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In response to
"would be more curious to see the outcomes than just the frequencies..."
by
znufrii
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here's one study I found, from 1986
Posted by
znufrii
Apr 23 '13, 11:56
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THE 3-0 PITCH. The fact that almost 60% of all 3-0 pitches are taken for a called strike should probably not be surprising. What WAS interesting, however, was the wide difference observed in the percentage of batters swinging at the 3-0 pitch (14 of 193, about 7.3%) compared to the Palmer study of all World Series games played between 1974 and 1982 (66 of 336, or 19.6%)! Can it be that World Series managers are likely to give a green light to a batter on a 3-0 pitch almost one out of every five times, when they do so about one time in 14 during the regular season? Since both studies eliminated intentional walks from the data base, there is no reason to assume a statistical bias one way or the other.
Moreover, the divergence of the data does not end merely with the frequency of swinging at the pitch; the results of those swings are significantly different as well. Palmer reported that of the 66 World Series players swinging at the 3-0 pitch, 34 missed it completely! This is a staggering 51.5% miss rate, higher by far than any sample at any count under any condition. In contrast, the 14 swings in this study produced only one complete miss, six foul balls and seven balls put into play.
While both samples are admittedly too small to draw any conclusions with confidence, the results of the current study are at least compatible with what has been observed for batters in general. This extraordinarily wide divergence of observed behavior in the regular season vs. World Series play certainly deserves closer scrutiny.
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