3 Wild Pitches in an inning...

With all the discussion about the black box and statistical abnormalities, is anybody keeping tabs on the wild pitch and passed ball stats? I don't notice it since I only watch replays during playoff games, but in the past it seemed like wild pitches and passed balls happened regularly in the games I saw. In semi-final Game 5 below, the 1996 Kevin Brown had 3 wild pitches in an inning (his rating is 6). He issued a total of 13 during the regular season, despite issuing only 4 according to historical records (Baseball Reference).

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/game/playbyplay/428771/982

Looking further in the regular season stats, I saw that Charles Johnson 1997 issued 16 passed balls, despite having a rating of (pb-2) and issuing but 1 passed ball in the historical records of that season.

Wonder what the odds are of three wild pitches in an inning.

Stop using logic with people--
it only confuses them.

Nothing to see here, move along...move along.

it happened this evening.

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/game/replay/429111/570

Well, I feel that Salty won't like my comment...but the world of logic and the world of statistics don't necessairly overlap, and clearly Salty prefers to follow the logic path; I prefer to rely onto statistics.

In the other thread (3 and out...about Bonds probability to hit homeruns), I gave the website where you can calculate the probabilities like the question in the first post.

http://stattrek.com/m/online-calculator/binomial.aspx

Brown has a 1.5% probability of allowing a wild pitch (wp=6, so 1/20 * 6/20= 0.015) (in fact, Brown has more chance than 1.5%, but more to this below). First line of the website is 0.015.

As you probably know, in super-advance mode, as soon as a runner is on-base, you have to roll for the wildpitch, and you have to roll it again if there is a situational change (for example, when a player steals a base).

(As a side note, I believe that most owners who play face-to-face under the advanced mode roll for the wild pitch only when trying to steal a base, so wild pitch will occur online much more frequently than if you play face-to-face under the advanced mode)

In this case (first post, with Kevin Brown), as soon as the first hitter, Jennings, gets on-base, up until the end of the inning, there were men on bases. At every situation change, so when Jennings stole a base, or when a wild pitch occurs, there's another roll. So overall, there has been in that inning 11 rolls to test the wild pitch. Second line of the website is 11.

There were 3 wild pitches, so 3 fulfills the third line.

After calculations, you see that the probability to have 3 wild pitches or more in such inning (11 situations) is 0.000509, or 0.05%, which is quite rare.

This inning was the first inning of a post-season game, but it could have happened in any game of the season. So if you enter that probability above (0.000509), and ask the system what's the probability that such inning (or worse, with 4 wild pitches or more) happens in any inning of the season of YOUR TEAM. THAT probability is 52%. And of ANY TEAM in the league (if they all had pitchers with a rating of wp=6), that probablity is 99.9%

So as Radiohead sings, those three wild pitches were an accident waiting to happen.

Final note. Not a lot of owners know that wild pitches can also occur on the Catcher's def-X. The worse the catcher, the higher the probability that a wild pitch occurs, and this has nothing to do with the pitcher's wp rating. I guess we should read in those occasions wild pitch (CATCH-X), but I never checked if it did.

Marc-

weather your math is correct or not, does it make any sense to you that this many wild pitches would occur?

Ask Rick Ankiel......

Ask Rick Ankiel......

Id have to ask a WHOLE bunch of Ankiel's since according to this it happens to almost every team every season

Salty,

On this, we agree. I think the flaw by SOM is the repetiton of rolling the "wild pitch" dice after each change of basepath situation, instead of each hitter. In my opinion, you should roll the dice ONCE for each hitter, period, regardless of whether there is a steal or a wild pitch. When you think of it, there is roughly the same number of pitches for every hitter---well, maybe a hitter will take an extra pitch with a runner stealing a base, but it does not justify that you throw twice or thrice the 20-face dice to test the wild pitch and the balk.

This post is about wild pitches, but it's even worse for balks. No referee would have the guts to call two balks in a row before a hitter's swing---but it could happen in SOM.

If you go back to emart post, there would have been two wild pitches, not three, if we had followed the rule of rolling only once the 20-face dice for the wild pitch/balk.

With all the discussion about the black box and statistical abnormalities, is anybody keeping tabs on the wild pitch and passed ball stats? I don't notice it since I only watch replays during playoff games, but in the past it seemed like wild pitches and passed balls happened regularly in the games I saw. In semi-final Game 5 below, the 1996 Kevin Brown had 3 wild pitches in an inning (his rating is 6). He issued a total of 13 during the regular season, despite issuing only 4 according to historical records (Baseball Reference).

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/game/playbyplay/428771/982

Looking further in the regular season stats, I saw that Charles Johnson 1997 issued 16 passed balls, despite having a rating of (pb-2) and issuing but 1 passed ball in the historical records of that season.

Wonder what the odds are of three wild pitches in an inning.

I wonder how many times Kevin Brown had to pitch with someone equivalent to Ty Cobb Hugh Duffy or Tris Speaker on base in 1996?

Looking further in the regular season stats, I saw that Charles Johnson 1997 issued 16 passed balls, despite having a rating of (pb-2) and issuing but 1 passed ball in the historical records of that season.

Final note. Not a lot of owners know that wild pitches can also occur on the Catcher's def-X. The worse the catcher, the higher the probability that a wild pitch occurs, and this has nothing to do with the pitcher's wp rating. I guess we should read in those occasions wild pitch (CATCH-X), but I never checked if it did.

I forgot to say: wild pitches can occur on the catcher's def-x, and passed balls can occur because of wild pitches!! The catcher's def-X sometimes requires that you roll the dice against a pitcher's wild pitch rating, and if you get a wp, it is marked as a passed ball.

So perhaps Johnson had a few pitchers with high wp