Baseball Research
Pitching Under Pressure: Do Pitchers Change their Strategy?
Do pitchers change their decisions when stakes are higher? This project sets out to answer this question by using pitch-by-pitch MLB data to see if pitchers follow trends when they are under pressure
Key Takeaways:
High leverage pitches are rare, but decisive
Only 17.58% of pitches are thrown under pressure
Most pitchers stick to their game plan
Overall pitch distribution changes very little when pressure changes (top figure)
Outliers stand out
Notable significant positive effect: Luis Castillo (15.9% more likely to throw a fastball under pressure)
Notable significant negative effect: Felix Hernandez (9.89% less likely to throw a fastball under pressure)
