What's the point? I don't know, I didn't start the thread. Now you are admitting Peralta gets owned by a lot of pitchers. It just looks most glaring versus Johan.

Just like if a 7th grader who hits .658 in his baseball league were to face Johan he'd go 0-1 with a strikeout and some poop in his pants and never come back to the box.

I mean, please tell me you'll admit that Johan owns many more hitters than, say, Kris Benson. At least concede that much.

Depends on whether or not they were in-the-parkers.

That is not the question. The question is, does Johan own Peralta at a greater rate than we would expect knowing both Peraltas and Santanas average K rates.

If Santana strikes everyone out at a 25% rate and Kris Benson strikes out everyone at a 10% clip. If Peralta struck out facing both of those pitchers 40% of the time, who would you say has done more owning?

Good point.

Would you agree it is possible for a particular batter to have more trouble then expected vs. a particular style pitcher? Like maybe someone who just can't figure out how to hit knuckleballs? Or can't get around on pitchers who can throw 100+. etc? Or like Pedro Cerrano?

Both have owned Peralta equally.

This isn't ruled out. As vhawk says, if you predict forward that a hitter will struggle, and the results from that point forward bear it out, you might've figured something out.

but just the results alone don't have any predictive value and are therefore useless.

Of course he does. Peralta strikes out a lot. Santana is the best pitcher in baseball. Any idiot can see that Peralta will strike out a lot vs. Santana. But so would EVERY hitter who strikes out as much as Peralta does. Its nothing unique to the matchup. The whole point of this thread was that there was some unique matchup factor going on.

So your overall argument is not that Santana owns Peralta specifically, it is that he owns the league generally.

Because in this example, Benson is showing some sort of individual dominance that is more than Santana is showing. B

Ok, then can you please go back and quote everyone in this thread who talked about matchups and some guys just dont see other guys as well, and ESPECIALLY the guy who asked me if I'd pinch hit for Peralta with a guy who had never faced Santana but was similar? I got laughed at for saying I wouldn't pinch hit, but now you are saying I was 100% correct? If the "similar hitter" strikes out as much as Peralta does, in general, he should be just as likely to "get owned" if I put him in there, right?

You tell mo24nyy that, that you would NOT PH for Peralta in that situation, and we are all in agreement.

But the results do help predict the future. In this case it is just whether the sample size is large enough.

The whole point of advanced statistics is to remove the noise from stats to pull out what the predictive measures are. Strikeouts, being one of the one true outcomes, is basically noise free over a large enough sample size.

Sorry, where does it say that? So your argument is that "well, yeah, sure Santana owns Peralta. But, but he owns a LOT of hitters because he's awesome. So, therefore, he isn't really owning Peralta. He is just pitching about as-expected versus a crappy hitter like Peralta. Peralta just so happens to be one of the hitters who routinely gets owned by Santana. Because Santana is awesome. And Peralta strikes out a lot. Therefore, Santana doesn't own Peralta."

That seems weird.

you shouldnt pinch hit for peralta becuase hypothetically he could strike out 40% of the time vs benson and santana
Wtf are you talking about

Player A who doesnt feel comfortable versus a cetain pitcher and strikes out 25 % of the time on avg facing a guy who strikes out people 25% of the the time will strike out a lot more than 25% of the time against the pitcher. Player B who is comfortable versus that pitcher and picks up the ball better should strike out a lot less than Player A even if there number are the same on average.
Would you really expect two students with an 80 avergage in high school to have the same result as eachother in English class?

Of course. Santana has a proven track record of owning the league. Therefore, he will own many hitters. Peralta is very likely one of them. Why is this so hard to understand?

Benson doesn't own nearly as many hitters. But if, over a million match-ups versus, say, Scot Lanned, he is equally dominant as Santana, then we'd say they both own Scot Lanned equally. Doesn't matter if one pitcher is pitching "over his head" and another is not.

I don't even think a pitcher could pitch "over his head" over that large of a sample size. I think it would mean more likely that the hitter has a hard time against that pitcher. Hitting is reactionary. The pitches said pitcher would be throwing wouldn't really be very varied over a huge sample, but the swings that a hitter gets might be.

In other words, it is far less likely that a pitcher "Pitches awesome" against some random hitter, and far more likely that a hitter hits horribly against a certain pitcher.

Michael Jordan plays a 3 year old in basketball. He creams the 3 year old. Obviously he owned the 3 year old. The fact that is was expected doesnt change the fact that Jordan owened him.

perhaps player A catches the pitcher on a bad day and he's hanging his breaking ball and takes one deep

don't you see how many variables there are in this and how long it would take to work through variance?

You didn't really expect to see many cases of batters like Neifi Perez owning pitchers like Greg Maddux, or pitchers like Todd Van Poppel owning hitters like Barry Bonds, did you?

I didnt say peralta couldnt homer off santana
but you really think the 2 hitters would have the same chance against santana?

In his career, Thome has struck out ~29% of the time vs. lefties and in his Peralta has struck out ~26% of the time vs. lefties.

They both have 30PAs vs. Santana. Thome has 11Ks and Peralta has 22Ks. You all honestly think Thome has a higher chance of striking out in his next AB vs. Santana then Peralta?

Why would it just be Johan and nobody else that Jhonny can't hit? Wouldn't Johan tell other Twins pitchers, and wouldn't other lefties figure out the same thing?

And why is Peralta the only one that Johan does this to? Aren't there similar batters to Peralta?

Are Santana and Peralta so unique that this is the only legitimate case of one player "owning" the other over 30 PA?

Batter/Pitcher matchups are too small of a sample size to make any reasonable judgments from the data.

A little off-track, but once in the early '90s, Bonds called Chuck McElroy his "kryptonite" and talked about how hard it was to pick up the ball for him, and how Chuck's particular style gave him a problem. A combo of the his particular release point and the constant diet of his hard-in slider that gave him fits.

This was about 93 or 94, when Bonds was discussing being 1-for-18 career against McElroy.

He finished up 3-33 career.

.091/.114/.303

Variance, for the most part, is the reason behind most matchup stats...but there are definately cases where guys just have someone's number for a reason other than variance.

I'll accept a measure of variance coupled with psychological reinforcement. Its obviously harder to get a hit, when you keep talking about how you can't get a hit. Otherwise you'd see similar pitchers with similar numbers. But still the vast majority of this can be chalked up to variance. I mean we're analyzing 30-40 PAs at the almost upper limit except for two people with exceptionally long careers. Usually like 15-25 PAs. Way too much intra sample variance to know whats up.

Cecil Fielder is 2 for 46 with 4 BBs for his career against Roger Clemens (.043/.120/.043)

Jim Thome is .373/.457/.898 in 70 plate appearances against Clemens.