THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Good stuff Jeff!  More work needs to be done. One of the interesting takes in this is that a batters walk rate is a function of his pitch recognition talent (and approach) and the pitchers approach against him. One of the ways that the pitcher determines that approach with respect to the strike zone is as a function of the batters overall hitting talent.

One thing to do us see how the other components change as a result of the pitchers change in approach (throwing fewer strikes). Of course we won’t know if any change in those other components is a result of that or something else. Remember we found no benefit, in The Book, to pitching around a batter…

#1 Thanks. I wanted to run a simple study first to see if it was worth while to run a large study on the idea.

Jeff - I am sorry but I can’t agree with MGL.  This study is not one of your best efforts.  The problem begins right with the title.  Non-intentional walks are not an “effect” of intentional walks; both intentional walks and non-intentional walks are effects of other causal factors.  You identified a couple of these factors in the body of your article, batter’s hitting ability and the hitting ability of the following batter.  But you have left out many other important factors.

I am guessing that the eventual objective of your study is to get a better measure of a batter’s true ability of discriminating pitches.  That is an admirable purpose, but this study is a false start to a very complex question.