Whither Wright?

Matthew Artus has a great look at the statistical indicators on David Wright’s future production.
The buried lede: unless I’m misreading the chart, does the Fangraphs data actually say that the percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone declined steadily leaguewide from 55.1% in 2004 to 46.5% in 2010? That’s an enormous change and pretty much the opposite of what you would expect during a period of declining home run production. I wonder how much of that is attributable to changing pitching patterns and how much may be in some way a collateral consequence of narrower strike zone measurement due to QuesTec.

2 thoughts on “Whither Wright?”

  1. Umps have always had to make insane snap judgments, and in baseball far more than any other sport, because each game has 250-300 pitch calls to make. And as anyone who read Ron Luciano can tell you, while a good ump was consistent within themselves, each had a different strike zone. QuesTec is probably doing more to make strike call consistent across the board, in ways nobody has ever seen.
    While we saw loads of variations with high or low strikes, especially in the days of outside chest protectors, per QuesTec strike zones tended to be as wide as 24.” Since the high and low calls are still judgemental on EXACTLY where the borders lie, there is no question. The strike zone is 17″ wide, and the black, where Maddux lived, is NOT in the zone. And consequently, it’s not called as much, because the umps are being trained not only to be consistent to themselves, but standardized. But it will even out. Because while you can’t live and die in the black, non steroid batters can’t hit the opposite field 450 foot home run anymore either.

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