Hey Tango:

doncoffin over at BJOL noted a correlation of wild pitches with strikeouts.  Here’s the thread:

BJOL Strikeouts and Wild Pitches

Some asked the reasonable question of whether increased WP was a result of increased pitch counts.  Did some digging and found a couple old blog entries of yours about pitch count estimation (both the basic and extended versions).

Did you or anyone else ever do additional PCE work?

Thanks!

(BTW, the increase in raw WP is due only slightly to increasing pitch counts… The WP rate (per 100 pitches) has increase by a factor of nearly 2.5.)

Makes perfect sense.  Want to strike a hitter out?  Get 2 strikes and make them chase a slider in the dirt.  Or bury a splitter.  Those kind of pitches will get strikeouts, but are certainly risky to throw with people on base.

+1

I guess the other thing (that I noted at the bottom of the BJOL thread)... There’s the basic fact that you can’t have wild pitches when the batter makes contact.  So finding a correlation between WP and lack-of-contact should not be surprising.

Interesting stuff.

I’ve tried to look more at the xPCE in the past, but didn’t get too far.  It would certainly be interesting to see how it behaves these days.  The amount of takes on first pitches is really what drives the whole thing.

The note about WP (and PB while we’re at it), as well as the count and pitch types is also another great aspect to look at.