Left-handed pitching has long been one of the most prized commodities in professional baseball. Teams strive to obtain lefty pitchers, and southpaws recognize their competitive edge. Two-sport athlete Tom Glavine explained his career choice this way: “I love both sports, but the deciding factor was, being a left-handed pitcher, I had a huge advantage in […]
One of the cool features in our MLB predictions model at FiveThirtyEight is its ability to adjust a team’s odds of winning any given game based on the strength of its starting pitcher. We do this by maintaining a constantly updating rating of every starter in baseball, which refreshes after every start based on our […]
We’ve all seen a pitcher when he’s zeroed in: His mechanics are clean, his curveball is dropping off the table and he’s painting the edge of the zone. But just as often, a hurler can lose command, and we see pitches that normally look sharp getting hammered into the stands. These streaks are confounding; for […]
We’ve all seen a pitcher when he’s zeroed in: His mechanics are clean, his curveball is dropping off the table and he’s painting the edge of the zone. But just as often, a hurler can lose command, and we see pitches that normally look sharp getting hammered into the stands. These streaks are confounding; for […]
