from Amazon
Thursday, October 08, 2009
What’s Matt Holliday’s problem?
A reader said this:
Check Holliday’s AB in the first inning. He was clearly thrown 5 balls and 3 of them were called strikes. I’m impartial to the game but ... The game would have been a lot different had that strike zone been an average MLB strike zone for that PA.
MGL decided to roll up his sleeves (post 3 of same thread):
OK, I watched the video of that AB very carefully. ... Pitch 3
A little better than pitch 1. Not a pitch trax strike. Some umpires, maybe most, call that a strike. DeMuth usually calls that a ball. Didn’t miss by much, maybe 1 or 2 inches. Not a “bad” call.
Pitch 4
Almost exactly the same as pitch 3. Not a strike according to Pitch Trax, but close. I think that DeMuth is forced to call it a strike because he called pitch 3 a strike, to be honest, and they were almost exactly the same pitch.
Pitch 5
Ditto pitch 4.
All 3 of those pitches were a little out of character for DeMuth, but I think he got trapped into calling the last 2 strikes because of the first strike. In general, they were NOT terrible or even bad calls. Probably half (maybe more) of all umpires call those same pitches strikes.
Then Peter (post 5 same thread) rolled up his sleeves and looked at all pitches that were similarly thrown:
Pitch 3 crossed the plate with a px of -.951, Pitch 4 at -.956 and Pitch 5 at -.917. These are probably the most difficult pitch locations for any umpire to call from a left handed pitcher. ... I looked at all the pitches for August 2009. There were 123 pitches from left handers where the umpire had to make a ball or strike call and the pitch was between -.957 and -.916 and also had a pz in the batters strike zone. 43 of those pitches were called balls and 80 were called strikes. Holliday should not have been taking those pitches.
This was easily my favorite thread of the past few weeks. A reader said something about “clearly out of strike zone” pitches. MGL looks at the actual pitches via video replay and makes his assessment, using his knowledge. And then Peter verifies it by looking at actual data from the last 123 similarly thrown pitches.
I love this sh!t.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date