Why Does the Home Crowd Boo Intentional Walks?

Over the last 10 seasons, home-team batters were intentionally walked 5,813 times. We saw 478 of those in 2016. If you watch enough baseball, you’ve seen several of these on television or in person. In many cases, these walks are met with enthusiastic booing by the home crowd, which is always something I’ve found particularly curious given that being offered a free base is almost always a good thing.

Of course, intentional walks aren’t as valuable as doubles or home runs — and, on average, they occur at times when they’re significantly less valuable than singles. In most cases, however, an intentional walk is better than the expected value of a normal plate appearance. This is why we’ve seen a movement away from intentional walks over the last several years; it’s rarely advantageous for the pitcher.

Given that the evidence seems quite clear that most intentional walks benefit the hitting team, why do fans frequently give the pitcher such a hard time? I see three possible lines of reasoning.

The first is simply that the average fan might not be familiar with or doesn’t agree with the idea that intentional walks are beneficial to the hitting team. Intentional walks happen primarily to good hitters when there are men on base in close games. It’s reasonable for your initial assumption to be that refusing to let that batter hit helps the pitcher.

You’re taking away a good hitter’s opportunity and giving it to a lesser hitter, the cost of which is a single base. That’s not an easy math problem to do in your head if you don’t have immediate access to historical data. It’s a two-pronged issue, as I believe the average fan undervalues the cost of allowing a baserunner and overvalues the difference between a very good hitter and an okay one.

I also believe that it’s relatively easy to recall examples of a great hitter coming through in a clutch spot, but harder to see the cost of an intentional walk because the hitter who was intentionally walked isn’t often the decisive run. If you study all of the evidence, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that most intentional walks are a good idea, but many people rely on their memory and that provides them with an incomplete data set, biased by all sorts of neurological quirks. Certainly, there’s room for disagreement on exactly where the line sits in terms of good versus bad intentional walks, but most of us don’t think of it terms of probabilistic outcomes. We reason based on individual memories.

If many fans subscribe to this kind of thinking, it makes perfect sense that they would boo intentional walks. I think this accounts for a good share of the booing, but I do want to offer two other explanations for why fans might boo the intentional walk, even if they fully comprehend the merits of the strategy.

Many people watch sports for the experience rather than the satisfaction of winning, so it’s entirely logical that fans might be booing the pitcher for robbing them of the experience of watching the best hitters in the biggest moments.

Sure, intentional walks might provide slightly better odds for the hitting team but would you rather have a 54% chance of winning with an intentional walk or a 53% chance of winning with a Mike Trout at bat and men on base? It seems entirely reasonable to me that small changes in the odds might not mean much to fans who paid to see great players take their hacks. Tigers announcer Mario Impemba seems to agree:

Given the cost of attending games, you might feel cheated if your team’s best player is coming to the plate in a big moment and as soon as he arrives in the box you learn he’s not going to get a chance to have an impact. Even if they know it’s in the club’s best interest to take the walk, fans are justified in expressing some displeasure.

Finally, there’s also an element of psychological gamesmanship. Fans are calling the pitcher a coward, suggesting he was afraid to face their best hitter because he knew he couldn’t get him out in a key situation. It’s an attempt to get in the pitcher’s head and to disrupt his performance against future hitters. Perhaps some pitchers thrive while being the object of scorn, but it seems more likely that it has a small negative effect on a human being trying to concentrate on a very challenging task.

When the crowd goes after the pitcher for trying too many pickoffs or head-hunting, it makes perfect sense. The crowd is annoyed with delay in the former case and angry about the physical peril involved in the latter. But the intentional walk is a rare case in which the crowd is upset about something we consider objectively good. Perhaps they are simply wrong on the facts, but there are two other potential explanations.

In the case of being robbed of a moment, the fans are challenging the idea of what is good. They’re happy to trade a little win expectancy for a more exciting and interesting bit of baseball. In the case of psychological gamesmanship, they’re simply latching onto a moment of shame and trying to shake the pitcher further.

I typically don’t like booing in sports when it’s directed at a player who has recently failed, but there is something fun about this particular custom. Even though it’s an objectively positive thing for your team to get that free base, the entire park still joins together to let the pitcher have it.

This is a good reminder that things which seem illogical on their face often appear that way because of one’s value structure. Winning and losing aren’t the only measures of good and bad, in baseball or in life. Sometimes it looks like you’re rooting against your own interests when, in reality, your interests are more complex than they appear.