from Amazon
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Why we want hang time
Dudek’s article should have been enough. Well, Greg, makes the point graphically even clearer.
Go to the 15 minute mark of the presentation. (You select the presentation on the right side.)
That’s EXACTLY why you want hang time. Greg shows the “landing point of ball from starting point of fielder” on one axis, and hang time on the other. This is so obvious, it makes you wonder why hang time (and initial fielder position) is not tracked for 20 years now. The NHL tracks who is on the ice every second (the NHL employs multiple scorers every game… 3 or 5 of them or something, and they are not swimming in money like MLBAM). We can’t get an extra stringer to show where a fielder is positioned with a stop watch in his hand? The 30 MLB teams are not demanding this from their subsidiary?
Anyway, his chart shows the obvious and expected clumping of hits and outs.
Great job from Greg in laying out the foundation here as to how things work with UZR and why it works like that, and what the uncertainties you have based on not having hang time.