Then There's the Times Where an Idea Blows Up in Your Face...
Trying to find stats to prove or disprove a theory can be a difficult and frustrating task. This is doubly so in baseball.
During tonight's game between the Jays and the Cincinnati Reds, I thought I recognized a correlation between the success of Jo-Jo Reyes and the number of fly balls that he put up. Going into the seventh inning (before the Rolen HR where the wheels started to come off), Jo-Jo had pitched well, garnering only one inside the park homer that really wasn't his fault. He had ten (10) ground balls compared to his seven (7) fly balls along with five (5) strike outs before he got run off the mound.
This got me to thinking if the amount of balls that he puts in play for his fielders and where they end up have any direct dictation over how well or poorly he ends up pitching. So, I start scouring fangraphs for some good old stats... and right about here is where the theory done blew up in my face like a firecracker at the Encarnacion residence.
I highlighted the number of flyballs and the Win Probability Added for each start in red. Any start where he had a high number of fly balls in comparison to his ground ball total and he suffered because of it is in green. Any time where the results deviate from my theory (either due to pooping the bed with more/equal ground balls or where he did well in spite of them) are in blue. Jo-Jo's complete game victory is in yellow. Pretty even ratio of GB/FB in that game. I highlighted it just because.
What does it tell us? Inconclusive. He's shown the ability to get around skying balls for the outfielders some of the time. However, he's also been punished for doing it, too. I don't know guys. Thought I had something, but it looks like this turned into a thirty minute statistical wank-fest with no real satisfaction at the end. I think I just figuratively blueballed myself with pitching stats.
I don't like this feeling.