The neutral state of a plate appearance does not exist.
During the May 24th game against the Twins, Ryan Lefebvre told a story about how former Royals VP Mike Swanson always used to say that 2-2 is not an even count and should not be considered as such. Even though the two numbers are the same, the distance from a walk and from a strikeout is not the same. Honestly I had never thought about it before, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought Swanson had a point. When you actually take a second to think about, it’s kind of obvious, yea? A 2-2 count means two strikes, but we count it as “even count”.
Is a 2-2 count more of an “even count” or a “two strike count”? This is easy to look up on Baseball Reference. Using 2025 data, batters as a whole on 2-2 counts have a 23 OPS+, which is categorically Not Good. The line is .172/.177/.267. To be clear, this is performance on that pitch in a given count, not after the count has been achieved.
The overall “even count” split on Baseball Reference is a 95 OPS+ with a .266/.273/.436 line. The overall “two strike count” split on Baseball Reference is a 44 OPS+ with a .170/.247/.264 line. That most definitely supports “two strike count” over “even count” for 2-2. And that’s with full counts totally skewing the overall results for a two strike count.
How about the other “even” counts?
0-0 (first pitch) —> .340/.349/.579, 155 OPS+
1-1 —> .328/.335/.532, 139 OPS+
The only reason the overall “even count” metric comes out at a 95 OPS+ is because the good performance in 0-0 and 1-1 balance out the terrible performance in 2-2. It’s nowhere near a normal distribution.
This got me thinking about the philosophical definition of what an “even count” actually is. What is it supposed to capture? What is it supposed to represent? My first thought is that it’s supposed to represent the “neutral” state of the plate appearance, in which the chance of an on-base event or an out event is relatively equal to the pitcher’s/batter’s overall tendencies. An “even count” is sort of the absence of influence of the count on outcomes. Stated yet another way, the “neutral” state of a plate appearance is perhaps those situations in which the outcomes are closest to overall league average performance. There are many ways to define what an “even count” means.
I’m not sure this situation, the “neutral” situation in which league-wide performance is close to average, really even exists. The only count split on BR that is close to 100 OPS+ is “zero balls”, which is aggregating first pitch (0-0), 0-1, and 0-2. Obviously 0-2 performance is wildly worse than first pitch and 0-1. While the aggregate results are close to average, the individual components are so distantly distributed that I don’t think there’s any value in saying “zero balls” means “likely league average performance”.
I think Ryan mentioned that Mike Swanson’s definition of an “even count” is when the distance from a walk or a strikeout is the same in terms of remaining count. So 1-0 would be an even count because it’s 3 balls to a walk or 3 strikes to a strikeout. 3-2 would be an even count. The list would be this (performance on the pitch of that count):
1-0 —> 149 OPS+
2-1 —> 143 OPS+
3-2 —> 125 OPS+
I don’t think that’s a neutral situation either. Those all seem slanted to the batter by quite a bit.
How about performance after those counts, not just performance on the count itself?
After 1-0 —> 125 OPS+
After 2-1 —> 122 OPS+
After 3-2 —> not a thing…full count outcome is guaranteed.
Doesn’t seem like a neutral situation to me.
Maybe the only truly “neutral” situation is the first pitch? Nothing’s happened yet! You might think it would be neutral, but first pitch OPS+ is 155 with a .340/.349/.579 line. Batters who jump the first pitch and put it in fair territory seem to have good outcomes.
This is maybe a limited investigation, but it kind of seems like a “neutral” situation, in which neither the batter nor pitcher has an advantage or disadvantage beyond their norms, does not exist in baseball. On any given pitch, on any given count, one guy has an advantage over the other guy. The advantage swings wildly from pitch to pitch.
Reminds me of how important strike one is. What do you think? Does the neutral situation exist? If so, can you define it? I found this to be a fun thought exercise to chat about with my buddy during the blistering hot home series against the A’s when we roamed about looking for shade at the stadium. And really, to me, that’s all this is – a way to talk about baseball with a friend. I don’t need a right answer. Who knows if there is one.