A few weeks ago, during the division series, Brandon McCarthy remarked on Twitter that it would be more interesting for TBS to show a diagram of the batter hot and cold zones for every batter than to show the PitchTrax strike zone and pitch location graphic. He argued that knowledge of the hot and cold zones would give viewers additional insight into the battle between the pitcher and the batter.
The pitcher-batter confrontation lies at the heart of baseball; learning about it is one of my favorite pursuits. Thus, I was intrigued by McCarthy’s comments. As far as I know, no one has published a study about the reliability of batter hot and cold zone data. If batter performance in particular areas of the strike zone is very repeatable, that knowledge could be highly valuable, both to teams and to fans. On the other hand, perhaps such data is no more useful than knowing that a batter is 2-for-10 in the postseason or 3-for-7 against a given pitcher in his career, in which case i...
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