Baseball
Veteran Bias in MLB Umpiring: Hitters
In the previous post we showed that umpires gave more calls to veteran pitchers, although part of this was due to veteran pitchers having better ac...
Sprint Speed, Exit Velocity, and Steamer Projections
The Steamer projections are the best baseball projections available where it is possible to get years of back historical data. It is possible there...
Veteran Bias in MLB Umpiring: Pitchers
With a little kid at home I don't have much time to enjoy televised baseball nowadays, but I used to watch a decent amount of NPB baseball. One of ...
Swinging at the First Pitch: Teams are Finally Catching On
Not all of the increase in offense over the past few years has been due to juiced balls, seam heights, or some other type of conspiracy like undete...
Throwing the Cutter and Beating the Market
For those of you hoping to build that game-changing model and get that free money betting the big leagues this year, rest assured there are few ine...
Pitch Sequencing: Breaking Balls ahead in the Count
For most pitchers the breaking ball below the zone but high enough for the hitter to be tempted to swing is by far the best pitch in a 0-2 or 1-2 c...
Racial Bias in MLB Umpiring
For the time being, balls and strikes in MLB are decided by humans, who have inherent prejudices and biases. This would suggest that finding racist...
Do Homer Umps Exist?
It is well known to any decent baseball totals gambler, or astute baseball watcher for that matter, that the interpretation of the strike zone vari...
Pitch Sequencing the Umpire, and why Inaccurate Pitchers Should Fight the Automatic Strike Zone
In my last post I mentioned the idea the umpire's call is heavily influenced by the location of the last pitch, which sets a sort of reference fram...
Pitch Sequencing 101: Fastballs Up-and-In
One of the truly under-studied areas of baseball theory is pitch sequencing, the idea that pitches earlier in the at-bat influence hitter behavior ...
Spring Training Velocity Drops: Do they have Predictive Value?
Velocity drops in spring training are a key area of focus for both fantasy baseball players and sports bettors, and for good reason. Spring trainin...