Pitcher Leverage

by rwperu34 on Feb 5, 2009 7:51 PM PST Comment 1 comment

How is pitcher leverage calculated? Is it the leverage when they enter the game or is it done on a batter by batter basis?

This might seem kind of silly. If you face one batter in a 2.0 situation, and another in a 0.5 situation, what is the total leverage, 1.25 or 1.0?

When calcuating run environment, they say a stater can impact the number of runs per win. Wouldn't this be just as much the case for a reliver? A starter might pitch six innings in a game to a relievers one, but over the course of nine innings, wouldn't the reliever have just as big of an impact on run environment?

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Not sure exactly what you're asking

And I’m far from an expert, or even an informed amateur on this topic. So I’m hoping others will jump in here.

If I’m reading your post correctly (and I apologize in advance if I’m not), there are two questions, to which I’ll try to provide links as answers:

1) Leverage

Go here for a basic guide to leverage-related terms as used at Fangraphs. See especially the links there to Tom Tango’s three part series on “Critical Situations.”

This is a link to Tango’s Leverage Index Tables.

2) Run environment. When they talk about a pitchers effect on his runs-wins conversion due to his effect on the run evironment, yes, that is true of starters as well as relievers. But that conversion is done over a full season’s work, and naturally one would expect a starter, over a full season, to have more of an effect on the league run environment (for better or worse) due to the higher amount of innings pitched.

In a proper calculation, the reliever’s WAR/RAR will already be multiplied by the appropriate leverage index.

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by Matt Klaassen on Feb 6, 2009 8:40 PM PST reply actions 0 recs