do pitchers throw more FBs when a good basestealer is on first?

[dominik]

I got this thought because of a discussion in a hitting forum. common baseball wisdom says that pitcher throw more FBs (and often up) with a good stealer on to give the catcher a better chance.

but do MLB data actually confirm that pitchers throw more FBs in that situation (say with 20+ steals guys on first)? are there even data on this?

[scorekeeper]

I got this thought because of a discussion in a hitting forum. common baseball wisdom says that pitcher throw more FBs (and often up) with a good stealer on to give the catcher a better chance.

but do MLB data actually confirm that pitchers throw more FBs in that situation (say with 20+ steals guys on first)? are there even data on this?

I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that more FBs will be thrown depending on 3 things. 1) the less experience whoever calls the pitches has, the more FBs will be thrown. 2) the less the ability of the pitcher to deliver the ball quickly, the more FBs will be thrown. 2) the less the ability of the catcher to make quick accurate throws, the more FBs will be thrown.

My best guess is, those 3 things are true no matter what the level, but the lower the level the more often one or more of those things will happen. In the end, I suspect experience dictates that its far more important to make a quality pitch to a batter than it is manipulate things trying to catch a runner stealing. All that runner can do, barring a throwing error, is acquire one base. The batter has the ability to do much more damage than that.

A dynamic I see more often than I’d like, is a pitcher making lots of throws to a base and/or throwing FBs to the batter when their team is ahead and/or there are 2 outs.

[JDanger]

I'm just getting my feet wet with pitchf/x, but this is something I can look into.

I have, however, seen studies that a good base stealer will not improve the batter's chances at the plate.