Pitchers agree.

“There are plenty of pitchers that leave the bullpen throwing 89 to 90 miles an hour, but their first pitch in front of the fans, in front of the opponent, is 95,” the former Cy Young winner Orel Hershiser said.

Reds starter Trevor Bauer, a full-bore adopter of pitching analytics, sees proof of the phenomenon in himself. “I know that when the crowd gets going with runners on, my adrenaline gets going, and I tend to have better stuff,” he said.

But this season, pressure — that amorphous but oft-cited concept — has taken on a new quality, and it remains to be seen whether players used to the energy of thousands of fans can provide their own.

“It’s like you have two of your senses that aren’t coinciding with one another,” Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon said of playing with fake crowd noise. “It’s like you’re looking at pizza, but you’re smelling a hamburger.”

People around the game have their hunches about who might be most affected by the changes.

Cliff Floyd, an MLB Network analyst and a former outfielder for a 1998 Marlins team that lost 108 games, said that certain lousy squads that don’t typically draw large crowds at home might not feel much of a contrast in the new environment.

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“Players in New York, you’re playing in front of 30,000 every night — it might be different,” Floyd said.

Matt Quatraro, the bench coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, who were second to last in overall attendance last season but who play in a division with the high-drawing Yankees and Boston Red Sox, said empty ballparks could offer something of a lift.

Source: New York Times

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