Mark, I love the idea….but the sample size is too small for such a heat map. I’m not sure what tools Baseball Analytics uses for it’s heat maps in their program, but with 168 pitches, you really don’t get anything meaningful….it’s either too smoothed out or too granular. Here it appears too smoothed out.

The end result, is that there’s not enough data to TELL US anything, particularly the locations out of the zone, where the sample size is even smaller.

Heat Maps tend to require somewhat larger sample sizes, ESPECIALLY heat maps for things other than simply where pitchers are locating. The red areas on the bottom third of the chart are almost certainly tiny tiny (less than 10, probably less than 5, or even less than that) and yet the heat map makes it look absolute.