Sometimes, finding nothing is interesting. It’s obviously not exciting as finding *something*, but it’s not a waste of time.
For example, Blake Murphy went looking for an expected walk rate for pitchers given different plate discipline peripherals. You’d think, if given a pitcher’s percentage of pitches in the zone, and batters’ propensity to reach (and miss) for pitches outside the zone, you might be able to get a sense of their future walk rate. After all, not walking a guy is as simple as throwing the ball in the zone, and getting batters to turn a couple walks into strikes for you, right?
Guess not.
Murphy couldn’t predict walk rate any better than previous walk rates. This, after finding some success predicting strikeout rates using velocity and swinging strike rates (FanGraphs’ Michael Barr had similar findings). That might be because there are confounding factors that aren’t easy to quantify — repeatability of mechanics, consistency of release points, and the severity of movement on the pitches — or it might be because we need to weight each of the variables differently to get there. Control (and command) is a difficult thing to suss. Even guys with similar walk rates have different levels of control and command.
But this wouldn’t be a good column if I just shrugged and said — eh, we can’t know! (Who knows if it’s a good column anyway, but there’s no need to give the opposition more evidence.)
