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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
HZR, UZR, PZR: the convergence of scouting and performance
Hey Tom, I’m a frequent reader of yours, and I had been wondering about a new possible stat derived from the vector things that UZR uses. Could we use batted balls to get a offensive stat that takes out great defensive plays. Like the example of the medium-speed, straight-at-the-shortstop ball being converted at 95% of the time (dont recall exact numbers), and then Derek Jeter makes the play and has a UZR of +0.05. Could we give the batter a scoring of 0.05 and then multiply by a run valued linear weight, like lets say 95% out and 5% single. and then he would get 5% of .47 (what i think is the run value of a single) then make an average? Wouldnt that take luck out of the stat?
What is the model? The model is a set of humans, who each have their own unique skills, each of whom is faced with a different set of circumstances at different frequencies, with a changing environment (weather, park, umpires, how they feel). Ideally, we’d put each human under all the possible combinations of parameters, and make him face each context one million times, all in the same day. That is the model.
What we have instead is 4 PA a day, of a set of known and unknown variables. That’s the performance data.
What we also have is how observers see those players, in-game or out. That’s the scouting data.
The idea is to create a model that is complex and comprehensive enough as to make both performance and scouting data obsolete. We’re not there, and we’re not going to be there. But, the plan is to work toward getting there as much as possible. PITCHf/x, HITf/x, and FIELDf/x (or similar systems) is the gold we’ve been looking for.
Imagine knowing exactly when Ryan Howard starts his swing when he faces Johan Santana, when he expects fastball, and gets curve, he expects it inside, and it goes outside. It will become not only important the angle at which it comes off the bat in that particular pitch, but at what angle does it normally come off under those conditions. We’re not going to necessarily care exactly where the ball ended up, we won’t necessarily care what happened when the ball and bat met, what we may end up caring about the most is the exact millisecond prior to impact: given all the effort exuded by Santana and Howard, in the amount, direction, and timing of that effort, what should have happened?
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