A Longitudinal Study Comparing Performance and Pants Tightness

A few years ago, my wife and I were in attendance at a San Diego Padres v Los Angeles Dodgers game, when the Dodgers outfielder Kiké Hernández came to the plate.

Unprompted, at least as far as I know, (who knows what conversations had taken place as I was taking out a second mortgage to buy a couple of beers?), a lady in front of us turned around, looked at my wife, loud-whispered six words - "Kiké Hernández - tightest pants in baseball" - before turning back to the field and focusing very intently on the next at-bat.

It was an amusing moment, and with the two teams scheduled to meet again this weekend in Los Angeles, the topic came up in conversation this evening. While the "tightest pants in baseball" were easy enough to remember, at my advanced age it took a few minutes to recall the player's name, but I got there in the end.

Curious as to whether this was just one person's opinion or a commonly held one, and aware that I was risking some rather dubious advertising on my Internet browsing, at my wife's urging I typed the words "Kike Hernandez pants" into Google and was rewarded by the most entertaining Excel related post since Gareth Wild's Bromley car park thread on Twitter of a year ago.

The very first search result is a Reddit post from 2018 titled "Kiké Hernandez and The Case of the Extra Tight Pants". Unless the writer was the lady sat in front of us in San Diego, there appears to be a small cult built around Kiké’s pants, but more importantly this opens up a totally new angle for baseball analysis and research as we look for our edges! I must admit the tightness of a player's pants hasn't been an area I've thought about before, but this lady has gone above and beyond:

on april 23, i watched kiké hernandez go 3 for 4 with a home run, two singles, and two golden glove-caliber catches to help the dodgers win against the marlins at dodger stadium. his pants were particularly tight. i had noticed kiké had different pants in different games; all of them were tight, but some of them were extremely tight.

as the season wore on and kiké’s pants changed day by day, i began to wonder if kiké’s pants affected his performance in games. it seemed like the days when he wore his tightest pants were the days he performed the best, but i couldn’t tell if his performance was actually better on those days, or if i just paid more attention because i love looking at his hot butt. the more i thought about kiké’s pants, the more i convinced myself that this research was necessary and important. i worked on multiple research projects in graduate school, but i hadn't actually used my skills in the "real world" yet. this was my chance.

i began to chart kiké’s pants tightness game by game, matching it with statistics from baseball reference. i determined kiké has three tiers of pants tightness, which i named moderately tight, tight, and extra tight (hereafter referred to as moderates, tights, and extra tights). he actually has two subtypes of extra tights: straight leg extra tights and tapered leg extra tights, but for purposes of this study i grouped all extra tights into one category. please see this album for image examples of pants tightness.

then i had to figure out the best way to determine kiké’s performance in each pant tightness tier. i spent two months analyzing statistics, learning how to calculate them, and identifying the best options. i narrowed it down to WPA and OPS. after hours upon hours of calculations, questions to r/Dodgers, and lost sleep, i discovered an online OPS calculator that could have saved me a lot of trouble. i decided to calculate the OPS for each pants tightness tier; this was easily achievable using my detailed excel spreadsheet (found below) and the online OPS calculator.

i am proud to present my findings as part of my dissertation for the honorary Master's of Thirsty Baseball (MTB) from the University of r/Dodgers. i have summarized my findings in the paragraph below, and following my summary, i have attached my formal research paper and excel spreadsheet for your information and enjoyment.

my research has determined that kiké’s performance is significantly better when wearing his extra tights. kiké’s OPS while wearing moderately tight pants was 0.552; tight pants was 0.682; and extra tight pants was 0.974. he wore his moderates in 16 games, his tights in 37 games, and his extra tights in 35 games. the biggest different in stats was in home runs: kiké hit 10 home runs while in extra tights, while he only hit 4 in tights and 2 in extra tights. i have attached my excel spreadsheet here if you are interested in more in-depth statistics; if you filter the column by each pants tightness, the “subtotals” line at the bottom shows the totals per filter.

please see my formal research paper for further in-depth analysis of kiké’s pants and his performance. i think you will find it both informative and entertaining.

upon completing this research, it is my recommendation that kiké wear his extra tights as often as possible to improve his overall performance. we saw last night that kiké is an outstanding player (he was wearing his extra tights), and the data suggests he is not cooling off anytime soon. i believe increasing the frequency of extra tights will only serve to improve his statistics, and will definitely make me a happier woman.

about the author: u/ItalicSlope presents this research as her dissertation for her honorary master’s degree in thirsty baseball, to accompany her real master’s degree of social work. she is also a licensed notary. while she grew up in los angeles, she currently cheers on the dodgers from kentucky, where the trifecta of braves, cardinals, and cubs fans routinely harass her. she is passionate about baseball, concerts, NPR, tamales, hot baseball players, long drives, and lightning bugs.

The spreadsheet is a thing of beauty: 

And the abstract of the formal dissertation was great: 

This study focuses on identifying a correlation between the tightness of the Dodgers’ super utility Kiké Hernandez’s pants and his performance in individual baseball games during the 2018 season prior to the All Star break. The goal of this research is to address the growing interest of fans worldwide in determining the importance of pants tightness, and to provide justification for thirsty baseball fans in salivating over Kiké’s juicy butt. This study is both qualitative and quantitative in nature with a longitudinal design. Information was obtained through MLB.tv archived games (Major League Baseball, 2018) and game log data (Baseball Reference, 2018). The data was analyzed using the researcher’s custom developed analysis tool. This study will highlight information regarding baseball and pants tightness, barriers to the study, and study findings, as well as provide discussion around key findings.

Keywords: baseball, pants, tightness, thirsty, banana rally, juicy booty, hot guys

While one of the many comments was this one:

Currently watching the Dodgers v Giants game and the announcers mentioned there was a "15 page research paper" on the relation of the tightness of Kiké’s pants and his OPS, so naturally I had to find it and I was directed here. This is quality content.

Quality content  indeed.