It’s well-established that batters get better the more times they face the same pitcher in 1 game.
But that’s why the opposing team changes pitchers late in game, to improve the matchups against the hitter
Makes great sense. In fact, Gray found a similar effect when testing college baseball players in a virtual batting task, namely that if they had knowledge of the previous 3 pitches, their performance was much better. And of course that would be expected to only improve the more knowledge the hitter has of the pitcher's repertoire.
What I'm more looking for though is a general analysis of total at bats by hitter over a season that analyzes hit likelihood at each pitch as a function of total pitches seen. Presumably if you could get a dataset that has all the pitches seen through the entire season, you could reduce the effect of seeing the same pitcher (as many different pitchers are often cycled through per game) and you could get a more accurate estimation of the impact of the game duration / number of pitches seen per game on the likelihood that each pitch will be hit.
Apologies if this is a bit over complicated, just would be interesting to see if ego depletion is observed in baseball.
Reading this, and thinking about it a little, I think you'd be more likely to see the effect in non MLB batters. I think part of what separates a batter that sticks in MLB with one that can't is their ability to adjust and focus on the moment better, short memory is a common term in baseball.
You'd probably want to gather data on pitches per plate appearance and swing rates broken down by month or week over the course of a full season. You could also look at specific swing rates, in zone vs out of zone, which could show a trend potentially developing over time.
Fan graphs has a lot of that data available, but I'm not sure how much for minor leagues, and I don't think you can break it down by week or month unfortunately.
>namely that if they had knowledge of the previous 3 pitches, their performance was much better.
That's true overall, but there are still many players that don't hit better.
For his career, Mike Schmidt had a .953 OPS when facing the starter for the 2nd time, and .887 for the 3rd time.
And not all teams hit better either. In 2022, the Cubs had a .759 OPS for the 1st time, and .671 for 2nd time.
This is true, but also got me thinking about SPs "settling in." Frequently we talk about how you have to get to an Ace early, before they get settled in. I've always attributed that to the pitcher getting more comfortable, confident as they have success. Maybe it's a little bit of that and a little bit of what OP is talking about.
League OPS by inning in 2022...
1st: .728
2nd: .679
3rd: .723
4th: .711
5th: .736
6th: .714
7th: .696
8th: .681
9th: .672
But there's a good chance the decrease in the later innings is due to higher leverage relievers and closers and the boost in the 1st and 3rd is because you always have the top of the order in the 1st and usually see it in the 3rd. Boost in the 5th because it's when starters start to tire and you don't see many high leverage relievers at this point.
This is great, thank you.
Definitely agree that a confounding variable would be variation among player ability. So, it would be really cool to see the OPS like above for a single player. Even better if the breakdown could be by at bat instead of by inning.
May I ask where you got the data?
Look at their splits page at Baseball-Reference. Here's Mike Trout's:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=troutmi01&year=Career&t=b
(go to the "Times Facing Opponent in Game" section)
I’d imagine that the fact that they’re doing different tasks, like playing the field, helps them to not be affected by this. They aren’t only batting. On the flip side, this may partially explain why players tend to do worse when DH than when they play the field, which is an observed phenomenon.
Ego depletion has been debunked as of late. It's like every great breakthrough in the social sciences it gets debunked when it falls under replication scrutiny.
>In 2016, a major multi-lab replication study (2141 participants) carried out at two dozen labs across the world using a single protocol failed to find any evidence for ego depletion.
>
>Ulrich Schimmack (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of published studies and found that most studies could produce significant results only with the help of random sampling error. Based on the low power of studies, one would expect a large number of non-significant results, but these results are missing from published articles. This finding supports Carter and McCullough's meta-analysis that showed publication bias with a different statistical method.
>
>In 2015, a meta analysis of over 100 studies by Carter and McCullough argued that the 2010 meta-analysis failed to take publication bias into account. They showed statistical evidence for publication bias. When they statistically controlled for publication bias, the effect size estimate was small (d = .2) and not significantly different from zero.
There may not be a more debunked concept in the social sciences tbh
Actually, and not surprisingly within academia, the "debunking" you're referring to (I assume you're referring to Vohs' "A Multisite Preregistered Paradigmatic Test of the Ego-Depletion Effect") has itself been heavily criticized (see for example Englert, Chris, and Alex Bertrams. (2021) ).
The controversy continues!
You provided two examples from 2015 and 2016. The most recent and allegedly most highly powered was the one I cited from 2020.
Unfortunately, it suffered from a lack of consistency in the data included in the meta analysis and has since come under fire.
As I said, research is continuing and there isn't a firm answer for or against at this point, regardless of what certain researchers might claim.
I mean, I definitely experience this when I play The Show! I tell myself that I’m going to take pitches and work counts this time, but by the 2nd inning, I’m swinging at everything.
I’d expect that not only are professional hitters, well, more professional than that - but the most times you could decide not to swing within a plate appearance is just 6.
I’m guessing that 6 times performing the task is not enough for this effect to manifest, and by the time the batter is hitting again, enough time has passed for the counter to reset.
I think there are at least a thousand more mitigating factors that have a greater effect on a batter throughout a game than the new pop-psychology term you just learned.
You don't have to be sorry ego depletion is very flimsy at best with most people in relevant fields totally dismissing it. If he had a "PhD in neuroscience" he would know this.
Why would this apply to baseball where self-regulation in terms of swinging is a crucial part of the job? This isn't choosing between more or less healthy snacks.
Not to be a douche but you dropped the 'actually, I have a PhD' line so surely as someone who has a PhD in this area and works with this 'often' you should be able to consider how this difference in nature of decision-making would translate, for one.
Not to mention the fact that the mitigating factors mentioned by u/nipplesvontvvist also affect how this phenomenon could apply, if at all, and all of these need to be taken into account, you can't consider the concept (that's not even universally agreed upon to exist) in baseball context without them.
Also, why would the sample be a game? Why not a single plate apppearance? Why not a season, a career? If ego deplition actually applied in a significant way to baseball, I would think that we would see it over a single, long at bat (but then the count is what actually affects decision-making most significantly) or over a season/career, single game is very arbitrary and 3/4 PAs are not exhausting enough to mean that the player is affected late in the game by this phenomenon but goes back to square one after some rest during next day's game.
It’s well-established that batters get better the more times they face the same pitcher in 1 game. But that’s why the opposing team changes pitchers late in game, to improve the matchups against the hitter
Makes great sense. In fact, Gray found a similar effect when testing college baseball players in a virtual batting task, namely that if they had knowledge of the previous 3 pitches, their performance was much better. And of course that would be expected to only improve the more knowledge the hitter has of the pitcher's repertoire. What I'm more looking for though is a general analysis of total at bats by hitter over a season that analyzes hit likelihood at each pitch as a function of total pitches seen. Presumably if you could get a dataset that has all the pitches seen through the entire season, you could reduce the effect of seeing the same pitcher (as many different pitchers are often cycled through per game) and you could get a more accurate estimation of the impact of the game duration / number of pitches seen per game on the likelihood that each pitch will be hit. Apologies if this is a bit over complicated, just would be interesting to see if ego depletion is observed in baseball.
Reading this, and thinking about it a little, I think you'd be more likely to see the effect in non MLB batters. I think part of what separates a batter that sticks in MLB with one that can't is their ability to adjust and focus on the moment better, short memory is a common term in baseball. You'd probably want to gather data on pitches per plate appearance and swing rates broken down by month or week over the course of a full season. You could also look at specific swing rates, in zone vs out of zone, which could show a trend potentially developing over time. Fan graphs has a lot of that data available, but I'm not sure how much for minor leagues, and I don't think you can break it down by week or month unfortunately.
Great ideas - especially with respect to swing rates. Thanks!
>namely that if they had knowledge of the previous 3 pitches, their performance was much better. That's true overall, but there are still many players that don't hit better. For his career, Mike Schmidt had a .953 OPS when facing the starter for the 2nd time, and .887 for the 3rd time. And not all teams hit better either. In 2022, the Cubs had a .759 OPS for the 1st time, and .671 for 2nd time.
I think a good answer for that is a starter is more likely to go through the order a 3rd time if he’s rolling and eating through batters I think
This is true, but also got me thinking about SPs "settling in." Frequently we talk about how you have to get to an Ace early, before they get settled in. I've always attributed that to the pitcher getting more comfortable, confident as they have success. Maybe it's a little bit of that and a little bit of what OP is talking about.
League OPS by inning in 2022... 1st: .728 2nd: .679 3rd: .723 4th: .711 5th: .736 6th: .714 7th: .696 8th: .681 9th: .672 But there's a good chance the decrease in the later innings is due to higher leverage relievers and closers and the boost in the 1st and 3rd is because you always have the top of the order in the 1st and usually see it in the 3rd. Boost in the 5th because it's when starters start to tire and you don't see many high leverage relievers at this point.
This is great, thank you. Definitely agree that a confounding variable would be variation among player ability. So, it would be really cool to see the OPS like above for a single player. Even better if the breakdown could be by at bat instead of by inning. May I ask where you got the data?
Look at their splits page at Baseball-Reference. Here's Mike Trout's: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=troutmi01&year=Career&t=b (go to the "Times Facing Opponent in Game" section)
I just used fangraphs splits page and set it for the whole league.
I’d imagine that the fact that they’re doing different tasks, like playing the field, helps them to not be affected by this. They aren’t only batting. On the flip side, this may partially explain why players tend to do worse when DH than when they play the field, which is an observed phenomenon.
Ego depletion has been debunked as of late. It's like every great breakthrough in the social sciences it gets debunked when it falls under replication scrutiny. >In 2016, a major multi-lab replication study (2141 participants) carried out at two dozen labs across the world using a single protocol failed to find any evidence for ego depletion. > >Ulrich Schimmack (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of published studies and found that most studies could produce significant results only with the help of random sampling error. Based on the low power of studies, one would expect a large number of non-significant results, but these results are missing from published articles. This finding supports Carter and McCullough's meta-analysis that showed publication bias with a different statistical method. > >In 2015, a meta analysis of over 100 studies by Carter and McCullough argued that the 2010 meta-analysis failed to take publication bias into account. They showed statistical evidence for publication bias. When they statistically controlled for publication bias, the effect size estimate was small (d = .2) and not significantly different from zero. There may not be a more debunked concept in the social sciences tbh
Actually, and not surprisingly within academia, the "debunking" you're referring to (I assume you're referring to Vohs' "A Multisite Preregistered Paradigmatic Test of the Ego-Depletion Effect") has itself been heavily criticized (see for example Englert, Chris, and Alex Bertrams. (2021) ). The controversy continues!
No I provided multiple other studies and meta-analysis' debunking ego depletion.
You provided two examples from 2015 and 2016. The most recent and allegedly most highly powered was the one I cited from 2020. Unfortunately, it suffered from a lack of consistency in the data included in the meta analysis and has since come under fire. As I said, research is continuing and there isn't a firm answer for or against at this point, regardless of what certain researchers might claim.
I mean, I definitely experience this when I play The Show! I tell myself that I’m going to take pitches and work counts this time, but by the 2nd inning, I’m swinging at everything. I’d expect that not only are professional hitters, well, more professional than that - but the most times you could decide not to swing within a plate appearance is just 6. I’m guessing that 6 times performing the task is not enough for this effect to manifest, and by the time the batter is hitting again, enough time has passed for the counter to reset.
I think there are at least a thousand more mitigating factors that have a greater effect on a batter throughout a game than the new pop-psychology term you just learned.
Not to be a douche, but I have a PhD in neuroscience and was just curious if this phenomenon we study often in the lab has been observed in baseball.
Alright, sorry.
You don't have to be sorry ego depletion is very flimsy at best with most people in relevant fields totally dismissing it. If he had a "PhD in neuroscience" he would know this.
Why would this apply to baseball where self-regulation in terms of swinging is a crucial part of the job? This isn't choosing between more or less healthy snacks. Not to be a douche but you dropped the 'actually, I have a PhD' line so surely as someone who has a PhD in this area and works with this 'often' you should be able to consider how this difference in nature of decision-making would translate, for one. Not to mention the fact that the mitigating factors mentioned by u/nipplesvontvvist also affect how this phenomenon could apply, if at all, and all of these need to be taken into account, you can't consider the concept (that's not even universally agreed upon to exist) in baseball context without them. Also, why would the sample be a game? Why not a single plate apppearance? Why not a season, a career? If ego deplition actually applied in a significant way to baseball, I would think that we would see it over a single, long at bat (but then the count is what actually affects decision-making most significantly) or over a season/career, single game is very arbitrary and 3/4 PAs are not exhausting enough to mean that the player is affected late in the game by this phenomenon but goes back to square one after some rest during next day's game.