from Amazon
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Stopwatches
Rob at Batter’s Box used some high technology to figure out how fast a batter runs to first base. (Hat tip studes.) I love this stuff, because it’s so basic, and so easy to record. One of my favorite shows in the 80s was the skills competition (the NHL did a great job with those as well). From what I remember, they did bunting and getting to first base, stealing second base, scoring from second base, throwing from the OF to a cutoff guy, and a few hitting skills. I remember Tim Raines winning one of these competitions (in the Year of the Bo). I’d love to see more “getting back to basics” data recording. I’ll repeat here my call to get more scorers and stopwatches to record games.
Every chance I get, I go on a rampage on giving a stopwatch to the scorers. And the scorers always tell me the same thing: they are overworked, so how can I make such a suggestion? They are right. The NHL has something like 5 to 7 scorers recording tons of data. MLB I believe has one official scorer, and then a PBP guy. I think that’s the extent of it. The NHL revenue stream is less than half of the MLB revenue stream. If they NHL can afford 5 scorer, MLB can afford to have 10 per game. I’m *not* suggesting they have 10, for logisitcal reasons. But, they can certainly afford it. If logisitically the NHL can handle 5 to 7, then so can MLB. But, all I’m saying is to get 1 more, and give the guy a stopwatch. And maybe he can record the fielding location of all the fielders before each pitch.
I realize it’s just for fun, but the Batters’ Box presentation is a bit surprising and unclear; being expressed in feet/second instead of the usual elapsed seconds. By expressing the speed in this way, I expect him to be incorporating in his measurement the extra distance (3 feet?) which a right handed batter has to cover to reach first. That will slightly but incompletely compensate for the torque of his swing giving him initial momentum away from first instead of toward it, as a lefthander’s usually would. Or perhaps Batters’ Box hasn’t done this, and has chosen this form of measurement for visual reasons in the graph?
I fiddled around with a stop watch earlier this year, looking at highlight video of diving catches on line drives. The outfield balls were usually in the air for 2.6 - 2.9 seconds, in which time I doubt even a very fast outfielder can ever move more than about 50 feet from his starting point. For corner infielders, it was about 1.0 seconds, and they usually didn’t take a step, just shift their weight and dive. In these time frames, reaction time and acceleration matter more than the player’s high-end speed in determining how much ground can be covered.