Real counts

No problem, I often can't interpret my own data.

The 1st column is the real count on which the batter left the box. I.e. the one you mentioned, 46 was 4 balls and 6 strikes thrown. Obviously, 4 of those strikes were foul balls.

The next column is the number of times that happened. In your example it happened only once.

The last column is the percentage of time that particular count happened out of the total.

So, the way it reads is, there was only one batter out of the 400+ that had a real count of 4-6.

Its obvious since there were 4 balls that the batter reached 1st, but not necessarily that he walked. He may have been hit by the pitch, put on because of interference or walked.

I haven't tried to break that out yet because I'm still trying to figure out how to present it. But, believem me, eventually, I will have that done too.

I've been doing "normal" counts for over a year, but the more I look at it in terms of "real" counts, the more I believe there is something there that really might be important if I can just pull it out.

If nothing else, this is much more meaningful than saying batters against pitcher so and so are batting .XXX with 3-2 counts.

That might very well be the count in the books, but it may be that pitcher is throwing 6 strikes most of the time on those counts.

That means the result has to be looked at differently.

Its just number manipulation, but before I use numbers to make an important decision, I like to be as sure as I can that what I'm looking at is valid.

Using the example I just gave, a coach who calls pitches might decide that he ought to change what he's calling on 3-2 and that may be a disaster!

If the batters are fouling off a lot of pitches, I'd say what he was calling was probably right and that what was happening was that eventually the pitcher made one too fat and it got hit solidly.