THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Batted Ball Splits

We should all be indebted to people who parse through the play-by-play files, and present us with compiled data.  When it comes to batted ball data, we start with Studes at Hardball Times.  Dan Fox provided a tool on his site to parse through the PBP data (maybe someone can find me the link; memo to Dan: you have too much great stuff at your site, that it’s in desperate need of some organization).  And now we can add David at Fangraphs.  Fangraphs even adds the fantastic news of:

Furthermore, at some point this season, we’re hoping to have batted ball splits available for all players for 2002 onward.

When it comes to batted ball data, we need to get away from the 100-year old practice of excluding SF from At Bats.  It is one of the silliest distinctions made.  And when it comes to OBP, we include it!  As well, reached on error is not a pure luck on the batter’s part.  They definitely provide some influence (though not as much as a hit).  Again, we need to record that.  Tom Ruane of Retrosheet goes further to also include reaching base on a fielder’s choice, when no putout is made (i.e., a force play was attempted, and failed, at 2B, 3B, or Home Plate, leaving the runner and batter-runner safe).  That too is an excellent category to track.