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Ball_Tracking
Monday, December 01, 2008
I love all articles on the 3-0 count because the number of choices to the pitcher and batter are very limited, while the payoffs are more apparent. Here’s John Walsh:
I re-did the above, this time only considering cases when first base was occupied. The thinking there is that with first base occupied, the pitcher is much less likely to pitch around a batter. The data show that there was no difference with a runner on first; the ball percentage was still 35 percent.
Later John says using PITCHf/x:
What I’ve done is take all 3-0 pitches, and thrown away anything that is not classified as a fastball. I figure if a pitcher is throwing something other than the fastball, he’s probably afraid the batter might swing on 3-0 and he’s unlikely to be aiming down the middle.
Perhaps John can merge the two, and look at situations where 1B is not open AND the pitch is a fastball.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
It’s true:
SB: How much, if at all, have you used pitch f/x thus far?
MA: I’m still learning. I think it’s going to be a huge part of scouting, especially when it matures and is 100% accurate, and is integrated in the minor leagues and even in college. There are so many things you can learn that we could never know for sure. How good is this guy’s slider, really? Why is it good? All of the conventional wisdom in scouting will be put to the test, and you’ll see a whole new world in terms of data and information.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Great stuff from Josh on the changes in Brett Myers. It’s scouting information like this that will let you separate the signal from the noise. We need more scouting information like this…
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Courtesy of Matt.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Alan Nathan gave a talk at SABR, summarizing all things PITCHf/x. He also had an interview with friend of the blog Cory Schwarz (I can’t see it from the office, so someone can comment on it). We should be thankful that Alan is so generous in sharing his knowledge with us, in such an easy-to-understand (to the extent that it can be) manner.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dave Cameron highlights a non-closer reliever. According to the Josh Kalk player cards, in 2007 his fastball speed was 94.4, and in 2008 it was 95.4. A one MPH change is fairly substantial, probably a 0.25 ERA difference. His fastball also moves a bit more horizontally, and less vertically. His curveball also increased by over 1mph, and moves completely differently. Also, his HR/FB numbers are all over the place: career low with Rockies in 2007, career high with Reds in 2008.
The question on the table is always how persistent these changes are. That is, of the guys who have improved their K/BB number substantially, if you split them up between “change in Fastball, curves”, “no change in fastball curves”, is the “change” group more likely to continue to be better than the “no change” group?
In order for PITCHf/x to have value to a front office, they need to know these answers.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
You can mix pitch breaks (direction: straight, north/south, east/west, NE/SW, etc; and amount), you can mix pitch locations (in, out, up, down), and you can mix pitch speeds. But as Dave shows, some pitchers mix pitch speeds better than others.
It is possible that he is giving up mixing pitch speeds with much better mixing of location and break, though it’s hard to believe a young starter can get a handle on that. I suppose this is what two-pitch relievers do. One-pitch relievers like Mariano obviously rely one only two of these three timing parameters.
Anyway, nice and simple graph. I like these kind of time-progression charts that Dan Brooks also does. I’d like to think that each team should have one guy on staff who is entirely dedicated to doing nothing but analyzing this data, for the direct benefit of the pitcher.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
I’m going to have to continue to be a d-ck on the matter of break and movement. The basic difference between a fastball and changeup is speed. The spin direction and spin rotation speed remains pretty much the same, though I will defer to those who study this issue more than I do. Let’s take a look at Josh’s chart on CC:
When you look at this chart, we see “movement”. That movement is the difference between how much movement the ball actually had, compared to how much movement that same pitch “would have” had with no spin, but thrown at the same speed.
What does CC care about? How much rpm and spin angle to impart on the pitch, and how much actual break the ball had in the physical world of Earth (gravity, time). This “movement” chart is an in-between data that shows implied movement, without actually telling the viewer what really happened. And it doesn’t tell CC exactly how much rpm and spin angle he’s got on the ball. These movement charts are great for analysts like us in order to classify pitches, but I don’t think it tells the viewer anything.
Just looking at the chart, and it looks like the fastball and changeup “moves” the same, except in the physical world, the actual break will show a difference for the batter and viewer.
I respectfully think that any movement chart be accompanied with a break chart. If someone like me, who thinks about this stuff too much, is confused, imagine those readers--who don’t give much thought to this--how little he actually appreciates what the chart is and is not telling him.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Lots of people are doing setups of PITCHf/x, and some are sharing them. Here’s another from Dan Turkenkopf.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A very good and fairly light Josh Kalk read on the knuckleball. I’d say that of all the PITCHf/x articles I’ve read, this would be one that would feel perfectly at home in a mainstream press. I also like the links to the Banks articles. Just good all-round read.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Only fastballs. That’s a sweet layout too, where the horizontal axis is the count from 0-2 to 3-0, that follows the Linear Weights by Count chart we’ve discussed in the past.
Monday, July 28, 2008
John looks into how often pitchers throw the inside changeup and how Ted Lilly bucks that trend. I commented on ballhype:
John, can you show Lilly’s previous pitch and location, prior to the CH, and how that compares to the other pitchers?
I will guess that would be one way to figure if he meant to throw inside. How often would a pitcher throw two balls consecutively inside, especially if it’s a FB/CH combination?
Unless you’ve already done it, I think that would be a great article on how pitchers “mix ‘em up”, in terms of distance gap between back-to-back pitches, break, and speed.
Friday, July 25, 2008
With Josh Kalk and Alan Nathan(video).
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Great job by Paul in finding correlations between some PITCHf/x data and performance stat lines.
A couple of things I’d change is make it GB/(GB+FB), rather than ratio. I’ve talked about this alot.
Use K/BFP, not K/9IP. I’d also suggest trying an additional correlation against (K-BB)/BFP.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Josh shows us that their tools remain very close inning to inning, except maybe if they have an extended inning.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Ooooooh… I like this presentation. You get to see the pitcher’s fastball speed game by game, along with his range within game (those ranges I believe are the 25th to 75th percentiles… if not, that’d be nice to show), along with this vertical and horizontal movements. All on one graph. Very very nice.
His home/road comment may simply be one of data quality.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
I don’t have the answer, but I have the process. I emailed this to someone else, and I’ll just repost it in its entirety:
Here’s a little trick to figure out how accurate are pitchers with their pitches: look at all 3-0 counts, where the batter is a pitcher (and preferably a man on 1B)
In this situation a pitcher would be out of his mind to throw anything other than a pitch down the middle. Why in the world would he try to walk such a batter, or even tempt fate? He’s throwing it down the middle, and he’s almost certainly throwing him a fastball. And, the pitcher/batter is almost certainly taking as well.
I will guess that Maddux/Moyer/Schilling will still walk the batter 10% of the time, while your Dempsters and other throwers (not pitchers) will walk this batter at least 25% of the time, if not over 30%.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
By , 02:20 PM
I was watching the Giants/Dodgers game last night and noticed, as I’m sure lots of people did, that Zito was throwing his fastball 86-88 mph, or something like that, at least according to the Fox broadcast.
I also noticed that Chan Ho Park was throwing in the mid-90’s, which seemed a little high, although I vaguely remember him throwing that fast in his last start as well.
The Giants’ announcers remarked that Zito has been throwing a lot harder in his last few starts.
Anyway, I checked Gameday today, and it had Zito throwing around 85-87, a little less than the Fox numbers I think, but still higher than his average so far this year, at least according to Fangraphs, which has him at 84.3. These are fastball numbers of course.
Park, on the other hand, was clocked by Gameday at 90-93, around 2, maybe 3 mph less than Fox and apparently the Giants home park speed indicator.
What is up with that?
I have a few questions for the people that follow and research this stuff.
I know that lots of the pitch f/x authors have mentioned this before, but at what point is the pitch being measured by pitch f/x (which is the same as Gameday, right)? We know that the pitch speed decreases a lot (3-4 mph?) from the pitcher’s hand to the batter, so where it is being measured is critical in terms of any kind of consistency.
What about the TV speeds? Where do they come from and where are they measuring the pitch (from the pitcher to the batter)?
What about the home park measurements?
What about BIS? Where do they get the pitch speeds from?
Is the Fangraph data from BIS or from pitch f/x? It can’t be pitch f/x can it, since they (Fangraphs) have data from 2005?
Has Zito really increased his velocity over the last X number of starts?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Hat tip: Peter.
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