THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I have never, ever understood the difference between command and control.  And since a lot of smart people that I respect use those two words a lot, I’m guessing it’s my issue and not an issue with bad terminology.

So if anyone wouldn’t mind clarifying the difference or pointing me to a resource that talks about it, I’d be really happy.

I’m not sure about a fixed “2”, but it’s a good start.

I think it’s a very good assumption, quite accurate actually, except on 3-ball counts.

At least, the catchers have two intended locations for the pitchers’ fastballs (except on 3 balls).  Whether the pitchers really aim for the catcher’s mitt I suppose is something we don’t/can’t know.

Sky/1, my understanding of the definitions is that control = throwing pitches in the strike zone and command = throwing pitches close to the catcher’s target.

I’m not sure that a pitcher over a variety of MLB game contexts can really have the ability to do one and not the other.  People will say that in theory a pitcher could have “good control” if he just threw a bunch meatballs across the middle of the zone for strikes, whereas command means you can hit the edges of the zone. 

In practice, I’m not aware of a pitcher who can consistently put pitches in the middle of the zone but can’t put them consistently on the same size area on the edges of the zone.

Sky/1, I’ll chime in on this command/control issue. I don’t claim to know much, but here is my understanding of the two words:

Command: Being able to throw strikes consistently.
Control: Being able to throw pitches with bite/movement to precise locations.

So they kind of overlap and they’re kind of on two different levels, it sounds like.  Different kinds of “aim”.

Being able to put a pitch in the strike zone requires combining the ability to aim a pitch and being able to control how it moves.  But also the desire to put the ball in the zone, I would assume.  The better your stuff, the more you can just throw “meatballs”.  Or the less likely you rely on getting hitters to chase out-of-zone pitches, the more you want/need to throw in the strike zone.

Command is really more of a skill.  Being able to aim—not just initial trajectory but how the pitch will move.

Sounds almost like control (as defined by Mike) is a combination of command and intent.

I always thought that control was location, and command was pitch execution (i.e. not throwing hanging sliders, non-diving splitters, etc).  I may have just made that up in my head, though.

Sky/5, let me emphasize that I don’t think there’s a good functional or practical use for both definitions describing separate things.  Some people will argue your ear off about it, but I don’t buy it.

I use the term “command” because I believe the traditional definition for that term reflects what pitchers are trying to do: hit the catcher’s target (and thus the edge of the zone).

If you are talking about what a pitcher is trying to do (intent) or capable of doing (skill), you’re really talking about command.  I don’t think control (as traditionally defined) is very relevant in that sense except as it serves as an approximate measure of command.

Where control comes into the picture is that command is difficult to measure.  We don’t know where the catcher’s glove was.  There are ways of getting a good approximation of this in the PITCHf/x data, but that hasn’t been widely done.  So we have used things we can measure: percentage of strikes thrown and walks per PA or per 9 innings.  Those are, strictly speaking, measures of “control” rather than “command”, though I suspect there is really a great deal of overlap between the two.

A simplistic analogy: command is where someone’s political ideology falls on the conservative/liberal spectrum.  Control is whether they voted for Republicans or a Democrats.  If we were trying to predict the results of the next election or understand the nature of a given electorate, we’d really like to have detailed survey that established the conservative/liberal tendencies of each voter on a variety of issues.  If we couldn’t get that, we’d settle for knowing whether they voted for a Republican or a Democratic in the last few elections.

Zack/6, the concept of command does include the skill of repeatable/controllable spin movement on your pitches, though I am not convinced that MLB pitchers differ much in that respect.

Command is the idea that you can make the baseball do what you want it to do.  That the pitcher is in charge of what happens, not just flinging it up there and hoping something good will happen by chance.

Most MLB pitchers have little trouble making the ball spin about the same way every time.  But putting it close to the catcher’s glove is a challenge even for MLB pitchers.  So when I think of command I focus on the latter.  For lower-level pitchers it probably makes more sense to include both aspects.

The way I would use it is this:

Good control is about hitting an intended location consistently.

Good command is about being able to hit more than one intended location consistently.

So, if Billy Wagner always throws his heater up, and keeps hitting that spot, then he’s got good control.

If he can throw his heater up and down and left and right, while hitting his intended locations, then he’s got great command.

Whether that’s how the pros use it, I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter anyway.

Tango, thanks for linking. I don’t like using a fixed 2, either, but it’s the best I can do for now.

Re command/control, I had written an intro about the differences between the two, but deleted it. Mike seems well versed about the subject, as the definition that Keith Law and scouts currently use is provided in his post 3, and the definition provided by the Neyer/James guide is in his post 8. Will Carroll also gave a shot at distinguishing the two in his recent Stephen Strasburg preview. For most purposes, they’re the same thing.

I have always thought of Control as demonstrated by a pitcher’s BB ratio, and Command as expressed by K/BB.

Sounds like you could build a model of pitcher talent with two main skills: command and stuff.  I guess you’d need to do address each type of pitch separately.  And then there’s the issue of pitch selection and goal of each pitch.  So maybe three things: command/stuff/purpose?