Pitcher Launch Angle, Visualized, Part 1

In May, I tweeted that I had a hunch that pitchers had very little (to zero) control over exit velocities against them.

This is going to sound stupid, verging on really stupid, but I honestly wonder if pitchers have any control over EV, like, at all and whether or not their allowed batted ball quality just comes down to launch angle. (1/6)— Connor Kurcon (@ckurcon) May 29, 2020

This was hardly a novel thought, and unsurprisingly, this wasn’t the first time someone had put this idea to paper. In fact, Rob Arthur wrote about it almost exactly 5 years before that tweet.

In the past 6 month, many smart people have explored the idea as well, in including Alex Chamberlain of RotoGraphs, Jim Albert of BaseballWithR, and Noah Thurm of FanGraphs Community Research. All 3 pieces offer great, unique insights of their own and I recommend perusing all of them.

Pitcher Launch Angle, Visualized, Part 1 — Baseball on the Pitchers Mound Close Up with room for copy

I wanted to dig a little into how pitchers might be able to do this. So for this article, through a series of visualizations, I’m going to share all the factors I looked at when searching for this answer. There are no massive breakthroughs in this article. I’m going to talk through and visualize all of the factors that could – and likely do – play a role in pitcher launch angle. Some of you may finish reading and say “yeah, I knew all of that already”. This article is for those who may not. Hopefully, any display shown here can spark an idea for something I haven’t explored. Who knows – perhaps me putting all my thoughts to paper will allow me to think of something else worth digging into as well.