Strikeouts aren’t the only thing Bud Black loves about his pitching staff

DENVER – Over the last few years, a philosophical debate has raged inside the game of baseball that might broadly be described as “traditional vs. advanced stat.” Of course, there is a ton of nuance to these positions and countless areas of contention and agreement among people along all points of the ideological spectrum.

But a topic that has been among the most contentious is the concept of “true outcomes.” For decades, it was more or less assumed that pitchers could induce weak contact by pitching to areas of the strikes zone with stuff that is difficult to get the barrel of the bat to. Then, as the stat community and SABR metrics and Bill James entered into the conversation data started to accrue that made a very compelling argument that pitcher really only have control of three things: walks, home runs, and strikeouts.

This is where stats like BABIP and FIP come from, the underlying philosophy being that balls in play are turned into outs at a somewhat random rate or at least a rate that is out of the pitcher’s control.

BSN Denver asked Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black what he thinks of this whole debate.

“I love this,” he says with a smile. “What was the question again?”

Can pitchers induce weak contact? And if so, how?

Here is his answer, in its entirety, uncut:

“Yeah. Good stuff. Mariano Rivera. Weak contact. Great cutter. Great stuff. Weak contact. Yes, pitchers can induce weak contact by being talented. There’s something about talent that sort of drives this games. And there are varying degrees of talent. There are 350-400 pitchers. There’s 50 of them who are like really good and they can induce weak contact just because they’re good. And there’s some other pitchers that do not have that stuff that give up harder hit balls. Exit velocity high. Not weak contact. But they’re a big league because they have a knack to get their outs, work through innings, do what they do to be big league pitchers. Yes, pitchers do have the ability to control strikeouts, if they’re good, and also weak contact … because they’re good.”

It looks like Black isn’t buying the whole “three true outcomes” thing. While a fair chunk of this answer was tongue-in-cheek (or at least purposefully oversimplified) the Rockies manager was still highlighting the question at the very heart of this debate; Does being “good” or “talented” have anything to do with what happens once the ball is put in play?

But Black, whether he intended to or not, also focused on another difficult aspect of measuring things like this. In statistical parlance, he gave some “outliers” as examples. Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher of all time, so it’s not hard to imagine he would possess some skills that other players do not. Black even went so far as to innumerate about 50 pitchers in MLB he felt separated themselves in this area. Those are, by definition, outliers. And where the stats see a kind of “noise” Black sees a level of talent. Outliers are simply proof that a particular skill is rare.

This problem comes to mind as we continue our research into Nolan Arenado and his clutch ability. A friend who writes for Purple Row recently told me that he wouldn’t believe Arenado was truly clutch until he actually put up his numbers in clutch situations for his entire career. It makes a certain amount of sense. The overwhelming data suggests Arenado’s clutch numbers will come down and the only thing that will convince some that they won’t is if they never do. In other words, if Arenado truly is an outlier who can escape the regression in the clutch that affects the vast majority of MLB players, it won’t truly be proven until his career is over.*

But managers don’t have that kind of time. Bud Black has to be making these decisions in real time. And they wouldn’t spend so much time teaching how to induce weak contact if they didn’t believe there was some skill in there that can be learned and bettered.

Over the last two games for the Rockies, a few pitchers who have made their names on inducing weak contact and scared off some evaluators because they didn’t strike enough guys out — Tyler Anderson, Tyler Chatwood, Chris Rusin — have combined for 18 groundball outs, 15 strikeouts and just one fly ball out.

*There are plenty of advanced stats that attempt to address this issue by comparing players against their own averages. For example, a player like Todd Helton proved over his career that he was just going to have a high BABIP so finding out how much luck was involved is better discovered by comparing him to his usual self. But this problem is why one should be cautious anytime an analyst uses just FIP or BABIP to suggest a player has been lucky.