How to Keep Hitters Guessing
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2024
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno, Trevor and DVR consider a few ways that pitchers could keep hitters guessing more often, a question about the possibility of great command being a detriment, unusual training methods and tools, and whether it would be more surprising to see the Tigers make the playoffs -- or -- for the Braves to miss them. Plus, it's Round 3 of Name That Dude!
Rundown
0:59 Using Game Theory for Pitch Sequencing?
9:18 Random Number Generating A Game Plan While Accounting for Known Useful Information
19:50 Can Great Command Be a Detriment?
31:17 What Unusual Training Methods and Tech Have You Seen?
40:39 Let’s Talk About Toe Yoga!
53:41 More Surprising: Tigers Making Playoffs - or - Braves Missing Them?
1:05:50 Name That Dude!
Follow Eno @enosarris
Follow Trevor @IamTrevorMay
Follow DVR @DerekVanRiper
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
With: Trevor May
Producer: Brian Smith
Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Bucknerates and barrels. It is Thursday, September 12th. Derrick and Riper, |
| 0:16.5 | Eno Seris, Trevor May, here with you today on this episode. We're going to dig into some game theory applications of pitch sequencing. Thanks to a great listener email that we receive. We'll try |
| 0:25.8 | to figure out just how far into game theory some teams actually could go with their planning process. |
| 0:31.6 | We're going to talk about unusual approaches in training, be that tech that is cutting edge |
| 0:37.3 | or maybe just really old, but people |
| 0:38.9 | don't use it anymore. We're going to dig into some surprising developments in the playoff |
| 0:43.5 | race, including Atlanta, sliding out of playoff position, and the Tigers trying to make that |
| 0:48.0 | late push in, and time permitting we have our third installment of Name That Dude. |
| 0:55.2 | Let's get started today, guys. |
| 0:56.7 | Let's start with the game theory to determine pitch mix. |
| 0:59.8 | We got an email from one of our listeners, Misha, pointing back to something that happens in soccer for PKs, |
| 1:06.8 | where you have to find the ideal mix of a shooter choosing his dominant side, but not choosing |
| 1:13.1 | it all the time to give an advantage to the keeper, right? And there's been a paper written about |
| 1:17.2 | this and trying to find the right sweet spot, the Nash equilibrium, the point where things |
| 1:21.8 | are actually competitively right. And this is something you can expand and turn into like a pitch sequencing conversation too. |
| 1:30.5 | So the idea would be like having the perfect portion of your strongest pitches against the pitch, the hitter you're facing to maximize your strengths, but also to apply it against their weaknesses. |
| 1:43.3 | It's a really tough balance to find because your best pitch might be something that the hitter can crush. |
| 1:48.7 | So you have to take that away a little bit, right? |
| 1:50.3 | So it's always this kind of sliding scale. |
| 1:52.0 | So just from like a broad mathematics perspective, Trevor, what's the most involved planning and processing that you know about? |
| 2:00.3 | Are there teams using anything like game |
| 2:02.1 | theory modeling to help determine how much they should have pitchers throwing certain pitches? |
... |
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