Hitter Analytics (2/22/15)

by
February 22, 2015

Last Friday, I wrote about some ways I plan on investigating a deeper into hitters. Here is the first weekly column on the information. I will pulish the data on Sunday night to help with setting weekly leagues. The format and information are not close to being 100%, so expect some changes for a few weeks as I iron out a few wrinkles.

Pitchers’ Approach Attacking Hitters

Robert Arthur at Baseball Prospectus has shown pitchers will change their approach depending on the hitter’s talent level. Here is a complete list of the number of fastballs (including sinkers) thrown to each hitter of the past two years divided into half seasons.  Also the number of pitches in the strike by half season is included along with the fastball percentage in the strike zone.  I will begin adding 2015 information as it becomes available.

 

Batted Ball Profiles

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Inside Edge tracts nine distinct batted ball types. The data includes the normal three distinctions of Groundball, Line Drive and Flyball. Additionally, the designations of Weak, Medium and Well-Hit are used. Here are the league average values for each of the nine batted balls.

Batted Ball Type: xBABIP, wOBAcon, % of batted balls
Groundball – Weak: .151, .112, 31.4%
Groundball – Medium: .461, .416, 9.5%
Groundball – Well-Hit: .647, .610, 3.8%
Line Drive – Weak: .622, .579, 2.3%
Line Drive – Medium: .650, .638, 7.3%
Line Drive – Well-Hit: .719, .815, 11.1%
Flyball – Weak: .078, .074, 18.5%
Flyball – Medium: .069, .081, 8.2%
Flyball – Well-Hit: .641, 1.168, 7.8%

With these values, I have created three values to determine a hitter’s talent level.

  • BABIPwHR (including home runs, but excluding bunts) – Number of batted balls which went for hits.
  • wOBAcon (how hard is the contact) – Each hit is weighted to an average run value. I used 0.9 for single, 1.25 for doubles, 1.6 for Triples and 2.1 for home runs.
  • Orig_xBABIP – I created this formula a while back which uses hard hit batted balls and Speed Score to estimate a player’s BABIP

Additionally, I have put some stats on a Plus system to help put the values in context. A value at 100 is league average, 90 is 10% below league average and 110 is 10% above league average.

One addition I may have in the future is each player’s values in each of the nine categories, but I need to find out if the data can be released in that form according to FanGraphs agreement with Inside Edge. Here is the information I know I can make available.

Additionally, I can take the batted mix and find players with similar mixes. Here are a trio of 2014 rookies and comparable players place in order of similarity.

Mookie Betts

Javier Baez

George Springer

 

Plate Discipline

More to to come

 

Times to First

I am collecting times from home to first base when a hitter is giving it their all to beat out a throw for a hit. With this information, changes in talent from age or injuries could be detected. Readers can submit times to first information by commenting in any of my articles or just Tweet the info to #time2first. All I would need is the player, handedness if a switch hitter, game and inning. If you can time the run even better. If you don’t have the chance to time the run, just let me know the other information and I can watch the game. I will check each when I have time and I will add them to a spreadsheet.

Sample form for data entry – very beta:

Additions
Shin-Soo Choo

Final Thoughts

Let me know what you like, don’t like or what needs tweaked. Hopefully by next Sunday night the page will complete and I will know more on how much information I can share.





 

Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.

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rOTOcAT
10 years ago

Just awesome.

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