Counterfactual Optimization of Baseball Pitch Sequences and Estimation of Its Impact on Season-Level Statistics

2026-06-15 · Ryota Takamido, Hiroki Nakamoto arxiv

Although pitch sequencing is a central topic in baseball analytics, previous studies have primarily focused on optimizing the final pitch within a single plate appearance, leaving the role of preceding setup pitches and their impact on long-term season-level performance insufficiently examined. To address these issues, this study conducted counterfactual analyses using MLB Statcast data. A Transformer-based machine-learning model was trained to predict whether a target pitch would result in an in-play outcome or swing-out. Counterfactual pitch sequences were then generated by replacing either the final pitch or the preceding setup pitch with alternative pitch types and locations while keeping the surrounding contextual information fixed. Optimal counterfactual selections were defined as those that minimized the predicted in-play probability, and their expected effects on pitchers' seasonal statistics were estimated using regression models linking model outputs to season statistics. The results suggest that the optimization of both final and setup pitches may substantially influence season-level performance, including improvements of more than 1.0 in K/9. The analyses also provided several practical insights, including velocity-band-specific effective locations, the importance of pitch commands, and the expansion of pitch-selection options through middle-velocity pitches. These findings quantitatively support the strategic importance of pitch sequencing in baseball.

📄 PDF Abstract BibTeX arXiv:2606.17345

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Neural Sabermetrics with World Model: Play-by-play Predictive Modeling with Large Language Model

2026-02-02 · Young Jin Ahn, Yiyang Du, Zheyuan Zhang, Haisen Kang arxiv

Classical sabermetrics has profoundly shaped baseball analytics by summarizing long histories of play into compact statistics. While these metrics are invaluable for valuation and retrospective analysis, they do not defi…

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BIG-bench Machine Learning Decision Making reinforcement-learning Reinforcement Learning+1

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The field of quantitative analytics has transformed the world of sports over the last decade. To date, these analytic approaches are statistical at their core, characterizing what is and what was, while using this inform…

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Using videos to analyze pitchers in baseball can play a vital role in strategizing and injury prevention. Computer vision-based pose analysis offers a time-efficient and cost-effective approach. However, the use of acces…

3D Pose Estimation Data Augmentation Keypoint Estimation Pose Estimation