Sweet!! Gonna try some of these. Mine is most like the Saturday Night Fever with a right-cross chaser. Sends 'em back to the dugout with a smiley face :( (Maybe not)
I was looking at this site for another statistical purpose ( max batted ball speed for batters ) when I came across this data.
from baseballsavant.com
Standard umpiring wisdom says "You can strike a ball....." which is what this chart clearly shows happening at about the 15% level in MLB.
....."but you should never ball a strike" which is apparently happening here at an alarmingly high 10% approximate rate. This can be attributed to the "Ted Williams effect" we had discussed in previous blog post. Umpires defer to stars as far as ball / strikes go.
I agree Vince!!! I was shocked and appalled when I saw the data as well!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V0TYIO6yv4
If you really, really want to speed up the pace of play, there is about a 10% pick up right there. That shaves 21 minutes off your standard 3;30 game and brings it to a more reasonable 3:09 marathon. Back to the average. Now, the average 3:09 game loses about 19 minutes, becoming a 2:50 gig.
I'm OK with this "Width of Strike Zone" outcome, in fact the actual could even be a bit wider. And if it makes the panty-waisted stat geeks shudder, who gives a Flying Walenda? Put on a Nutty Buddy, get behind the dish for three hours of dealing with David Ortiz and Mike Napoli's and see how wide your strike zone gets,
This wisdom is taught at all umpire clinics at all levels, except perhaps at the MLB level, where they have unions and shit they have to go through, but it's so simple and elegant and gets to the heart of the pace of game issue:
CALL STRIKES, YOU GET HOME FASTER!!!
PACE OF GAME PROBLEM SOLVED!! YOUR WELCOME!!
Also, you can eject that melon-head Ortiz from more games, which would suit me just fine.
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