Really interesting article here from 2013 (before all this really took off) about pitchers and hitting success various times through the order:
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/22156/baseball-proguestus-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-the-times-through-the-order-penalty/
Here's the conclusion of a fascinating article:
"Let’s recap what we learned today about the “times through the order” penalty.
- The first time through the order, pitchers pitch better than they do overall. This “first time” effect is magnified in the first inning, especially for the home pitcher.
- Starters get progressively worse as they face the lineup for the second, third, and fourth times. The fourth-time penalty gets masked in outdoor games, especially at night, and in the ninth and later innings.
- A pitcher’s career “times through the order” patterns have almost no predictive value. We can assume that all starting pitchers have roughly the same “true talent” TTOP, regardless of what they have shown in the past.
- Good and bad pitchers show around the same magnitude of TTOP. The third time through the order, all starters are expected to pitch around .35 runs per nine innings worse than they do overall.
- Pitch count does not seem to have much of an effect on the TTOP. For example, going into the third time through the order, whether a pitcher has thrown 60 or 75 pitches doesn’t seem to matter much.
- For an individual batter, the number of pitches seen makes a huge difference. The largest difference is from the first to the second time through the order. If a batter sees fewer than three pitches in his first PA, he hits 10 points better his second time at the plate. If he sees more than four pitches his first time up, he hits 25 points better on his second go-around!"
The fourth bullet point is interesting. And he goes on to say this a short while later:
"In an
article I wrote two years ago about the benefit of “quick hooks,” I showed that a typical NL team could add from a half to a full win per season simply by removing a starting pitcher who is not an ace whenever he comes to bat in a high-leverage situation after pitching at least five innings, even if his replacement is a league-average reliever. Even in AL parks, where pitchers don’t bat, managers should be inclined to replace a pitcher, especially a fourth or fifth starter, as soon as he faces the order for the third time. These mediocre or worse starters are likely at or near replacement level by this time, even if they have been pitching well."
So here's the thing. He's talking about non-ace pitchers. He's talking about how this effect really is for decent, mediocre, or worse starters, not top-level starters. Because those guys, I guess, if they're good enough to stay in the game in the later innings, it's because they're dominating and they're just so much better than the hitters are. So when Blake Snell, who was an elite pitcher (having won a CYA already), was DEALING last year in game 6 in the WS, while the overall point is that pitchers do worse when seeing the lineup for a third time, it probably wasn't the right move with him at that point. Elimination game, and Snell is maybe your best pitcher. And he's ON.
Remember, he got taken out after only 73 pitches, and he had given up just two hits. He had retired 10 straight guys before the single by Barnes in the 6th, 4 of them by strikeout. He was overpowering, and he still had tons left in him.
Being slaves to this methodology may win you more regular season games when you're throwing average starters out there, but when you have a stud, and he's dealing, he needs to keep going, unless he's wearing down.
But interestingly, this article points out that adopting this approach over the course of a season "could add from a half to a full win per season". A half to a full win. Yes, I know teams look for all kinds of advantages, but all that for *maybe* a half to one full win?
I do wonder what this approach will do for pitching contracts. If starters are, moving forward, only expected to pitch 5, MAYBE 6, innings, will they start to get paid less because they're shouldering less of a burden?
By the way, how much more valuable would Pedro Martinez have been in this pitching environment? He was the king no matter what era he pitched in, but he didn't throw as many innings as some other aces. Imagine if he was told they only ever expected him to go five or six innings, so go ahead and air it out and not worry about going deep into the game? The guy would have been absolutely impossible to hit.