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Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Now you frame it, now you don’t
Wonderful article by Ben, on the Molina v Lawrie episode (though Molina was invisible to everyone except Ben).
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Ball_Tracking
Does changing your pitch frequency lead to substantial change in results?
This writer gives us some examples of what happened following changes in pitch selection frequencies. Obviously, it is both anecdotal, and shows no specific correlation=causation effect.
But this is one of those areas of PITCHf/x that could potentially lead to dramatic results.
Friday, May 11, 2012
How is pitch speed affected by the conditions?
Max gives us some good data:
Pitchers deliver the ball over 0.7 miles per hour faster (relative to an 0-0 pitch) when they need one more strike to eliminate the batter, throw around 0.2 mph slower when grooving a 3-0 pitch, and throw roughly 0.2 mph harder on every other count.
...
I expected to see that pitchers throw harder in bases-empty situations because they can pitch from the windup; however, that does not seem to be the case, as they apparently reach for a little extra gas (+0.2 mph) when they are in a tight spot. Maybe the extra effort pitchers make with men on is enough to make up the difference between the full windup delivery and the set position, and then some.
...
However, while the month table, like the one we showed at the beginning of the article, indicates a strong (and expected) relationship between temperature and pitch speed, the one with times of the day illustrates something different, as there is an increase in speed in the coolest parts of the day.Note that the identity of pitchers is already considered, so the fact that flame-throwing relievers are more likely to be on the mound at later hours is also an already neutralized factor in the model.
He also shows alot more, like the longer you pitch, the slower you pitch during the game. It’s not noticeable, about a quarter to half mph per pitch, but it’s there. If let’s say we treat 1 runs per 9IP as the result of losing 2-4 mph, then you’d lose 0.1 runs per 9IP due to fatigue (on the speed of the pitch). Add in (presumably) another bit of loss due to fatigue for movement, for pitch location, and familiarity of seeing the same batter, you end up with the effect we’ve seen, each time through the order. The interesting part is trying to quantify all these components that we know likely have an impact. That’s usually our job, to measure things, rather than to find things.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Posey wearing down?
And the scout remarked that Posey’s at-bats are dropping off in quality in the later innings. The numbers bear it out. In the first three innings, Posey is a .361 hitter. He has struck out five times in 36 at-bats. In the fourth inning through the ninth, Posey is a .250 hitter. He has struck out 20 times in 64 at-bats. And if you take just the seventh through the ninth innings, Posey has 13 strikeouts in 30 at-bats, while drawing just one walk.
Two points:
1. If the scout says what he did WITHOUT looking at the outcomes, that Posey’s swings “look” slow, etc, then that’s one thing. If the scout however CONSULTS the outcome numbers, then that’s a completely different thing.
2. 5/36 in one instance and then 13/30 in another? Meaningless by itself. Again, combined with the scout’s view (but without the scout seeing the outcomes), then it could be modestly valuable.
For example, let’s say that the scout says that Posey’s got great mechanics, and he expect him to not K alot, that he should K say 3/36 times, and he ends up K-ing 5/36. We might therefore conclude his true talent in early innings is say 3.2/36 K rate.
And if the scout says that Posey has a lousy swing in the late innings, that he looks like he’d K 10/30, and he ends up K-ing 13/30, then we might say his true talent K rate in late innings is 10.3/30 or something.
But, without the scout’s observation, we are forced to conclude that Posey’s true talent K rate in early and late innings is virtually identical.
Again, that’s IF (and a big IF) the scout’s observation is INDEPENDENT of the outcomes. Which is going to be pretty hard to do, since the scout will get biased by the fact that Posey struck out.
Which is why HITf/x will be so powerful, that we’ll be able to tell if Posey is swinging harder than normal, earlier/later than normal (if Sportvision can start the clock on the bat earlier on the swing), etc.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
What does it mean when you age? It means you can’t throw as hard
Good stuff from Jeff, whereby he controls for the lack of year-to-year change in fastball, and notices that there is no change year-to-year in FIP.
Monday, April 30, 2012
BrooksBaseball/Pavlidis to integrate with BPro
Here’s the news, for those who love Dan and Harry.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Competitive advantage for the Giants with FIELDf/x?
I’d be interested to hear who the Giants have to mining and analyzing the data, and what they’ve been able to find.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Yu Darvish’s pitches
garik does a great job of bringing to light Darvish’s pitches, including a fastball with extra bite.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Verlander, ace reliever
Verlander not only dials it up in the ninth inning, but he also throws the heat more than usual. Basically, he pitches more like an ace reliever, than a starting pitcher.
Note selection biases when looking at league totals especially. And, possibly even for the pitchers themselves, as they may have been “hotter” than usual in the games they went deep.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Livan Strasburg
Image below courtesy of BrooksBaseball.
That’s 4 bad strike calls, and maybe as many as 8 bad strike calls. But maybe five bad ball calls too, and more depending how wide you make the unofficial strike zone. So, you’d have to do the plus/minus on all his pitches to get the balance of whether Strasburg benefited from a Livan strike zone or not.
That’s another suggestion for you Dan and Harry, to give us a plus/minus on the strike calls on a per game basis (i.e., UZR-style). This way, we can look at a game and see if a pitcher benefited or not from the calls, and by how much.
I only saw the highlights. Did those low ball calls come on curve balls and/or against tall hitters? Who was the umpire? I wouldn’t blame him if that’s the case, because his curve balls are impossible to call.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
PITCHf/x Umpire cards and heat maps
One suggestion: convert columns 2 through 8 into percentages. A person can always multiply any of those rates by column 1 to get the counts. As it stands, it’s too difficult to read the chart.
Also, the last two columns have no scale, so we have no idea of what they mean without knowing the whole league. Converting them into percentiles will do wonders.
Just a couple of friendly suggestions to improve presentation.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Mound visit “tells”
A nice PITCHf/x tracer.
With 1000 pitches, one SD on the sinkers is .01. However, as noted in the article, it would be much better to control for the men on base scenario (as well as the handedness advantage or not). And of course, the identity of the pitcher (on the possibility that sinkerball pitchers are visited more often by the pitching coach).
Anyway, I love the idea, and it’s just a matter of refining the baseline.
Monday, March 05, 2012
Are umpires behind the decreased run environment?
There are easy ways to reduce a run environment without too much effort: adjust the ball, adjust the bat, and adjust the strike zone. None of us would even be aware. David notes:
Year Called Strike Rate on Pitches Taken in Zone
2008 74.5
2009 76.3
2010 78.9
2011 79.1
The difference between 2008’s called strike rate on in-zone pitches taken and 2011’s rate amounted to an extra 5,732 called strikes on hitters
This is an enormous change!
I don’t know why David gave the low run values per pitch that he did, which I won’t quote because either they are terribly wrong, or I can’t read. (Both are possible.)
A switch between a called ball to a called strike is close to 0.15 runs, depending on exactly what you are measuring. So, those 5732 called pitches that toggled is worth about 859 runs. And since there are 81 162x30 games, that means it’s an average of 0.35 0.17 runs per game.
He noted that the runs scored in 2008 was 4.65 and it was 4.28 in 2011, which is a difference of 0.37 runs per game.
There you go… no need to look at steroids or anything else. The umpires are calling strikes alot more on pitches that the batter takes. Just like that, you get 0.35 fewer runs per game.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Jose Molina
Max gives us a component-by-component analysis of Jose Molina. Bottom-line: if you believe he controls the strike zone, then he’s a great catcher.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Pitch Diversity Index
I love the idea, off the bat.
But, I don’t like the question. The peripherals already includes the diversity. A better thing to ask is if a pitcher with more diversity performs better than someone with less diversity, if you control for the fact they have the same fastball speed. (We will end up with a selection bias at the low-speed end, but not the high-speed. Well, we might, because we don’t have a measure for strike zone location, which, really, is what pitching is all about.)
Anyway, would love to see more work on this.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Complete PITCHf/x classification
Great stuff available at BrooksBaseball.
It’s interesting to me when we classify things as “Fastball”, when obviously a Moyer fastball and a Strasburg fastball moves differently. First, there’s the difference in speed (16mph difference), which means that gravity has more time to impact a Moyer fastball (you can see this in the charts a bit further down). The end result is that a Moyer fastball sinks more than a Strasburg sinker.
But, then there’s also those pitchers that throw alot of fastball AND sinkers, and so, they will try to differentiate them enough so they can get value from the two pitches. For example, Strasburg doesn’t throw a sinker alot, but when he does, the movement is a couple of inches different from his fastball. It’s also two mph slower. Moyer on the other hand throws his sinker and fastball at the same speed, but it has significantly different movement on the pitches: 7 inches on the horizontal and 5 inches on the vertical.
And it’s not just Moyer. CC also throws fastballs and sinkers, and the speed difference is only 1 mph, the horizontal is 6 inches and the vertical is 3. Felix throws his sinker and fastball at the same speed, with 7 inches of difference on the horizontal and 3 on the vertical.
Verlander is like Strasburg, in that he rarely throws a sinker, and he gets 3 inches on the horizontal, and 4 on the vertical, at the same speed (so, a bit more movement differentiation than Strasburg, but not as much as CC/Felix). And maybe the reason is that his fastball already gets so much movement to begin with. Verlander’s fastball on the horizontal moves as much as Felix’s sinker on the horizontal. So, he really doesn’t have much room to maneuver there. One might think that Verlander can improve his repertoire by following a Felix/CC model of limiting movement on the fastball, to differentiate it more to the sinker. But, it’s hard to argue with the success of Verlander/Strasburg to think that they can actually pitch better.
Anyway, all to say that since a Verlander/Strasburg fastball really lies half-way between a Felix/CC fastball/sinker, that it’s not really helpful to simply classify their pitches as “fastball”. It’s really a Verlander-fastball and a CC-sinker and a CC-fastball.
I think it’s perfectly fine that when you treat the pitcher as his own universe, that we stick with the standard classifications. But, when we combine pitchers, it’s may be more helpful to distinguish them based on their movement and speed, rather than how they clustered for a particular pitcher.
Bill James Baseball IQ app
I downloaded Bill James Baseball IQ onto my iphone (I don’t think it is available on droid phones, but I’m not sure). Here is the web site for the app on Acta Sports:
http://www.actasports.com/titles/bill_james_baseball_iq_app/
It is pretty cool. You can read a description and see some screen captures on the above site, but basically it allows you to see heat maps and color maps of batters and pitchers (in all combinations, counts, situations, etc.) for K zone, batted balls, pitch type, etc.
Best of all, the app is free! Seems to me that they could have charged for this one, but I know nothing about the best way to make money from apps. It also seems like they could use these graphics more often on TV broadcasts.
Anyway, give it a try and see what you think…
(14) Comments • 2012/04/18
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