From Struggling to Dominant: What Inning-Level Time Data Tells Us About Baseball’s Invisible Game

“From Struggling to Dominant: What Inning-Level Time Data Tells Us About Baseball’s Invisible Game”

I first started collecting time data while coaching in Taiwan back in 2021. I wanted to measure time for monitoring player fatigue in game to protect their usage and maximize their performance, so that they can perform their best for longer. What I found over the years is that the interwoven game of baseball between pitching, defense, and offense all impact each other in a powerful way. 

On the granular level, I was looking at active inning time as one of the factors for how “stressful” the work being done on the field was. I took into account pitch volume, monitored velocity, tracked command and miss patterns, had open communication with the pitcher and training staff and would do my best to watch for physical adjustments in game with how a player moved (in today’s game there are high speed cameras recording everything on the field that track how players movement changes as they fatigue during a game with research backing up changes, most notably trunk becoming more upright as the game progresses Escamilla et al 2007). In addition I added in temperature and humidity levels and would factor that into the environmental stress the player was experiencing. Higher humidity and temperature for athletes correlates to inability to whisk away sweat, heart rate and core temperature rising, VO2max negatively impacted, and 10%-20% faster fatiguing; there’s a lot of research out there on it. 

What I found was that the time on offense correlated to better times for our pitchers and defense. A few extra minutes of staying in the dugout helped our pitchers recover better between innings, perform better on the field, and led to the team overall performing better. Intuitively this makes sense, and baseball people for years have anecdotally been preaching this stuff. “See some pitches” after a long inning is a common phrase, well, back in the day. Give the pitcher and catcher an extra breather. With all the analytics now, and hitters swinging more aggressively in 0-0 counts for various reasons (chances at getting a good pitch to hit, staying away from negative counts to name a couple), it has been more popular to teach a hitting approach that wants to take advantage of pitchers trying to groove strikes. 

The thing with that is pitchers aren’t trying to get crushed, so 0-0 counts aren’t for grooving strikes anymore. Pitchers are throwing less fastballs and more “nasty shit” in all counts. I have seen hitters swing at balls in the dirt and over their heads in 0-0 counts and 3-0 counts, a sign of the times recently. Like anything in baseball, the times change. And I had a front row seat to the impact of a simple approach adjustment that spring boarded a team from the depths of hell to the cusp of heavens gates, per se. 

While working this past year in Myrtle Beach for the Low A Cubs affiliate Pelicans, we found ourselves in a hole quickly. Our first two months into the season we were 18-30, crawling into June trying to develop our players to grow into their skills. Learning new shapes, pushing velocity, attacking the zone and blending it all into competition for our pitchers. The position players were pushing quality contact and maximizing exit velocity. As best the players could, we worked during the day on the new skills and tried putting it together at night with people in the stands. 

What the inning time data was telling me was obvious; pitch efficiently by throwing strikes, minimizing damage, induce swing and miss and getting the position players in the dugout led to winning games. 

What the inning time data was also telling me was our hitting approach (be aggressive, swing 0-0, swing whenever there is leverage) was leading our hitters into quick innings on offense. Opposing pitchers were not following the script to throw cookies middle of the zone. Putting our pitchers on the field with less rest than our opponent pitchers. 

Instinctively this makes sense that less rest would induce fatigue physically and mentally, leading to poorer performance. 

June 8th,  we have an approach change on offense. Taking more pitches, forcing opposing pitchers to be in-zone before we start swinging. 

The results were undeniable. Not only did we start scoring more, we continued to pitch more effectively. We were consistently applying pressure to opposing teams by being less aggressive overall. Funny to say but it was the truth. This led to more time on offense, more time for pitchers to recover between innings, and better team performance. Defenders continuously were making better and better defensive plays behind our pitchers as well. There was a rejuvenation of the players as they put it together on the field. A little extra time on offense led to everyone performing better. 

Baseball was fun. 

Having efficient recovery in game allows players to push performance and have adequate time to reflect and make necessary adjustments.  Faster defensive innings (elite <7 min/IP at 1.95 ERA) keep pitchers fresher, defenses sharper (especially late-game, where gaps widened to +1.9 min in losses during 7th-9th), and reduce cumulative fatigue. Slower ones (slow >9 min/IP at 6.61 ERA) correlate with higher walks, more baserunners, and blown leads; classic signs of mounting exhaustion or poor control under pressure.

Pitchers can push velocity while fine tuning command, think about execution strategies for secondary pitches, breathe and hydrate after working on the field. Catchers can have a breather, helping them also reflect on pitch calling or their at bats. Our late game struggles from earlier in the season seemed to vanish as well. Closing out games seemed impossible, combinations of poor zone control and defensive mistakes plagued us. That also went away with the approach adjustment. The minutes of extra time each inning led to fresher players overall. 

This is critical for younger professional baseball players as they are learning and implementing new skills regularly on top of being pushed to physically mature on the strength and conditioning side of sports performance. The “momentum” shifts we felt in game, we were quantifying with time on the field. Big innings on offense and quick innings on defense.

Using time to quantify team trends with positive or negative impacts led to another way to see how coaching strategies on a team scale impact performance but also how important losing or gaining a player would be. For instance, our star catcher getting hurt was the single biggest impact a player had on the team.  

Losing our best catcher who impacted the game with pitch calling, managing base runners, receiving pitches, and batting in the middle of the lineup made for the entire pitching staff to make adjustments which hurt performance. 

With the backup catchers in the lineup more often, pitchers struggled. More time on the field, more pitches thrown, more mistakes happening, more runs allowed. 

Keeping track of the time data and combining it with important dates led to seeing team trends at a deeper level. Time under stress is important to monitor, not just in the gym, but on the field of play. 

The team finished the year strong with adjustments made by the players and coaches but having to make those adjustments during the “dog days of Summer” led to our team sputtering into the playoffs. We struggled to score runs in our playoff series and received a quick boot. We looked tired, and probably were. 

Broader Implications: Time-tracking adds nuance for MiLB/pro teams; spot workload risks, manage health (arm/mental fatigue from long innings), optimize lineups (fast pitchers in high-leverage), and even scout (pace as underrated trait).

What I have learned over the years of monitoring pitcher time is how important it is to include in evaluating performance in game. It isnt just velocity and command when monitoring fatigue. It is actively monitoring how long they are performing acutely and chronically. In doing so this has helped me better manage players health, which has led to less injuries and better performance. It did not matter what country I was in or level I was coaching at, tracking time for players mattered. 

I think as coaches we should all consider this and try to measure it. This important variable that is going for the most part unnoticed could be another big piece to solving the injury epidemic we are seeing from youth baseball into the professional ranks. 

Hope you enjoyed this blog! Please share your thoughts, lets keep the conversation going