Playing baseball in the cold weather absolutely sucks. Your hands hurt, you feel like you can’t move, and you just want to go inside or to Florida. SO….every spring, Big Leaguers head to Florida or Arizona to defrost and shake off the proverbial dust while catching a few rays. Oh yeah, they play a few games (over 30) while they’re there too but that’s beside the point. I’m more concerned with the fellows left with the joy of playing in the cold weather like Max and I. Around the time of the World Series, a friend of mine pointed out that ESPN Sports Science did a blurb on playing baseball in the cold weather and how it affects the game. I couldn’t find the clip but because of the suggestion I figured I’d do a little analysis of playing in the cold as December approaches.
As it turns out, there wasn’t much statistical analysis I could do about colder weather. Everything I thought of was thwarted by some confounding factor. I initially looked at runs scored in the colder months and found that the bad offenses (Padres, Giants, Twins, A’s, and Pirates) fared the worst. This seems more a product of poorly talented lineups than of a noticeable difference in warm and cold weather production. So then I thought about looking at wins and losses for cold weather teams. Hey, some ideas are better than others.
Finally I decide to look at some statistics that could actually be affected by cold weather. So I look up the average velocity of fastballs thrown in March/April as contrasted with August. The thought here is that in August you should feel better with the warm weather. Sure enough, the numbers back up the hypothesis. In March/April, across baseball pitchers’ fastballs averaged 91.01 mph while in August the number reached 91.64 mph. Hey, it doesn’t look like much but across the almost 122,000 pitches thrown in August that means almost 61,000 extra miles per hour. Assuming we travel an hour we could go from L.A. Calif to NYC like 30 times (if we take I-80).
In slightly more serious statistical analysis, we should look at average home run distance by month. Not that interesting, or easy to come up with instead I’ll look at some of the longest home runs. Yes, those are statistical anomolyes but… they’re awesome. OK, I’m back after watching this and this and this. Back to the point of the post.
I did find some interesting-not-so-trustworthy-yet-still-interesting-did-I-mention-interesting facts. According to this Sports Science video, your reaction times can be reduced by up to 45% in extreme cold weather. In a sport where most of the action takes place in the .4 seconds it takes the ball to travel to the plate, reaction time is important. Another fact was that when the temperature drops 20 degrees the ball travels some 3 feet less. I’m not sure I believe it and it really doesn’t matter that much.
The fact of the matter remains: playing baseball in the cold sucks. The ball may not go as far. The pitches may be slower. Reaction time may be reduced. And the Dominican players may look silly with those things covering their ears. Were those prohibited in the new labor agreement? Either way– I can’t wait for it get warm and enjoy some baseball.
Home Run of the Day: Mike Napoli’s go ahead homer on the last day of the year came off his bat at 106.8 mph.
-Sean Morash
