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Friday, April 08, 2011
Umpires like catchers as batters
As Millsy shows:
On average, a pitch that is at the edge of the zone (normally a 50-50 change of being called a strike) is about 12.5% less likely to be called a strike if the batter is a catcher.
...
I have not controlled for the talent of the batter. We know that catchers are generally not as adept at hitting the ball as those at other positions, if for no other reason than the top hitting catchers are often moved to another position early on. If umpires are ‘compassionate’ toward players who just aren’t very good hitters, then we could be picking up this effect here. I don’t currently have an answer to this issue, as I do not have individual player performance in my Pitch F/X data at this point. If it is the case that this is an effect of the umpire interacting with the batter’s skill, then it is also an interesting issue to be looked into later on that likely needs to be controlled for in the data. I am in the process of greatly improving the information in my Pitch F/X database, so hopefully I can take a look at this stuff as well.
Millsy: if you have position information, just compare SS to 1B to see if there’s compassion. If you see there is something, then you can worry more about getting the talent levels, rather than position.
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