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Thursday, May 28, 2009
PITCHf/x … Tracers!
One of my favorite parts of the Bill James books was these “tracers”, where Bill’s assistant (like Rob Neyer) would investigate some claim, and see if it was true. Dave Allen has gone all high-tech on us and looks at Milton Bradley’s claim that his strike zone has been expanded by the umps:
These contours are closed lines such that a pitch inside the line is a strike 50% of the time or more and a pitch outside the line is a ball 50% of the time or more. Here you can see how the outside edge of the strike zone is shifted farther outside to Bradley as a lefty, as is the case to all LHBs. The inside edge of the pre-2009 and 2009 zones are almost exactly the same. Up and outside the pre-2009 zone is larger, but down and outside the 2009 zone is larger. As a whole the two are almost exactly the same size.
