Baseball Hacks

Measure Hits by Pitch Count

Determine whether pitchers are more effective earlier in games than they are later.

In Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, Pedro Martinez was dominant. In the first seven innings of the game, Pedro allowed the Yankees to score only two runs. The Red Sox were leading the game, 5 to 2. Pedro got the first batter (Nick Johnson) to pop out to short, but then he allowed Derek Jeter to hit a one-out double. Red Sox fans knew that Pedro became less effective after pitching his first 80 pitches, and, at this point in the game, he was well over that mark. Red Sox manager Grady Little decided to stick with his ace. Bernie Williams hit a single to center, scoring Jeter. Matsui then hit a double, followed by a double from Posada to tie the game.

The rest is history. The game went into extra innings and ended with a walkoff home run by Aaron Boone; the Yankees went on to lose the World Series, and Grady Little lost his job.

Part of the “conventional wisdom” of baseball is that pitchers become less effective as the game progresses. This is partly because pitchers tire out and can’t throw the ball as hard (or can’t follow through as well on their pitches), and partly because batters learn to recognize what the pitcher is throwing. But is this true?

This hack shows you how to use play-by-play data to examine what happens to starting pitchers as a game progresses.

The Code

To show how a pitcher performs as a game progresses, you need to calculate a cumulative ...