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...
Author: Ben Perry
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...
Are Hitters Hitting It Where It’s Being Pitched?
If you watch baseball games, which you probably do if you find yourself reading this, you’re likely familiar with announcers employing phrases like “he just went with it” or “hit it where it was...
Catching Up with the Oft-Overlooked Double
In the context of 2020s baseball, doubles in some ways have an uphill battle to capture our attention. After all, home runs are generally hit farther! And harder! Home runs are crucially less subject...
More Ways to Measure Pitch Mix Variation
Earlier this year, I took a hack at defining what I referred to as pitch mix variation. Pitch mix variation, as I conceived of it at least, would be a single number to capture...
Contextualizing 2021 for the Texas Rangers
The last decade for the Texas Rangers has been a tale of two halves. The first half of the 2010s featured unprecedented success for the franchise; alternatively the latter half, bluntly put, was a...