![]() On two-strike counts, the pitcher really wants to throw his slider low-outside or high-inside, preferably outside of the zone.There is some advantage in throwing high-inside on a 2-1 count On one-strike counts, it is now advantageous to throw the slider outside, even outside of the zone.On a 1-0 count, pitcher wants to throw a slider on the outer side of the zone, and on a 2-0 pitch, any slider in the zone will be good.Sliders (pitch type of SL) have a similar pattern to changeups. On a 1-2 count, note the green area inside the zone - this is a poorly placed changeup which tends to be put in play for a hit.On 2-strike counts, it is now desirable to throw change-ups low outside of the zone.On 0-strike counts, the pitcher gets positive value from change-ups thrown in the middle of the zone.To illustrate, here are graphs of the values of change-ups (pitch type CH) on one and two ball counts. The count has a different effect on the value of off-speed pitches. Note that there is a sizable orange area outside of the zone for the two-strike counts 1-2 and 2-2 - these correspond to swing and misses on these pitches out of the zone. As the number of strikes increases, it is desirable to locate somewhat outside of the zone.For 0-strike counts (1-0 or 2-0) the pitcher wants to locate the pitch within the zone.Generally it is desirable to throw a four-seamer high or outside to a right-handed hitter.Recall from my recent post that larger pitch values (orange color) are beneficial to the pitcher and negative pitch values (yellow towards blue) are beneficial to the hitter. Here I am focusing on right-handed pitchers to right-handed hitters, although it is easy to consider other matchups. To begin, suppose we want to explore the pitch values of four-seamers (pitch type FF) across all 1 and 2 ball counts. A current introduction to many of the functions in the CalledStrike package can be found here. Here I will use these displays to show how the value of a specific type of pitch can dramatically change across counts.īy the way, my Analyzing Baseball with R coauthor Max posted on this same subject in a Hardball Times post. This package includes a Shiny function PitchValue() that uses 2019 data to select a pitch type, a batting side and pitch side and displays the smoothed pitch values across a group of counts. Recently I’ve added some functions to my CalledStrike package that compute pitch values and make it easy to graph pitch values over the zone. For example, pitchers will typically throw a fastball on the first pitch (0-0 count) and throw an off-speed pitch when they are ahead in the count. One key thing that I ignored was the role of count in the choice of pitch type. A few weeks ago, I reviewed the concept of pitch value and showed smoothed graphs of pitch value for different pitch types (four-seamers, sliders, and changeups) over the zone.
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