The Cost of One Pitch: Quantifying Emmanuel Clase‘s Alleged Actions

It’s just a ball. It’s just one pitch.

When Emmanuel Clase allegedly threw balls in the dirt on purpose and risked his current and future earnings for a small amount of money, he may have been thinking along those lines. It’s just a ball. It’s just one pitch. How much could it matter? Who would notice?

Tracking how much that one pitch matters reveals a lot about the current state of baseball. Because, as it turns out, one seemingly meaningless pitch can actually be worth a lot.

Let’s start with something simple: count leverage. It’s clear that hitters perform better when ahead in the count, but the difference between a 1-0 count versus a 0-1 count is critically important. in 2025, after a 1-0 count, batters hit .255 with a .375 on-base percentage and a .431 slugging percentage. After an 0-1 count, those numbers plummeted to .216, .253 and .344, respectively.

Throwing a ball rather of a strike to begin an at-bat in 2025 effectively transformed the batter at the plate from last season’s Luis Rengifo into Mike Trout.

that seems like a huge deal.

There are othre ways to describe what happened that make it seem less significant. In the indictment, six specific pitches by Clase are highlighted with screenshots. By analyzing each pitch and calculating how much each cost the Guardians in terms of win probability, we can determine the cost of each pitch more comprehensively.

For example, clase is accused of intentionally throwing a first pitch ball to Ryan Jeffers in the ninth inning with the Guardians leading 4-2. Win probability analysis assesses the likelihood of each team winning in that specific situation. Before the pitch,according to