Posted by Bill Baer on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 5:07 am

I recently took a trip down memory lane by watching Game 5 of the 2008 World Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies again. Ahh, nostalgia. Little did I know that I was vulnerable to FOX color commentator Tim McCarver saying something interesting. I’m just as surprised as you are that McCarver had such potential.

Phillies right fielder Jayson Werth was facing Rays reliever Grant Balfour in the bottom of the sixth inning with one out and a runner on third base with the score tied 2-2. McCarver mentioned that Balfour was a good guy to have in given the situation because, with his high fastball velocity, he could induce an infield fly ball, which would prevent the runner on third (Geoff Jenkins) from scoring.

Sounds like something that would be true. Faster pitches, weaker contact… more fly balls hit in the infield. Thanks to FanGraphs, we can actually see if this claim of McCarver’s holds true. It held true in Werth’s case, as he hit a fly ball that normally would have been caught by the shortstop if the infield had been playing at normal depth, but the ball dropped in shallow center field to score the Phillies’ third run of the game.

Is that outcome — heat-throwing pitcher induces infield fly ball — more exception or rule?

I went to FanGraphs and imported their data into Microsoft Excel and ran some correlations. I created two data sets: starters (with a minimum of 120 innings pitched) and relievers (min. 30 IP).

There were 118 starting pitchers who qualified from the 2008 season and 224 relievers. Here are the findings.

In both cases, there is very little correlation between the two. Starting pitchers have an r-square of about 0.01 and relief pitchers are even worse.

What if we reduce our sample size a bit? Not a great idea but it might offer up something more. Let’s move the relievers’ qualification to 50 IP and the starters’ to 150 IP. Our starting pitching sample size goes down to 97 and our relievers go down to 135.

The r-squares bump up a bit but it’s still very, very meaningless. There’s just no correlation between fastball velocity and a tendency to allow infield fly balls.

If you’re a manager and you’re faced with a situation that involves one out and a runner on third base that absolutely can’t score, assuming everything else to be neutral, your best bet is to go with a high-strikeout pitcher. That shouldn’t be surprising, since that gives you the highest probability of not allowing that run to score.

Joe Maddon had in the right guy for that situation. Grant Balfour led the Rays’ bullpen with a 12.65 K/9 rate.

McCarver was kind of right in about the smallest way possible. There is a correlation between fastball velocity and IFFB% but it’s just so minuscule that it is completely meaningless. Balfour was the right guy to have in the game, as McCarver mentioned, but it’s because he’s a strikeout-happy pitcher.