The 2015 Season Preview in Strikeouts

Junior Lake struck out the most in 2014 on balls at the bottom of the strike zone. (via John Maxmena)

Junior Lake struck out the most in 2014 on balls at the bottom of the strike zone. (via John Maxmena)

Editor’s Note: With Opening Day nearly here, it’s time to preview the season. Welcome to Season Preview Week!

The strikeout has been a hot topic the past couple of seasons. So we thought we’d try to create a comprehensive outlook for the season of strikeouts to come. So we brought together six writers to tackle the topic from different angles.

Strike Zone Outlook, by Jon Roegele

We know the strike zone has been expanding over the past several years, and we know the vast majority of that growth has come from the bottom of the strike zone falling on an annual basis. Not surprisingly, it has been shown that the larger zone leads directly to more strikeouts, fewer walks, and an overall lower run-scoring environment. This table neatly summarizes the trend as it pertains to strikeouts.

Strike Zone Size, 2009-2014

Year Strike Zone Size (sq. in) Strike Zone Size Below 21” (sq. in) K%
2009 435 0 18.0%
2010 436 6 18.5%
2011 448 11 18.6%
2012 456 19 19.8%
2013 459 30 19.9%
2014 475 47 20.4%

With new commissioner Rob Manfred seemingly open to change in the game targeting an improved experience for fans, finding a way to increase run scoring appears to be one item under consideration. On this front, MLB’s Playing Rules Committee announced it would monitor the strike zone during the 2015 season, with the potential for making a change to the rulebook zone definition as early as 2016.

Over these same years that the zone has been expanding, we also know home plate umpires on the whole are becoming better at their jobs. Given that it doesn’t sound like umpires will be directed to call the strike zone any differently in 2015, we might expect a strike zone similar in size and shape to what was observed in 2014.

That said, there is evidence that during the postseason last year, the bottom of the strike zone may have pulled back up slightly from the level seen during the regular season. If this apparent change is real and is sustained into the 2015 season, there would be reason to expect the strikeout rate to level off this season if not abate slightly.

If I were made to take a guess as to what will unfold in 2015, I would say this is the season the falling bottom of the strike zone finally levels off, given the increased attention. There are other aspects of the game affecting strikeout rate aside from the strike zone itself, but I will predict a strikeout rate that is flat with the 2014 numbers in the upcoming season.

The Bottom of the Strike Zone, by David G. Temple

Rule changes don’t just happen for the heck of it. There needs to be some inertia there, some impetus for the different direction. When management takes away the toaster oven from the break room, you know it’s because Randy kept burning his Hot Pockets in there. There could be just one Randy or a whole group of them, but rules are changed in reaction to some sort of perceived problem. Oh, or money. People do all kinds of things to make money.

When the MLB Playing Rules Committee said it was going to take a serious look at the strike zone this year, it wasn’t because of money (well, not directly anyway). People have noticed that the bottom of the strike zone keeps dropping. Offense has also been dropping, and we think this may be related. Low pitches are harder for most batters to hit. Allowing them to lay off those pitches will either lead to more walks or more hits, theoretically. It won’t solve the pace-of-game problem, but it just may solve the offensive problem.

I can’t imagine the umpires just suddenly decided to lower the strike zone. It probably has more to do with the shifting baseline theory. The difference between the bottom of the zone in 2008 and 2014 is much bigger than the difference between 2013 and 2014. If it drops just a little bit every year, it becomes less noticeable. Pitchers are working to slowly expand the zone. This is basically how Greg Maddux made his career.

Both the pitchers and umpires are implicit in this shift — they are all a bunch of Randys. And so management must do something about it. It’s for the benefit of the game, but it’s not without its consequences. Some pitchers are going to have to alter their game quite a bit. If the road to
Hell is paved with good intentions, a shrinking of the strike zone would pave a highway for Brad Ziegler.

I went to the intrepid Baseball Savant to do a little research into this area of the strike zone. As I sort of expected, Ziegler was in the lead; I just didn’t realize by how much. Here are the top 30 pitchers living in the bottom of the zone:

Top 30 Pitchers by Percent in Bottom of Strike Zone, 2014

Pitcher % of Pitches in Bottom of Zone
Brad Ziegler ????
Zach Duke 76.3%
Shane Greene 69.8%
Brandon League 68.9%
Craig Stammen 66.2%
Wade Miley 65.2%
Trevor Cahill 64.8%
Jacob Turner 64.7%
Felix Hernandez 64.1%
Jeanmar Gomez 64.1%
Jeurys Familia 63.9%
Dallas Keuchel 63.7%
Tommy Milone 63.1%
Francisco Rodriguez 62.8%
Luke Gregerson 62.6%
Kevin Gausman 62.3%
Hisashi Iwakuma 62.2%
Steve Cishek 62.2%
Kyle Gibson 62.1%
Joe Smith 62.0%
David Hale 61.6%
Masahiro Tanaka 61.2%
Hiroki Kuroda 61.0%
Francisco Liriano 61.0%
James Paxton 61.0%
Dominic Leone 60.8%
Alex Cobb 60.7%
Justin Masterson 60.6%
Roberto Hernandez 60.6%

I’m being cheeky by making you guess what Ziegler’s rate is. If you’re anything like my wife when it comes to guessing games, you’ve shot way too high, but the actual number is still impressive.

Top 3 Pitchers by Percent in Bottom of Strike Zone, 2014

Pitcher % of Pitches in Bottom of Zone
Brad Ziegler 82.1%
Zach Duke 76.3%
Shane Greene 69.8%

In fairness, not all these pitches are in the very bottom of the strike zone, just in the lower third of the zone (and only what PITCHf/x and Baseball Savant consider to be the lower third of the zone). Caveats aside, that’s sill an amazing number.

We’re still in the planning phases of this whole project. We don’t know how much the strike zone will be shortened, if it will at all. Everything is still very much up in the air. This is all speculation. But look at Ziegler’s heat map and tell me life isn’t going to be rougher for him if they raise the bottom of the zone.

Brad Ziegler

Compressing the zone would cut Ziegler down at the knees by not allowing him to cut batters down at the knees. Ziegler is a professional, of course, and professionals adjust to things. He would still have his side-armer’s deception. He’d still have his little fadeaway change-up. He’d be okay, probably.

We haven’t been through a drastic strike zone change in the PITCHf/x era, so we don’t know how long it will take players to adjust. But for guys like Ziegler, Duke, Miley and Felix — guys who have declared squatters’ rights in the bottom of the zone — some drastic changes might have to be in effect.

There are two sides to every coin, however, and the other side of this coin features the likeness of George Springer. Using Baseball Savant again, here are the leaders for hitters who whiff the most in the bottom of the zone:

Top 30 Batters by Swinging K% in Bottom of Strike Zone, 2014

Batter Swinging K% in Bottom of Zone
Junior Lake 13.57%
Josh Hamilton 12.93%
Chris Johnson 10.90%
Mike Zunino 10.66%
George Springer 10.31%
Brandon Hicks 9.95%
Ryan Howard 9.86%
Nick Castellanos 9.47%
Danny Espinosa 9.29%
Justin Ruggiano 9.29%
Delmon Young 9.24%
Javier Baez 9.20%
Chris Carter 9.12%
Corey Hart 9.08%
Kennys Vargas 9.08%
Alfonso Soriano 8.97%
Matt Kemp 8.88%
Colby Rasmus 8.80%
Marcell Ozuna 8.79%
Charlie Culberson 8.77%
J.D. Martinez 8.76%
Ryan Ludwick 8.76%
Jose Abreu 8.34%
Chris Davis 8.31%
Chris Heisey 8.26%
Brandon Barnes 8.25%
Rickie Weeks 8.22%
Giancarlo Stanton 8.21%
Marlon Byrd 8.19%

For clarity, the denominator of these percentages isn’t only swinging strikes, but all pitches seen. So of all the pitches thrown toward Springer, over 10 percent of them ended up being whiffs in bottom of the zone.

Springer strikes out a lot, but he doesn’t necessarily chase a lot of pitches. In fact, his O-Swing% was under league average last season. Springer just has a hard time making contact on pitches inside the zone. And a lot of that trouble comes down in the zone. Springer swung and missed at 246 total pitches last season, and 143 of those were in the lower third of the zone.

Springer is only 25 and still has time to improve his K rates, though his minor league numbers show this is pretty much his norm. He has a problem getting bat on ball in the first place, but especially in the bottom of the strike zone. If the zone were compressed, he might find it easier to make contact on thrown strikes. Pretty much all batters would benefit from a shrunken zone, but Springer might be predestined to be helped most of all.

In all honesty, if the powers that be deem it necessary to pump up offense, some slight tweaks to the strike zone seem like one of the least invasive ways — certainly better than outlawing shifts or making changes to the ball. It’ll be a bit of a kick in the groin to Ziegler, yes, and it might be doing Springer a favor. Any rule changes affect those on the fringes the most. But if we’re going to ever get our toaster oven privileges back, measures will have to be taken.

How Will Increased Pace Affect Strikeouts?, by Patrick Dubuque

The pitchers are winning. Over the eight years of the PITCHf/x era, the league average for every type of pitch, from fastball to curveball to knuckleball, has risen several miles per hour. For any starter to gain two ticks on his fastball would be enough to resuscitate his career; for the big leagues to do it all at once is madness. They’re getting ahead in the count, which is forcing batters to chase worse pitches, which is evoking more strikeouts. Until batters learn how to swing faster to compensate, things are only going to get worse.

As we have discussed above, the umpires constricting their increasingly liberal conception of the strike zone would be helpful. Another source of reprieve is on the horizon for hitters: the pitch clock, slated to see use in Double-A and Triple-A for the 2015 season.

The theoretical rules are simple: The pitcher must deliver the ball within 20 seconds of receiving it or be charged with a ball. The batter may not leave the box. That’s pretty much it. The new rule stems from MLB’s desire to shorten games and its unwillingness to shorten its commercial breaks. But despite its questionable motivations, pitcher pace has seen a disconcerting trend as of late:

Pace-of-Pitches

That second and a half doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of 704,974 pitches in a full season, it amounts to nearly 294 hours of extra baseball, all of it spent staring at motionless, grim players. It comes to 7.25 minutes a game, which is worth worrying about.

When the pitch clock inevitably does arrive, it will affect everyone. Out of the 477 pitchers who threw more than 20 innings last year, only 22 made it under the cutoff. But there’s one particular type of pitcher who may have the largest adjustment to make.

Pace,-by-K%

Pace doesn’t correlate particularly strongly with any particular statistic; there are just too many variables going into a particular pitch: the out and base state, the fatigue of the pitcher, the skill of the batter, etc. But the strongest correlations we do see (with R-scores in the 0.3 to 0.4 range) are clear: the better hitters tend to require more time to pitch to, and the harder throwers take more time to throw. Strikeout percentage and fastball velocity are the two strongest correlations with pitch pace. And as everyone is throwing faster and striking out more batters, it’s only getting worse.

The big question is, how will the clock change this? Batters — most notably David Ortiz — have complained about the batter’s box aspect of the rule, as it is a point of emphasis in the majors this season. However, a more regulated game actually appears to help his colleagues. If hitting is timing, the inability of pitchers to foil that timing through a lengthy staredown can’t hurt. Perhaps we’ll see more lazy pickoff throws (until baseball turns to that little problem, which it eventually will). But since most timeouts by hitters are the result of pitchers taking too long, they won’t miss it for long.

The other fascinating aspect of the pitch clock will be its psychological aspect. As Rob Arthur noted at FOX Sports, waiting is an old man’s game: Pace rises pretty reliably with age, and as Dirk Hayhurst noted in an episode of the podcast “Effectively Wild,” much of this is an act to establish animalistic dominance over his younger opponents. Meanwhile, Russell Carleton notes that — especially as pitchers adjust — they’re more prone to panic as that clock winds down, throwing pitches they might not have been ready to throw. A rise in these mistake pitches certainly would cut down on strikeouts and inflate offensive numbers.

One might expect the clock to provide a small home-field advantage, as raucous if distant fans count down “three, two, one” at every opportunity. Surprisingly, the most direct parallel to this, the free throw, provides skepticism. The present author happily recalls fond memories of Karl Malone, staring blankly at the hoop as fans chanted from ten to one.

But the data do not bear this out. In 2014-2015, home and road free throw percentages are essentially identical, and a Bloomberg study found in clutch situations it was the home team, performing in front of its own fans, that was more likely to suffer from stress. The booing, it seems, clears the mind and externalizes the pressure. Whether this is true when carried over from a rote mechanical action to the meditative act of planning a pitch will be interesting to learn.

How pitchers adjust to the logistics and pressure of the pitch clock will be one of the most interesting stories of 2015. But it’s clear the timer won’t hamper all pitchers equally. The guys who pitch to contact, whose limited arsenal leaves them unparalyzed by choice, will find the adjustment much easier than their fireballing brethren.

Team Strikeouts Overview, by Michael Barr

Based on the FanGraphs 2015 depth charts prognostications, over 182,728 plate appearances there are to be 35,529 strikeouts, good for a league-average 19.4 percent strikeout rate. This probably sounds high, but that projected K rate is actually an entire percentage point lower than last season, which as Jon detailed above, registered at 20.4 percent.

In 2014, the Cubs, Astros and Marlins had the highest team strikeout rates with 24.2 percent, 23.8 percent and 22.9 percent, respectively. This season, it’s predicted the Padres join the club at 21.2 percent, just behind the Cubs and Astros at 22.5 percent and 23.7 percent, respectively. The Marlins, if you’re wondering, are predicted to drop down to 20.8 percent.

The Padres are impacted, no doubt, by their newest acquisitions, as Justin Upton, Matt Kemp and Wil Myers are predicted to lead the team in strikeouts — and if he can find a full-time gig, Will Middlebrooks just might best them all. Interestingly, even though they’re ranked third in predicted strikeouts, 21.2 percent is actually a decrease from 2014, when their team K rate was 21.9 percent, when their two most prolific whiffers were Tommy Medica and Yasmani Grandal.

The Cubs are led by Javier Baez, who has the potential to break the 200-strikeout threshold if given the concomitant number of plate appearances. In fact, if Kris Bryant can manage to convince the Cubs brass to bring him to the major league level early in the season, it’s possible the Cubs could have two players break 200 strikeouts, which hasn’t happened in major league baseball history. Obviously, since they were both sent down to Triple-A on Monday, that is now less likely. But the Cubs still have plenty of high-strikeout hitters. Behind Baez and Bryant are Dexter Fowler, Anthony Rizzo and Jorge Soler, all who contribute robustly to the Cubs ranking.

Putting that 200-strikeout factoid in context, only four players ever broke the 200-strikeout threshold, and not only were they not on the same team, it’s never happened twice in the same season. We came awfully close with Chris Davis (199) and Chris Carter (212) in 2013, but the closest any two players have been to 200 strikeouts on the same team were Ryan Howard and Marlon Byrd for the 2014 Phillies, and neither of them broke 190.

The new kings of strikeouts are in Houston, and in the K department — boy, howdy — do they shine. Carter is predicted to strike out over 200 times despite playing in just 147 games, followed closely by Springer, who is predicted to whiff 185 times over 142 games. If two 200-strikeout batters wasn’t exciting enough, the Astros might just set the record book on fire with three if Colby Rasmus gets enough playing time and gets fooled enough. History in the making!

On the other end of the spectrum are the more prudish. Last season, the Rays, Athletics and Royals had the lowest team strikeout rates with 18.1 percent, 17.7 percent, and 16.3 percent, respectively. This season, the brainiacs behind the depth charts see the top three as the Athletics, Giants and Royals at 17.1 percent, 17.0 percent and 16.5 percent, respectively. The Rays are expected to jump to 20 percent, presumably because of some kind of Joe Maddon strikeout-suppression effect that only occurs in Florida. Blame climate change.

The A’s are planning to give a goodly number of at-bats to Ike Davis which is firmly at odds with maintaining a low strikeout rate. But the fact they won’t be running Brandon Moss, Nick Punto and Derek Norris out there anymore ostensibly allows them to absorb his high strikeout rate. The reasonable K rates of Billy Butler, Ben Zobrist, Sam Fuld and Coco Crisp ought to keep their overall strikeouts among the lowest in the league.

The Giants had a team strikeout rate of 20.5 percent in 2014, so it’s quite a leap to knock almost four percent off that. But getting rid of Michael Morse and inserting Nori Aoki with his stingy strikeout rate probably has a lot to do with that. Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford will have their share of strikeouts, but guys like Joe Panik, Buster Posey and Angel Pagan all have terrifically low strikeout rates.

Kansas City has been called the “Paris of the Plains” and with regard to strikeouts the Royals are by far the crème de la crème. They boasted a much lower strikeout rate than the rest of the league in 2014 at 16.3 percent, and they are poised to repeat that feat with a predicted 16.5 percent mark in 2015. How? Well, they’re chock-full of low-strikeout, low-walk hackers, and that’s not pejorative. They have seven regulars predicted to stay below 100 strikeouts, but none of them are predicted to walk at a rate over eight percent, and Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar will be lucky to exceed four percent. The lineup is built on contact, with only Lorenzo Cain predicted to have a strikeout rate over 20 percent.

Who Will Lead the League in Strikeouts?, by Jared Cross

To project a distribution of possible strikeout totals for each pitcher, we modeled each pitcher’s strikeout ability as a beta distribution and his strikeout totals as beta-binomial.

Strikeout Projections, 2015

The red-shaded region is the distribution of strikeouts for the major league leader, and each of the other curves represents an individual pitcher. Clayton Kershaw (blue), Chris Sale (black) and Max Scherzer (red) stand far ahead of the rest (all in grey). Among the three, they lead baseball in strikeouts almost 89 percent of the time. Baseball’s strikeout leader, whoever he is, has a median of 264 strikeouts — seven shy of David Price’s mark from a year ago — and falls between 239 and 293 strikeouts 90 percent of the time. Let’s break it down:

Potential Strikeout Leaders, 2015

Pitcher Chance to Lead League Reliability IP Mean SO 10th% 50th% 90th%
Clayton Kershaw 37.7% 79% 218 249.2 220 249 278
Chris Sale 25.4% 77% 211 242.6 214 242 271
Max Scherzer 23.1% 79% 207 240.4 212 240 268
Felix Hernandez 4.6% 80% 212 219.2 193 219 245
Corey Kluber 2.4% 79% 207 212.8 186 212 239
Madison Bumgarner 1.5% 79% 206 209.3 183 209 235
Stephen Strasburg 1.3% 78% 189 206.9 181 207 232
Cole Hamels 1.0% 80% 211 205.0 179 205 230
David Price 0.9% 80% 217 202.7 177 202 228
Matt Harvey 0.7% 60% 177 193.5 163 193 223

One thing to keep in mind is these projected ranges are conditional on our playing time projections and give Price little chance to repeat as strikeout king while throwing 30 fewer innings than a year ago. The reliability numbers are an imitation of Marcel’s reliability scores and represent how much we know about each pitcher’s true talent. Matt Harvey makes the top 10 — despite a lower projected innings total — thanks to more uncertainty in his true talent. In other words, he has some serious upside.

Prospects Are Striking Out More Often, Too, by Chris Mitchell

It’s well known that strikeouts have been climbing steadily throughout the major leagues. Last year’s 20.4 percent mark was the highest mark on record. This strikeout scourge hasn’t been isolated to the game’s highest level but has afflicted the minors as well. Just over the last half-decade, the Triple-A strikeout rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points, while the Double-A rate has risen by 3.0 percentage points. This inevitably means today’s prospects strike out significantly more often than their counterparts from years past.

Not only are strikeouts up across the board, but today’s wave of prospects features several hitters with swing-and-miss in their profiles. In today’s high-strikeout atmosphere, this results in unprecedentedly high strikeout rates. Ranked by strikeout rate, five of the top 10 seasons from players who made Baseball America’s top 100 list took place in the past two years.

Top 10 Leaders, K%, Baseball America Top 100 Prospects, 2006-2014

Rank Year Player K%
1 2013 Joey Gallo 36.8%
2 2014 Joey Gallo 33.3%
3 2006 Brandon Wood 28.5%
4 2008 Giancarlo Stanton 28.3%
5 2009 Mat Gamel 27.8%
6 2007 Chris Davis 27.7%
7 2008 Travis Snider 27.5%
8 2013 Miguel Sano 27.4%
9 2013 George Springer 27.3%
10 2014 Kris Bryant 27.3%

The poster boy for enormous strikeout totals from an otherwise excellent prospect is Joey Gallo, who ranks 16th overall on Kiley McDaniel’s top 200 list. In two and a half years in the minors, Gallo has put up a beastly 170 wRC+. However, he did it while striking out an alarming 34 percent of the time, including a 40 percent clip in Double-A last year.

While he’s the most extreme, Gallo is far from the only player with swing-and-miss concerns. Kris Bryant, Byron Buxton and Joc Pederson — who ranked first, second and 11th on Kiley’s list, respectively — all K’d in more than one fourth of their plate appearances last season. You can lump 15th-ranked Miguel Sano into this category, too. He sat out all of 2014 with injury but whiffed 27 percent of the time in 2013.

Aside from their inability to make contact, most prospects of this archetype have otherwise promising offensive profiles. Virtually all of them hit for power, and many draw walks as well. Each can make good things happen at the plate, but they are able to do so only in the 65-75 percent of the time their plate appearances don’t end with the dreaded strikeout.

Of course, when scaled to the ever-increasing big league average, these lofty strikeout numbers don’t seem quite as worrisome. In that sense, they’re not really outliers any more than the guys who posted strikeout rates in the 23-26 percent range a decade ago. This might be the right way to think about it. However, it’s difficult not to wonder if there’s a minimum contact threshold that a hitter needs to meet to successfully hack it in the majors.

A player who strikes out 30 percent of the time in the minors might whiff 35 percent of the time in the big leagues. Maybe that would be OK, but what if a hitter strikes out over 40 percent of the time in the majors? That wouldn’t leave very many plate appearances for a hitter to compensate for all of those automatic outs. I’m looking at you, Joey Gallo. And you, too, Javier Baez.

Each of these hitters has an impressive set of tools, and each has acquitted himself well in the upper levels of the minors. But at the same time, there have been very few successful big leaguers who flirted with 30-percent strikeout rates as minor leaguers. Since 1990, only 11 players who struck out over 27 percent of the time in a minor league season (minimum 400 PAs) went on to record over 4.0 WAR through age 28.

Batters With 27% K% In Minors & 4+ WAR in Majors thru age 28, 1990-2014

Year Name Age Level K%
1998 Preston Wilson 23 AAA 30%
2009 Sean Rodriguez 24 AAA 27%
1995 Tony Clark 23 AAA 28%
1996 Derrek Lee 20 AA 30%
2004 Ryan Howard 24 AA 30%
1991 Tim Salmon 22 AA 29%
2007 Chris Davis 21 A+ 29%
2001 Jhonny Peralta 19 A+ 29%
2004 Mike Napoli 22 A+ 28%
1994 Ruben Rivera 20 A 27%
1998 Travis Hafner 21 A 29%

There isn’t much historical precedent for ~30 percent K-rate players achieving big league success. As a result, today’s crop of prospects represents an interesting experiment, and the early results of this experiment have been mixed. Despite his chronic strikeout problems in the minors, George Springer managed a respectable 127 wRC+ as a rookie. Javier Baez, on the other hand, fell flat on his face in his first tour in the bigs, as did Jon Singleton.

In the year ahead, we’ll see several more low-contact hitters matriculate to the big leagues. Pederson looks like he’ll break camp as the Dodgers center fielder, while Bryant figures to get the call shortly thereafter. Baez, Buxton, Gallo and Sano are all good bets to see big league time before year’s end. These players’ transitions will be interesting to watch and will give us a better sense of how to evaluate future prospects who succeed in the high minors while testing the limits of bat-to-ball ability.


Michael, Jared, Patrick, Chris, Jon and David are some of the finest sabermetric minds around. Follow them all on Twitter.
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Some guy
8 years ago

5 articles for the price of one! A steal!

… oh, 0/5=0? Never mind, then.

Al Braun
8 years ago

Great article guys. I really enjoyed looking at this from so many perspectives.

Jared,

What beta prior do you use for the projections?

J. Cross
8 years ago

Thanks!

The beta distributions here are really posteriors. Each pitcher gets a different beta distribution depending on his mean projection and the estimated variance in his true talent. To get the estimated variance in true talent we take the league talent variance in log odds of a K and multiply it by (1-SOreliability^2), [note: a pitcher’s SO reliability approaches 1 (or 100%) faster than his overall reliability b/c it stabilizes faster] to get each pitcher’s estimated true talent variance in log odds of a K. Then we translate that into a variance in true talent K% (K/TBF). Once we have variance in true talent in K% and mean K% we get alpha and beta for the beta distribution as:

alpha = ((1 – K%) / var(K%) – 1 / K%) * K% ^ 2
beta = alpha * (1 / K% – 1)

which I admit sounds (and maybe is) pretty convoluted.

james
8 years ago

So basically ur wanting them to force pitcher to throw the ball in right down the middle of the plate waist high? So everyone can see every mlb game turn into home run derby so basically pitchers are being to smart so they need to change the rules?

Whats next having the pitchers throw under hand so ppl can have there 15 to 20 score every game. I hate how ppl are trying to change the game i fell in love with as a kid if its not broke why try to fix it?

ReuschelCakes
8 years ago
Reply to  james

runs / game started to explode in 1993. a 10yr old in 1993 would be 32 yrs old today. this 32yr old could say the same as you and mean the exact opposite…

note also that the same could be said for a boy aged 10 in 1921 and currently 104 yrs old. or a boy aged 10 in 1947 and currently 78 yrs old…

it’s just a matter of perspective – and yours, sir, is only one.