Next in line to be the Chosen One is 16-year old baseball player, Bryce Harper.

Of the 30 teams in Major League baseball, 12 of the managers are former catchers.  A normal distribution would be 2 or 3.  Sounds like a case of a Gladwellian Outlier, doesn’t it?  The authors explain their theory here…that catchers face their teammates, that they are closest to the competition, that they have to keep track of a lot of things at once, be psychiatrists to flailing pitchers, etc.  Essentially that the kind of person who is a successful catcher has all the qualities of a successful manager.

Only Once explores the Catcher Hypothesis.

The WSJ highlights how some major league teams are tracking the number of groundball outs from their pitchers. This brings up something I’ve always thought about. Why isn’t a groundball out on one pitch more valuable than a three-pitch strike out. The one pitch will keep the starter fresh for longer (keep pitch count down) and gets the same result.

Lokesh Dhakar designed these great infographics of baseball pictches that give avisual of the difference between pitches.