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1. 

   potterfw
   Member

   Does anyone have any statistical data on the number of foul balls hit in an average playoff game vs. a regular season game? Seems like there are many more fouls in playoff games, but perhaps that's because I tend to follow these games more closely. Could also be that players are more focused in playoff games, or better hitters on the best teams spoil more pitches. Thanks.

   Posted 1 month ago #
2. 

   Kincaid
   Member

   From the Retrosheet files, it looks as if there isn't much difference. From 2000-2008, there were about 48.2 foul balls (excluding foul tips and bunts) per game in the regular season and about 49.7 foul balls per postseason game, so the difference was only about 1.5 foul balls per game. There was also an increase of about 3.7 overall pitches per game in the postseason. Foul balls per pitch increased from 16.6% in the regular season to 16.9% in the postseason. There appears to be a difference, but it's probably too small to notice the actual difference. It's probably more what you hypothesize; you are just following the game more closely. 50 foul balls a game is a lot of times for something that most people probably don't think about much in the course of a game, so if you are watching the postseason games with greater focus and you start noticing foul balls, there are all of a sudden quite a lot of them.

   I guess it's possible that this year is an aberration and there really are more foul balls this year, but there aren't normally.

   Posted 4 weeks ago #

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