MINORS: Scouting & projecting command

On the opening evening of First Pitch Florida, The Athletic’s Eno Sarris came up to me and asked, “What’s more important for a pitcher, stuff or command?” I answered, “Command, but it’s a lot closer than people think it is.” This was the start of a 20-minute conversation about pitch command. Eno was working on an article using analytical data, such as STATS’ Command+ and Driveline’s stuff metric, to determine what was better, stuff or command (Eno published the article in March).

The quantitative data necessary to do a similar study to Eno’s isn’t publicly available for minor league players. For instance, STATS’ Command+ relies heavily on stringers to pinpoint intent of a given pitch and whether the pitcher hit his spot. In the minors,...

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