The Leadoff — Conventional Wisdom, Tested

The Jump Tax: The Steal Is a Decision, Not a Physique

The slowest runners in baseball steal at 96%. Not with speed, not even with a big lead, but with an ambush. The jump and the legs are real, repeatable skills -- and neither tells you who banks the value. That is the decision, and it barely repeats.

Baserunning · 11 min read

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Fig.1 — Called-strike rate by location
2025 baseline · inside → away

The rulebook box never moves. The shadow zone around it does — and it tightens when the batter has two strikes.

By the Numbers

Pitches analyzed

Seasons of Statcast

Umpires graded

Investigations published

The Investigations

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Bat Tracking

The Adjustable Swing: Hitters Have a Dial. It Isn't Wired to Anything.

Statcast started measuring the shape of a swing in 2025 — the attack angle — and the instruction industry turned it into a product. So we tested the premise: do hitters adjust their swing shape to the pitch, and does it help? The first half is true and genuinely cool — hitters have a 'dial,' steepening ~10° on low pitches and flattening on high ones, and how much they turn it is one of the most reliable, year-over-year-stable traits in hitting (split-half 0.94; two independent methods agree on who at r=0.99). The second half isn't: the dial adds no power (its effect can't be told from zero once you know a hitter's bat speed and average swing shape), and it doesn't save contact either — the more adjustable hitters whiff slightly more, worst at the zone extremes where matching your plane is supposed to help. 'Ideal attack angle rate,' the marketed metric, is ~88% bat speed. The least-adjustable qualified hitter in baseball is Juan Soto. Two independent methods, two adversarial review rounds; the cross-review caught and killed a contamination bug before it could ship.

June 16, 2026 · 11 min read

Pitchers

The Arm-Angle Gambit: We Went Looking for the Cheat Code. We Found a Tax.

Pitchers across baseball are dropping their arm slots, chasing the pitch-lab promise that a lower release unlocks a sweeper and a new level. We priced the gambit within-pitcher across 374 arms, two independent methods, two adversarial review rounds. The slot credit is indistinguishable from zero five different ways — and the study's most interesting number (+0.28 runs/100 for the bundled repertoire change) died in cross-review as target leakage; rebuilt clean, both methods land at ≈+0.03, the same as pitchers who never moved. The one effect that survives: droppers lose an average 0.46 inches of four-seam ride (10 of 15, Wilcoxon p=0.011) while stable arms gained. The scoreboard among the 16 droppers: nine better, seven worse — a coin flip. Early-signal by design; full re-test queued for the All-Star break.

June 10, 2026 · 11 min read

Bat Tracking

The Two-Strike Brake Belongs to the Pitcher, Not the Hitter

We set out to build the hitter version of the Pressure Grade — one number for how a hitter changes gears with two strikes. Two independent models, run blind to each other, converged on the same answer: the famous −1.4 mph two-strike bat-speed 'brake' is mostly a mirage. Roughly two-thirds to ~85% of it is the pitch a hitter is thrown (slower, softer, lower) with two strikes, not a decision. The real adjustment is small (~−0.3 mph), lives in swing shape not speed, and — while a stable year-to-year signature (r=0.73, two methods agree per-hitter at r=0.98) — adds about one-thousandth of AUC to predicting two-strike whiffs over the stats already on a hitter's card. A descriptor, not an edge.

June 6, 2026 · 10 min read

The Long Read

Hitters Are Chasing More Under the Robo-Zone

A robot zone was supposed to reward discipline. Instead chase is UP +2.3pp (30.0%→32.3%) — and it survives a matched-calendar-window control, so it's not just early-season noise.

The findingABS

+2.3 pp

more chasing under the 2026 robo-zone (30.0% → 32.3% out-of-zone swing rate), measured on the identical March–June window in both seasons. The opposite of what a precise zone was supposed to do.

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Explore the Data

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