The Final Step: Hitting in the Major Leagues
Few things are so exciting as a promotion. A promotion generally represents a lot of time, energy, and focus devoted to a role. While all promotions are special, there is a legitimate argument to...
Author: Ben
Who is Leveraging, or Squandering, their Sprint Speed
The premise of this blog post can be summarized in a couple questions: (1) what is the relationship between player sprint speed and player value on the base paths and (2) which players are...
A Brief Investigation of Spiked Curveballs
This post is all about curveballs; specifically, those that are spiked. Of course, unavoidably, all types of pitches get spiked at least once in a while, but curveballs likely end up in the dirt...
The Intersection of Batted Ball Angles and Direction
Over the last handful of years, metrics like average launch angle and pull% have made their way into increasingly broad and casual baseball discussions. And for good reason; those metrics are quite interesting and...
Pitch Classifications and Baseball’s Poverty of Language
There is a fragment of a Virginia Woolf quote that has long stuck out to me. In her essay On Being Ill, Woolf states that “…to hinder the description of illness in literature, there...
Choosing Over or Under on 2022 Texas Rangers ZiPS Projections
Creating projections for MLB players seems to me all at once a Herculean and a Sisyphean task. Creating (“good”) projections is of course quite technically rigorous in the first place, and maintaining those projections...
Starting Pitchers Aren’t Leaning on Their Best Pitches
The title of this post does not exactly mince words. Should that be all the context you need (TL;DR), it would be fair to move on. However, for those looking for a greater explanation,...
Comparing Release Points in Three Dimensional Spaces
It seems as though almost all media consumed today comes to us by way of ads or sponsorships. Of course, this blog post isn’t sponsored by anything (nor does its traffic warrant such consideration),...
Let’s Talk About Pitcher Luck
Luck invariably plays a role in all baseball players’ individual performances. Try as they might, baseball fans, players, and analysts will always compete with those fickle forces, which obscure the pure performance of any...
Changing Speeds: A Pitch by Pitch Breakdown
The 2021 MLB playoffs have, at this late stage, seemingly been dominated by pitching considerations. Load management, relief pitcher usage, and cherry-picked matchups are all at the forefront of managerial considerations and decisions. Pitcher...