THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What you are seeing for Ichiro there has nothing to do with comps. That is a baseline forecast with no aging. The comps are used to provide age adjustments. (This has always been the case with PECOTA.)

Colin, thanks, I missed that:

Withholding comment until we’ve presented all the data, let’s take a look at the retroactive forecasts (sans aging adjustments, which we’ll cover later this week) for the same seasons, generated by the latest PECOTA methodology:

Presumably then, after you add in the age adjustments (Ichiro aged 28-36), the forecasts are going to bring him down a bit?

I think it would be interesting if you can have a couple of players so we can see what is happening.  Say, Ichiro, Johnny Damon, and Bobby Abreu, before and after the aging/PECOTA adjustments.

Tango, my forecasts are really just a more rigorous Marcel, so I don’t think there are any types of players that I would consistently do better than Marcel on.  My strength is in teasing out context - that’s about it.

I would figure the BB/SO guys (high or low), since they should have a different amount of regression (K/PA and BB/PA are more stable year to year).

And of course, rookies or players under 24.

Also, possibly, guys over 35.

Those I think are the three classes of players where you would find some differences.

Re: Ichiro

Is there any source that tries to record how far from home plate a grounder first hits the ground?

In other words, if we assume that not all ground balls are equal then there is likely at optimal spot, dependent on the batter’s speed, for the ball to make first contact with the ground.

If not, then the long way around to anecdotal evidence might be to see how ground ball hitters fare (BABIP) against ground ball pitchers. 

I’ll add this to my to-do list, but it’s long already.

Is there any source that tries to record how far from home plate a grounder first hits the ground?

Current public source? No. But a number of private sources are doing that.  Sportvision with HITf/x and TrackMan, definitely.  Possibly BIS; I know they are with fly balls but unsure whether they are with ground balls.  I don’t remember what information Matt Thomas records in his data from Busch Stadium.  There may be others.

In other words, if we assume that not all ground balls are equal then there is likely at optimal spot, dependent on the batter’s speed, for the ball to make first contact with the ground.

The best thing to do with a ground ball is to hit it harder and get it between the fielders faster.  If you can’t do that you’ll find some marginal success if you don’t hit it very hard and chop it down into the ground relatively close to the plate.

I think we’ve talked about some of this here before when the HITf/x data sample was released from April 2009.  I’ll see if I can find that thread.

This wasn’t the thread I was thinking of, but it has a lot of relevant information for #5/#6:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/when_is_a_line_drive_a_flyball/

I’m still looking for the other one.  I thought I posted some charts for Ichiro and Ryan Howard based on the HITf/x data.

This was the one I was thinking of, the David Ortiz HITf/x discussion:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/batted_ball_distance_of_ortiz_is_way_way_down/

The relevant point from the second thread (posts #18 and #20), is that if you hit the ball <50 mph, you’re going to be safe <10% of the time, with the slight exception that if you hit it very softly (<20 mph) and chop it into the dirt in front of the plate, you might be safe 20-25% of the time.  Probably safe more if you’re faster, of course, but I doubt that’s a purposeful approach by any hitter any significant amount of the time.

If you can hit it between 50-80 mph, you’ll be safe about 20% of the time, and every bit you hit it faster than 80 mph, your chances of being safe go up dramatically.

Mike-

Thanks much.