At the end of each game, saves measure whether bullpen pitchers held a lead when the game was close. What about the beginning of a game? Is there a similar measure?
Finding an answer required several steps.
Let’s look at the last two seasons (2019 and 2020) for each pitcher in the 2021 rotation. One caveat is that this season’s starters will include additional pitchers.
Let’s limit some sources of variability that could add noise to the answer.
- To reduce the impact of facing batters the third time through the lineup, let’s only look at innings 1 through 5.