No Products in the Cart
Table of contents
No headings found in this article.
Walk into any pitching lab in the country, and they will all start the conversation the same way. Velocity, spin rate, and arm angle will be the main points of discussion, and they aren't wrong to lead there — but what about the pitchers who find success in the lab but just can't figure it out in the game? Or the pitchers who dominate the mound in big spots but don't light up the radar gun? There has to be a reason some of these pitchers find success while others don't.
Understanding the Metric: An Analytical Breakdown of Location
Location+ works off a simple idea: not every pitch is trying to do the same thing. A 3-0 fastball down the middle and an 0-2 slider off the plate are being judged by completely different standards — so instead of grading every pitch against one flat scale, Location+ buckets each pitch by its count, its type, and the handedness matchup it's facing, then asks a narrower question: given all of that context, how good was this specific pitch's location compared to where a league-average pitcher would have located it in that exact spot? 100 is league average — in this case, the average Division I pitcher — and every point above or below tells you how far a pitcher's command actually separates him from his peers. It's the same convention as ERA+ or OPS+, just pointed at command instead of results.
Command by the Numbers
xFIP has been a great indicator of pitcher performance throughout baseball over the last few years. Taking a closer look at how location correlates with xFIP reveals some very interesting patterns. Here's what that relationship looks like plotted out — each dot is one D1 team, plotted by Location+ against xFIP:
The trend is clear: as Location+ climbs, xFIP drops. This relationship gets even more apparent once we focus on the elite portion of college baseball. The top conference in Division I baseball based on RPI is the SEC. Take a look at the correlation between xFIP and Location+ when looking only at in-conference SEC games.
Where Stuff and Location Mix
So does location just quietly win at every level, no exceptions? Not quite — and this is where it gets interesting. Breaking teams into RPI tiers and comparing how well Stuff+ and Location+ each predict xFIP reveals something neither metric can claim on its own.
As competition gets tougher, location matters more. Against the SEC, the best hitters in the country, Location+ predicts a staff's xFIP almost twice as well as Stuff+ does. Elite hitters don't miss mistakes. A well-located average fastball survives against a lineup like that; a nasty pitch left over the middle doesn't. But drop down to Tier 4, where hitters are chasing and missing more on their own, and that discipline shrinks — location stops being the separator because hitters aren't punishing bad location as consistently, and swing-and-miss stuff starts closing the gap instead. The better the hitters get, the less room there is to survive without command. That's the case for location: it isn't just correlated with performance in general — it becomes more decisive the higher you climb.
Key Takeaways
There has to be a reason why a pitcher like Kyle Hendricks can pitch to a 2.1 ERA at the highest level in the world without having any overpowering stuff, while countless guys who can top out at 100 fail to find success. That answer is location and execution — though location alone won't get you to the highest level. Some level of stuff is required to give you a chance at the level you want to play at, but location is the thing that will earn you a coach's trust in big moments. Velocity gets you a phone call. Location gets you a career. The gun starts the conversation — it's what gets you on campus, what gets you the look. But long after the radar gun stops being the story, location is still out there getting outs, inning after inning, year after year. Stuff opens the door. Location is what keeps you in the room.
Written and Developed by Premier Intern Ian Maxedon
