The Princess and St. Pete Pitcher’s Mound
On Wednesday night, for the second time in two days, the pitcher’s mound at Tropicana Field became the star of the World Series. Jacob Misiorowski, he of the 6-foot-7 frame and 7-foot-6 extension, was having trouble finding purchase with his front foot when he finished his absurdly long stride. On Tuesday night, Cam Booser, whose extension is not far from average, had suffered similar difficulties in the 11th inning of Game 4, so on back-to-back nights, we the baseball viewing public were treated to the sight of emergency mound repairs, replete with tamps and buckets of clay.
After Tuesday night’s difficulties, the broadcast made sure to be prepared to talk about the mound during Game 5, which the Brewers won, 4-1, to secure their first World Series in franchise history. One mound story came ready-made: Some players believe the pitching mound to be higher at Tropicana Field than at other ballparks. This is an easy thing to check. I’m going to run the numbers, but let’s start at the beginning.
You might have heard that assertion before. Alex Speier wrote about it in the Boston Globe in 2021. He noted that certain pitchers were credited with more extension at the Trop than in other ballparks, though he also raised the possibility that the difference was the result of some sort of calibration error, as 2021 was the first full season after Statcast switched tracking systems from Trackman to Hawk-Eye. Just last year, Chris Bassitt told The Athletic that Tampa Bay’s higher mound somehow increases his spin rate. Clearly, this narrative has taken hold around the league. None of us knows how often Major League Baseball is sending somebody out to measure each mound with a ruler, a protractor, and a plumb bob to make sure that each mound adheres perfectly to the rulebook specifications.
Davy Andrews is a Brooklyn-based musician and a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @davyandrewsdavy.bsky.social.
I know that granular public data doesn’t exist in the same way for any other sports, but it always kills me when something anecdotal (and interesting!) like this gets reported in other sports with such a shrug and often indifference to the veracity of the claim. Just so fun to actually have a website and writing staff that loves trying to answer questions.
You mean, like, significant veteran leadership and playoff experience are required to succeed in the playoffs?
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yes-the-playoffs-are-still-a-crapshoot/
“Contact rate is another post-hoc explanation for why certain teams win, but that was rejected from the model at the 95% level of significance. The same goes for attempts to include momentum (second-half performance, September record). Team speed doesn’t make the threshold. Neither does clutch performance during the regular season or postseason performance history of the players involved. In layman’s terms, knowing which teams have these characteristics has little to no value in telling us why certain teams won playoff games over the last three decades, apart from their effect on their Pythagorean record. Surprisingly, what was (barely) useful enough to make it as a variable was team age, but this was an advantage on the side of young players; young teams, and consequently, teams with less playoff experience very slightly overperformed over the last 28 postseasons.”
Great headline
I cannot imagine why the rulebook stops dictating the angle of the slope six feet from the rubber, leaving four-and-a-half feet of mound with no direction whatsoever.
Do we know when this part of the rulebook was written, or last updated? It’s possible that when it was the 6’4″ behemoths that pitch baseballs today were a somewhat rarer species
I had the same thought, although surely legendary drop & drive guys like Tom Seaver were always beyond 6′.
They changed the mound height in 1969, so that’s the oldest the rule as it currently exists could be. Now I’m really curious how the rule read in the 15″ mound days. Maybe the 6′ limit is a relic of that era, and taller mounds got steeper between 6′ and 10′.
I imagine it’s exactly because every pitcher’s step will be just after that point.
If this point of contact was specified in the rule book it would need to be rebuilt throughout the game and opposing managers would challenge pitchers who try to adjust it for their safety.
Speaking as an architect, that drawing is making me itchy. No sane person gives a rectangle as 34″ x 5’—it should be 34″ x 60″ or 2′-10″ x 5′-0″ or, maybe, 34″ x 5′-0″.
Drafting conventions aside, Davy gets a bit confused about the slope’s starting point: it begins 6″ in front of the rubber, and the front of the rubber is 10′-6″ from the front of the mound. So the total drop is 10″ in 10′. This means that the designated 6″ drop in the first 6′ (again, measured from the point 6″ in front of the rubber) is exactly in line with what you’d get if you specified a uniform slope the whole distance. I can’t imagine why they don’t.
However, Davy’s right that, since the rule doesn’t specify what happens in between 6′ and 10′, shenanigans are possible. But I think it would be dangerous to try something, since the inflection point is quite near pitchers’ typical landing points: it looks like Nick Martinez would have his heel land within the 6′ and his toe in no man’s land.
Incidentally, 1″ in 1′ (or 1:12) is exactly what handicapped ramps are required to be. So if anybody wants to get a feel for pitching on a MLB mound, draw a chalk line 6″ from the top of a ramp, and call that the front of the rubber.
I truly value this article. It is incredibly important because it tells us so much about the environment. I appreciate that it includes a solid scientific protocol. I would upvote it if the webpage contained that capability.
However, I have one request: when posting numbers that possess units, please state the units. The table, which is the heart of the article, contains only numbers. It wasn’t immediately clear which length units were being used – feet, inches, centimeters, light-years, hands, smoots, or cubits. It was especially challenging because more than one unit type was reported.
Please note: my request/criticism is not limited to this article. I believe many readers would benefit from adding proper units and captions to tables and graphs. I recognize this requires more work for the authors and editors. However, I feel more readers might better understand the details in the delightful studies that FG authors present.
This was an oversight on my part, and I appreciate the note. I’ve added the units to the table, and I’ll try to be better about including them in the future.