Are the Indians built for cold weather?: Between Innings

Take that Minnesota! The Cleveland Indians (76-56) swept the Twins (49-84) out of Progressive Field with a 8-4 victory that saw the Tribe even the season series at eight each. Corey Kluber (8.0 IP, 3 R, 6 H, 2 BB, 11 SO) was dominant early while Carlos Santana (HR, 28), Rajai Davis (SB, 34, AL-best), Jose Ramirez (2-for-3, 2 RBI), and even Roberto Perez (HR, 2) helped open up a large lead.

The Indians finally receive an off day on September 1, which happens to be the one year anniversay of The Slide. Yes, Francisco Lindor’s slide against the Toronto Blue Jays. Good times.

Slow Starting Robo

via baseball-reference.com

The Indians have had issues at the plate for anyone designated as a catcher in 2016. However, the same could be said for the position in early 2015 until Yan Gomes leveled out and Roberto Perez had his bat warm up. Perez would finish as an average MLB hitter in 2015, but he started incredibly slow.

Perez was needed quickly after his thumb rehabilitation due to Gomes landing on the DL with a shoulder separation but could Perez be in the midst of starting another warming at the plate? The sample size is too small right now, but it is worth tracking.

Perci Garner

https://twitter.com/TJZuppe/status/771180993927536640

Sure, Garner has a 13.50 ERA after giving up a run on two hits and a walk in 2/3 innings pitched. Who cares. Garner made The Show. The Dover High alum pitched in front of a large group of family and friends. All of them grew up as fans of the Indians and got to see one of their own don the uniform and pitch in a game the home team won.

Coolest moment of the night came when Garner struck out noted Tribe-killer Max Kepler with a 96 mile per hour heater. The Indians removed the ball for posterity, and to top it off, his three year old son got to meet some of those guys he has watched on television.

https://vine.co/v/5i5i5Mp5mOp

Three True Outcomes effected by temperature

The last time the Indians were in the World Series, there was a game in Cleveland played with a start time temperature of 47 degrees (in continued to get colder as the night went on) in dry conditions. The Florida Marlins won that game 14-11 though the 25 mile per hour winds might have had something to do with the uptick in scoring.

However, that is a mere anecdote as the usual effect of the temperatures dropping is that the scoring drops with them. Chris Constancio of the Hardball Times did a study during the 2006 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals that saw nearly freezing temperatures through many games. He studied over 2000 games to analyze the relationship between temperature and the effect on pitchers.

Constancio focused on the Three True Outcomes for pitchers. He found that there were more strikeouts and walks, but less home runs. He theorized the fact a ball could move more in cold, dense (read: dry) weather might lend itself to both the resulting strikeouts and walks, noting that patient lineups were more likely to benefit from less overall control from pitchers.

Why do home runs decrease in the cold?

Why do home runs decrease in cold weather? Well, when needing an answer about the physics of baseball, turning to Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Alan Nathan is the way to go. He wrote up the reasoning in 2012 for Baseball Prospectus.

In order to figure out the temperature effects on home runs, one must first consider air density. Elevation, temperature, air pressure, and relative humidity all factor into the overall air density equation. Elevation and temperature are the biggest components/dependencies though, so they are the ones that Professor Nathan focuses on.¹

Let’s have Professor Nathan explain:

The data are amazingly linear over the full range of temperature. The red curve is a linear fit to the data with a slope of 0.25 ft/F, meaning that a change in T by 10F changes the home run distance by 2.5 ft.
…
We find that a 1% reduction in distance reduces the home run probability by about 10%.
…
Now let’s put it all together. Suppose the average MLB game-time temperature were 10F higher. Fly balls on a typical home run trajectory would travel about 2.5 ft farther (about 0.6%), leading to 6% more home runs. As a more dramatic example, consider games played at the two extreme temperatures of MLB, 30F and 110F. The home run probability would be about 50% greater at the high end (110F) than at the low end (30F). This result simply confirms what everyone already qualitatively knows: balls carry better at higher temperatures, leading to more home runs.

Scott Lindholm of Beyond the Box Score has also further verified the Nathan data to check for park effects and the physics (no surprise) hold up.

What about pitches?

Well, if air density and temperature effect home runs and batted balls, then they must certainly have an affect on pitches too, right? Of course. There was a 2014 white paper from Syracuse University presented at the MIT Sloan Conference detailing some of the effects, specifically on breaking pitches.

10% decrease in air density will lead to a 1% increase in the speed of a fastball and a 4% decrease in the rise of the fastball. For breaking pitches, a 10% decrease in air density will increase the speed of the ball by 1% and reduce the drop in the breaking pitch by 9%.
…
In high air density, breaking pitches will decrease in speed, but will have a greater drop. In low air density, breaking pitches will travel faster, but their drop will not be as large. Higher air density conditions could create the classic “hanging-curve” effect, where the breaking pitch is moving slower, is more recognizable to the hitter, and is likely easier to hit. Low air density, on the other hand, does not create as much of a drop in the breaking pitches, but the pitch does travel faster and still moves laterally, possibly making the breaking pitch in these
conditions more difficult for the batter to identify and successfully hit.
…
With high temperatures and high humidity, pitchers throw more breaking pitches. Given that temperature and humidity have a negative relationship with air density, this corresponds to pitchers throwing more breaking pitchers on low air density days.

Cold air tends to be dryer (in normal conditions) and decreasing the air temperature also increases the air density. So, decreasing temperatures on dry days should see a reflection in a decrease of velocity, while also increasing the drop on breaking pitches. Woah! The theory from the Hardball Times done eight years earlier with much less data holds up. Those breaking pitches are now much harder to control (and easier to differentiate for hitters).

Fastball velocity will decrease with temperature and Jeff Zimmerman of Fangraphs did verify that relationship with MLB data. However, given the control factor and relative drops for both, particularly cold and dry days appear to give an advantage to pitchers who can rely on their fastball, which holds up with some ancient baseball wisdom that you want power pitchers in cold weather.

https://vine.co/v/5i55B7ZZrv5

How about humidity though?

Eno Sarris at Fangraphs did additional digging with more MLB data to see if humidity matters. Again, Professor Nathan noted the effect on actual movement of the baseball is minor compared with the relative elevation and temperature. But, what about grip?

Ah, spin rate is highest in the warmest and most humid times of the season. So, Sarris theorizes that the grip of the baseball might be the portion of pitching that can bear the affects of cold, dry baseball games. Seeing pitchers blow on their hands, licking their fingers, and working up a sweat are all about getting some moisture on their fingertips.

Last Word

Once again, the baseball writer community is top notch. A simple question to be answered about cold weather baseball has such great writing and research from many sources a google search away.

For the Indians, it is worth noting that their best home run hitters, Carlos Santana and Mike Napoli, are also their most patient hitters. The data suggests more walks and less home runs for them during an World Series run. The offense is going to need to find other ways to score more consistent runs, which is why the Tribe has had such a focus on baserunning this season. Those extra bases taken on singles and doubles will be even more valuable when less balls clear the outfield wall.

On the pitching side, it will be interesting to see if Miller’s slider or Kluber’s curve are less efffective when the chill of late Fall takes hold. The good news is that the Indians possess a ton of pitchers with power including those two. And, the home run issues some of the players such as Carlos Carrasco have had might be muted during the MLB postseason.

Overall, it looks like the Cleveland Indians are poised for October baseball. Now, they just have to survive September and get to it.

Update!!!

Professor Nathan was kind enough to reach out to WFNY and make sure we were aware that there has been updated knowledge on atmospheric effects on fly balls from observing Statcast data. Here is that update.

Update on atmospheric effects on fly balls #Statcast pic.twitter.com/vb9J7sHCjY

— Alan Nathan (@pobguy) September 1, 2016

1. Also, it is important to understand that the intuitive effect on humidity of air is incorrect. Most assume high humidity is heavy and causes more drag on the ball, hurting overall flight. However, low humidity is actually more dense than dry air due to physical makeup of the air in both conditions. [↩]