First Pitch After a Mound Visit
During Yesterday’s Phillies and Pirates game, Phillies announcer Garry Matthews Sr. stated that he believes fastballs are almost always the next pitch thrown after a pitching coach comes to the mound to talk to his pitcher. Mike Axisa caught this and passed it along, and the topic seemed interesting and worthy of research.
The logic behind Matthews’ statement seems valid. A pitching coach most often comes to the mound when a pitcher is struggling, and a pitcher’s fastball is often the pitch he can most easily get over for a strike. But if this actually were the case, hitters would sit on fastballs each time the pitching coach came out. Hitters perform exceedingly well in fastball counts already, and this would basically be free knowledge that a fastball was coming if teams and players operated in this manner. I suspect that teams would not be this predictable.
So, I took a sample of 1,000 pitches from last May and June that were thrown immediately after a pitching coach came to the mound. I did not include when a coach came to the mound and changed pitchers. In scenarios where the next batter was intentionally walked, I went to the first pitch thrown to the subsequent batter after the free pass. I also combined both four-seam fastballs and two-seam fastballs for sake of simplicity. Although 1,000 pitches is a decent sample size, it is not large enough to say that the results are definitive. Below are the results compared with the league average frequencies of each pitch.
| After a visit | CH | CU | FC | FB | SI | SL | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10.1% | 9.9% | 5.3% | 44.5% | 14.2% | 14.8% | 1.2% |
| League Avg | CH | CU | FC | FB | SI | SL | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10.7% | 8.9% | 5.3% | 47.8% | 9.0% | 15.8% | 2% |
As you can see, Matthews’s statement is not quite accurate. In fact, it seems as though fewer fastballs are thrown in these situations, but again the possibility of sample size error must be understood. Looking at the rest of the results, most of the rates are relatively consistent with the league averages, but for some reason there is an odd spike in sinkers thrown after mound visits.
While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why more sinkers would be thrown after a pitching coach talks to his player, my logical answer would be the same reasoning I mentioned in defense of Matthews’ original statement. A pitching coach often comes to the mound when a pitcher is struggling and has allowed men on base. With a pitcher being in a jam, a sinker may be the best way to force a double play and get out of an inning, but I cannot say for certain that this is the cause for the spike..
Another potential reason could be that sinker ballers allow more men on base and are therefore more often in situations where a pitching coach comes out to talk to them. This is similar to having better numbers with men on base than with the bases empty. Worse pitchers usually allow more men on base, so the opportunity for a player to succeed against a lower quality pitcher is greater. There are other factors of course, but the logic behind both situations is sound.
In looking at how each team attacked these situations, the range of fastball percentage for the league was 15.4% on the low end and 67.5% on the high end. The top five teams in fastball percentage after a mound visit were the Yankees, Rockies, White Sox, Tigers, and Pirates. The bottom five, lowest to highest, were the Twins, Braves, Marlins, Diamondbacks, and Indians.
Matthews specifically mentioned Yankees pitching coach, Larry Rothschild, when he was speaking about this topic, stating that Rothschild would call a fastball away. I did not have the time allotted to research the accuracy of his statement, but I plan to research this further. He was certainly accurate in mentioning Rothschild specifically though, as the Yankees were the only team that had a fastball rate above 65% in my sample. If Matthews was incorrect about Rothschild’s suggested pitch placement, at very worst he was one for three, and a .333 average is not too bad when speaking in hyperbole.
Ben has been at RotoGraphs since 2012 and focuses most of his fantasy baseball attention toward dynasty and keeper leagues.
Awesome work, man.
The Sarge and Fangraphs, the perfect combination.
eggscellent.
“In scenarios where the next batter was intentionally walked, I went to the first pitch thrown to the subsequent batter after the free pass.”
I do not quite understand the logic behind the practice of doing this for your analysis. The pitcher is in a 3-2 count, the coach visits the mound, the pitcher throws a ball to walk the batter which this pitch isn’t included in your analysis, and then the first pitch to the very next batter is included in your analysis. Isn’t there a huge situational difference between that ball four to the previous batter and the first pitch to the next batter? Or am I not understanding correctly?
I would love to see this analysis with that ball four included rather than the first pitch of the next batter.
Never mind, I glossed over the word intentional for some reason, but I still think the situation is different with the first pitch to the next batter is included. In my opinion, it should not count in the analysis.
You misunderstood me, or maybe I did not explain that well. In that situation, I added the ball thrown on 3-2. On the occasions where there were intentional walks, the coach came out to the mound and ordered the pitcher to walk the next batter. Presumably, the coach came to the pitcher to talk about walking the batter and how to attack the next one, so I included the first pitch to the batter after the intentional walk.
I understand now. You are basing your analysis on the implication made by Matthews that the coach will always instruct the pitcher to throw a fastball for the next meaningful pitch (i.e. the intentional walk not being meaningful) regardless of batter or situation. Thanks for clarifying.
He didn’t say that he excluded all walks, merely intentional passes. If the pitcher is ordered to lob it high and outside to the catcher, that’s hardly a real pitch …
Re: extra sinkers… lots of mound visits take place with runners on base. Maybe it’s an effect of managers saying “let’s get a ground ball here for a double play” in those situations?
Oops, that’s what I get for commenting without actually reading the article. Disregard the above 🙂
I have a suggestion to control for the adverse selection problem you mentioned with respect to comparing to league average pitch frequencies (i.t. that “after visit” sample is more heavily weighted towards pitchers that require more visits than the league average sample). Instead of computing an unweighted league average, compute a weighted average where individual pitchers in the sample are weighted by the total number of mound visits over the period examined.
This is a good idea. I will look into it further.
‘Outside and away’ is probably not going to be a strike…
but seriously, does strike% change by pitch type vs. league average? Some coaches may say “Waste one in the dirt, if he doesn’t chase, then go after him.” or some type of similar plan.
Also, does swing % spike on that pitch? Is the batter thinking like the announcers, expecting a FB?
Thanks for catching that!
Very interesting look. The only suggestion I could make is perhaps to control for count somehow, given that that could well be a lurking variable here
Since you can identify the first pitch after a mound visit, can’t you identify the last pitch before the mound visit? This would seem the best comparison.
The only actual way I was able to do this was by hand, so going back and finding out which pitches were thrown before the mound visit would be very difficult to do now. If there were an easier way to control for mound visits, this would definitely be a good way to attack the issue.
really interesting look at this. nice job.
Gary Matthews was wrong. It would be big news if Matthews were ever right about anything.
I guessed that the pitch percentages would be about the same as usual, but I don’t have Matthews’ immense information base.
Nevertheless, this was an interesting and informative study.
Still, he was a fun as hell player to watch. He’d rip his batting helmet off his head a couple steps down the line to first(especially when he knew he might have a double or triple).
What is the % of first pitch fastballs? If it is high like I believe so, that might be increasing your fastball percentage after a mound visit
Ben,
I really enjoyed reading this. If you happen to watch/listen to as many Phils broadcasts as I do, you’ll hear a whole lot of nonsense coming from Good Ol’ Sarge that would’ve been FireJoeMorgan-worthy just a few years back. That he was somehow correct about Rothschild is, I can only assume, the result of dumb luck. Thanks for posting – looking forward to the next one.
Yeah, but Sarge isn’t as unlikeable as Joe Morgan. Sarge says dumb things but I take them the way I take it when my Grandpa says dumb/angry/racist things. Smile and move on.
As a hitter “sarge” is about right, expect a FB 45% of the time after a mound visit. This may improve his odds of putting the ball in play successfully.
Maybe we need to be more critical of the coaches advice or when they chose to visit the mound
I’m not sure that “A pitching coach most often comes to the mound when a pitcher is struggling” is a true statement. Stalling for a reliever to get in a few more warm-up pitches and delivering pitch around (unintentional intentional walks) or defensive positioning instructions could easily account for half more of the pitching coach visits, especially later in the game.
Before even delving into the analysis of how pitch selection changes after a pitching coach visit, I’d start with a simple table showing when the pitching coach visits were made broken down by game status (run differential/inning/outs/count/bases occupied). You could then eliminate the bulk of the cases of stalling visits by selecting only those visits made in the first 4 innings of a game or so. I also suspect that very few stalling visits are made with the bases unoccupied, a score difference greater than 5, etc. That table mentioned above would make for an interesting post on its own – when do pitching coaches make mound visits?
Nice article, though I wish you presented the statistics in a normalized fashion. As in, for each pitch reference a database with that individual pitcher’s averages, and construct the overall number of each pitch that should have theoretically been thrown. One way to get around the question of biasing the sample with types of players who are more susceptible to mound visits.
There are a variety of situations in which the coach or manager will come to the mound, complicating drawing any statistical inferences from the next pitch thrown. Often, the visit will be made to a struggling pitcher, to calm him down, and not to call the next pitch. On the other hand, the pitcher may not be particularly struggling, and the coach will come out to consult about the strategic decision as to what pitch to throw next. You’d think the fastball would result more from the “calm the pitcher down” visits, and less from the “subtle strategic decision” visits. I’ve even seen for example, Jim Leyland come out as a feint, making the batter think about subtle strategy when the next pitch will be the obvious fastball that the pitcher planned on throwing anyway in this situation.
Great article! I’ve heard other tv commentators say the same thing. More so back in the 80s, compared to now. I wonder if the fb has just been replaced by the sinker to induce a double play like you said.
Great article. I would love to see some analysis on how effective those visits to the mound are. (My own data crunching abilities are non-existent). So often, it seems that the mound visit only gets the pitcher more rattled than he already is. Also, some coaches, I imagine, have a more beneficial effect than others …
A fair percentage of the time, the mound visit is meant to give the next guy to come in the ballgame a few more minutes to warm up. They’re probably talking about tee times the next day and stuff like that every once in awhile too.
Every time I hear the phrase “mound visit” I can’t help but think of cunnilingus.
This is different at lower levels of play. As a high school pitcher myself, I have never thrown anything but a fb after a vist. Not only that, but when I am hitting I know that after a visit I’ll get a fastball. Not once have I gotten anything else. The reason MLB is different is because those pitchers are so good most of them can throw changes and sliders for strikes just as easily as a fast ball. If you don’t have confidence in your off speed stuff, you’ll be in a or aa instead of the majors.
If my memory serves me right, I believe Johnny Bench hit a home run in a NLCS game based on the same “fastball after mound visit” belief.
I believe Sarge said some pitching coaches demanded fastballs, and others had other pet pitches they’d call for, so who knows how right he was?
FYI: in the bottom of the 4th of today’s Cubs @ Dodgers game, and Len Kasper cited this article as a part of an extended discussion on pitch tendencies and data analysis.
Well clearly Kasper is just randomly citing FanGraphs articles now so that he’ll place higher in next season’s TV broadcasters crowdsourcing poll.
I think there could be more to this. Such as whether the mound visit followed a hit or walk. What was the last pitch thrown and is it different than the first pitch thrown after the visit.
Whether the first pitch to the batter is different than the 1st pitches the same batter has seen during the game.
Sometimes coaches go to the mound just to calm a guy down or talk about the situation. But sometimes they go with a specific bit of info like “This guy hasn’t swung at a breaking ball yet, so let’s start him off with one and get ahead” or “we need this guy to pull the ball on the ground so let’s pitch him soft away and get him to roll over on one” or “we’re playing him to pull, so pitch to your defense and stay inside” and things like that.
We might see different data based on quality of hitter, location of runners , number of outs, etc. by looking at all situations we might simply have too much data to discern any real trends due to the diversity of scenarios encapsulated in such a large average.