Do Reliever Release Points Matter?

It’s well known amongst MLB The Show players that certain pitchers are difficult to hit due to their, dare I say, funky, delivery. It’s a testament to how realistic the video game is, or, so it would seem. I’ll never actually know. Regardless, The Show players often rely on relievers like Pat Neshek, Sergio Romo, or, more recently, Huston Street to throw off their online competitors. If you’ve gotten used to seeing the ball released from a certain point or angle for 7 innings, then a quick and drastic change from that look can be challenging. Outside of the fantasy world of video games are real-life relievers who can either throw very similar to the starter they are relieving or, drastically different. I wanted to know if there was a major difference in performance between the two.

In a previous post, I looked at the Mets and those pitchers who came in relief after Jacob deGrom. In this post, I’ll share the results of all relievers, who came in directly after the starter in the 2018 season. I’ll spare you the mind-numbing details of how I put together this Frankenstein dataset and just show you a sample:

What qualifies as a different release point from the starter? The distance metric is a simple geometric calculation of the distance between two points. The average distance in my 2018 dataset is 2.74 feet with a standard deviation of 1.77 feet. But, we’re talking different here and in that case, I separated the dataset into starter to relievers with a distance between average release points greater than 6 feet (high difference) and less than 2 feet (low difference). Here are the two groups and their average performance per outing:

This subsetting of the data basically separates lefties from righties with such a high measure of distance, but that is what I’m interested in. Unfortunately, there’s going to be a lot of noise involved due to things like managers playing matchups. However, if I go back to my original question, I’m looking for the largest difference in release point from starter to reliever, and going from right to left or vice-versa gives that largest distance between release points.

Looking at the comparison between the two groups on average does not give any indication of greater performance by differing release points. On average, relievers with a significantly different release point from the starter gives up fewer runs, hits, home runs, and walks, but records fewer strikeouts and outs. A one-sample t-test measuring the statistical significance of the high variation relievers shows no significant difference from the population and a two-sample t-test shows no statistical differences between the two groups. Though it may seem like a dead-end analysis, I do think there is still value in the relievers who come into the game looking like this:

Tim Hill is one of the relievers who has a greater than 6-foot difference between his release point and the starters he came after. Here’s a list of all relievers whose release point clocks in 6 feet greater than their starters and how they performed on average in those appearances:

I think there’s more to do here, but the initial analyses may not give enough motivation to keep digging. It’s possible that ultra hands-on managers could choose to stream relievers based on who the starter is that day, but this analysis doesn’t show that it would be worth the time. For fantasy managers who are looking for a reliever who may be able to vulture a win, miss bats, limit runs, and shock hitters with a wacky release point, the above list would be a good place to start.