How Does Pitch Recognition Translate to Outfield Defense?

Investigating how hitting skills show up in defensive statistics

A pet theory I’ve had over the years was that hitters who have good pitch recognition skills are likely to be better defenders in the outfield than hitters who have poor pitch recognition skills. My thought was that if you are good at identifying pitches out of the hand while hitting, you’re likely to be good at seeing the ball off the bat in the outfie…