The Forgetting Curve and the Cost of Neglected Fundamentals

Snap decisions with unforgiving endings are a common theme in pitchers’ fielding. Trying to do too much with the baseball comes up a lot in those moments. Pitcher fielding practice receives extensive coverage throughout Spring Training. These sessions are typically lighthearted and focus on preparing pitchers to handle their defensive responsibilities across various game situations. However, when the bright lights come on during actual games, pitchers often struggle to execute as athletes in the field, falling short of the standards they've established in practice. There's a common saying that pitchers are the worst decision-makers on the field, and this frequently proves true during live game action.

When we see plays like one between the Diamondbacks and the Rangers from the other night it illustrates how these fielding struggles can manifest on the baseball field:

The thing is, pitchers front-load their PFP work in spring training without really touching it again until it’s too late. Most of the time, those sessions don’t pop up until mistakes happen. By then, they can feel like “eye-wash” to the players. Pitchers’ number one job is to execute pitches, and they don’t often get time before games to get on the field for defensive work. Part of that is logistics—fields take time to prepare for professional play, and on-field time is limited.

But here’s the real issue these skills aren’t reviewed or retrieved from the toolbox until enough mistakes pile up to force it. That’s a problem. I’m not saying every pitcher needs to run through PFPs before each game, but there’s value in touching those skills from time to time.

There’s some science to back this up. The “Forgetting Curve” shows that everything you learn needs some retrieval at certain points to keep it sharp. Each day without review erodes the skill a little more until it’s gone.

Teams will say, “We’ll review fundamentals after the All-Star break” or after a long layoff. That’s fine, but it shouldn’t be the only time. If you wait months to refresh a skill, you’re already behind, and that’s how you end up right back at the start. What’s needed instead is a sustained process that forces pitchers to work through these situations throughout the year.

Each review doesn’t just check a box—it refreshes memory and slows down the natural decay of that skill. The science is straightforward: every time a player revisits a concept, the forgetting curve resets. Yes, forgetting still happens, but the slope flattens with each retrieval. That means the skill sticks longer, and the rate of decline shrinks. Over time, consistent refreshers don’t just maintain ability—they build resilience against the kind of high-leverage breakdowns that cost games.

The issue is that teams slowly bleed away an edge that was once cleaned up. You can see it when we look at teams’ batting average on balls in play, focusing only on balls hit to the pitcher. We can get an even clearer sense of which teams handle these situations best by filtering out the hardest-hit balls—say, anything above 90 mph—so we’re looking only at balls that are realistically fieldable at the position.

We can see that the best teams in the league are holding teams to around a .100 batting average in these types of situations. What is interesting to see is that teams don’t get a ton of these opportunities over the course of the season. Roughly between 60-70 situations that have played out per team.

The difference between the best teams in these situations and the worst is probably 7-9 different plays that occur. Even the difference between the highest and the lowest teams in terms of their ability to stop these from happenign is about 7-8 hits in a given season.

These situations may be rare, but they’re high-leverage moments that can swing a game. A ball put in play with runners in scoring position, or a bunt misplayed into a hit, might seem small but those tiny margins often dictate the outcome and shape the trajectory of the game.

Pitchers fielding their position has always been cited as a fundamental skill, yet it’s often neglected. It should be integrated intentionally—probably as part of a month-long practice plan scripted in advance—so everyone knows what’s happening. Not as a filler for a day’s shagging or simply to change things up, but as a structured way to keep these skills sharp. These moments occur roughly once per game, maybe once every two games but their impact can be enormous. I’m going to assume that the Win Probabilities in these situations swing wildly in response to misplays by pitchers.

Pitchers are asked to shag batting practice nearly every day, but simply getting them on the field to help with routine drills doesn’t translate into in-game performance. In fact, this ritual may be quietly hurting teams on a day-to-day basis. A smarter approach is to replace some of these sessions with focused PFP’s throughout the season. Even trading just a few days of shagging for PFPs can provide a meaningful boost to overall team performance.

Infielders field balls every day, with coaches relentlessly drilling fundamentals. Pitchers deserve the same attention. While fielding isn’t the headline of their job, a few minutes of concentrated practice every few weeks can prevent a game-changing mistake. These deliberate refreshers can be the difference between a routine out and a high-leverage blunder—and that’s exactly why they can no longer be overlooked.