By the end of a season, you’re more likely looking at a real trend than if you’re looking at one season of ISO, but that doesn’t mean you can make judgements about players with small samples of these stats either. You can’t look at a player’s last 30 PA, observe a 95% contact rate and assume he’s made a meaningful change in his approach or talent level. While these numbers are on a per pitch basis which allows them to return large samples of data over the course of a season, you have to remember that at any given point in time, they are subject to random variation. Ideally, you should swing at pitches against which you can make solid contact, but that set of pitches is not easily defined by in and out of zone in all cases.Īdditionally, you have to be careful with sample size. Additionally, not all pitches inside the zone are created equal, for instance. Lots of contact on pitches outside the zone might be good, but if you’re swinging at lots of bad pitches and grounding out weakly, that’s not a very useful event. A 95% contact rate means a very different thing if the player is Juan Pierre compared to Victor Martinez. However, you should remember to use plate discipline numbers in the context of other stats. You know what an average swing rate is and you can compare it to the swing rate of the player in question. As long as you’re clear on the numerator and denominator of each stat (listed above) then you should be pretty well prepared to use these values. Plate discipline stats are pretty easy to use because you’re just dealing with raw percentages. Ultimately, a player can succeed with a wide variety of discipline stats, but knowing these will help you identify the player’s style and skill. These statistics won’t tell you the entire story, because a batter who swings a lot on the first pitch because he’s aggressive and one who swings a lot on the first pitch because he happened to see a lot of hittable pitches won’t separate out here, but you can typically get a sense of a hitter or pitcher’s approach by looking at the sum total of their plate discipline numbers. ![]() Is this hitter particularly aggressive? We have a metric that tells you how often he swings at pitches outside the zone, or how often he swings in general.Īre we looking at a swing and miss starting pitcher, or a hitter who has trouble making contact? We have a statistic that tells you how often contact is made when the batter swings. We care a great deal about outcome statistics like BB%, K%, wOBA, etc, but we also want to know some of the underlying factors at play. Plate discipline stats are very important for hitters and pitchers because they tell you about a hitter’s approach (or hitters’ approaches against a pitcher). Additionally, our BIS data updates nightly during the season, but on a delay, so recognize that the most recent games may not be include when using that particular set of stats. You can also find plate discipline data on player pages and can use the “Averages” button to show the player’s numbers next to league average for that year. Here are the 2014 plate discipline leaderboards for hitters according to BIS data, and here are the same leaderboards according to PITCHf/x data. SwStr% = Swings and misses / Total pitches Zone% = Pitches in the strike zone / Total pitches Z-Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made on pitches inside the zone / Swings on pitches inside the zoneĬontact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made / Swings O-Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made on pitches outside the zone / Swings on pitches outside the zone Z-Swing% = Swings at pitches inside the zone / pitches inside the zone O-Swing% = Swings at pitches outside the zone / pitches outside the zone The PITCHf/x numbers are raw PITCHf/x data, while the BIS numbers have been modified by human coders so they will not always be in perfect agreement and are subject to some measurement error. Please remember that we have data for these from two different sources. There are many statistics that fit into the category of “plate discipline,” and the basic definitions are provided below. These numbers are very useful for determining the type of hitter or pitcher at which you’re looking and changes in these numbers can often be indicative of underlying changes in a player’s approach. We host a variety of plate discipline statistics on the site and draw from two separate data sources (Baseball Info Solutions and PITCHf/x). ![]() Plate Discipline statistics tell us how often a hitter swings and makes contact with certain kinds of pitches or how often a pitcher induces swings or contact on certain kinds of pitches.
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