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Thursday, November 15, 2007
John Dewan: Stopwatches? No!
# Q: Are you currently tracking, or are you planning to begin tracking “hang time” for fly balls and “time to get through infield” on ground balls? This, along with the hit location data you already collect, would allow you/us to back-calculate trajectory and would eliminate the need for qualitative, subjective categorizations of hit speed or batted ball type (fly vs. fliner vs. liner). ?
A: We’re not using a stop watch, if that’s what you mean. But we factor in virtually the same thing by utilizing both the speed (soft, medium, hard) and the type (bunt, fly, liner, fliner, grounder) of batted ball. Can we get more precise at some point? Probably.
Suffice to say that I completely disagree with his stance.
We’re always working on improving. Since we went to print with the Handbook just two weeks ago, we have already added a new element to the Plus/Minus System. It’s the Manny Adjustment. We no longer “punish” outfielders on balls that hit an outfield wall at a height that is physically out of reach. We now treat these balls the same way as home runs by removing them from consideration. Manny Ramirez went from a -38 to a -24, a huge improvement, but still a poor performance. Coco Crisp winds up with the highest plus/minus figure (+26) in center field with the adjustment.
(Hat tip: Justin)
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