Full Count Pitch Outcomes

One of the wizards of retrosheet David Smith posted the following interesting items on the SABR list yesterday.

This first table shows how the outcomes of pitches differ in full count (3-2) situations versus no full count situations for 2004 in games through June 2.

      Not 3-2        3-2 count

Pitch    No.  %       No.  %

C      38548 17.2     463  4.5

F      34908 16.6    2875 28.2

X      41248 19.7    3414 33.5

B      83681 37.8    2270 22.3

S      18619  8.7    1157 11.4

     217,004       10,179

C = called strike
F = foul ball
X = hit into play
B = ball
S = swinging strike

You'll notice that not suprisingly batters swing more often with two strikes (F+X+S), 74% at 3-2 and just 45% otherwise fouling off more pitches and swining through more pitches.

In this table you see the outcomes when the pitch count to a particular batter goes over 6 pitches. I was suprised the averages were so low since it seems like there are more good outcomes when the batter sees lots of pitches. Only on pitches 9 and 11+ do you see significantly better production than normal and at that point the sample sizes are starting to shrink. Of course, the high OA (on base average) is accounted for since in most cases at 6 or more pitches the batter will already have a 3 ball count.

Pitches   Times   BA    OA    SA

  6       4067  .217  .462  .344

  7       1909  .220  .471  .369

  8        809  .212  .443  .336

  9        338  .271  .467  .478

 10        114  .217  .430  .349

 11+        69  .286  .545  .679

Total     7306  .220  .462  .358

All             .265  .336  .423