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...
Author: Ben
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...
Getting to Know Exit Velocity Distributions
Although they offer really helpful snapshots of particular data points, measures of central tendency (mean, mode, etc.) sometimes leave a lot to be desired. To help with that, there are all sorts of measures...
Dominican Ballplayers in MLB and the Provinces They Hail From
It shouldn’t come as any great surprise to a typical baseball fan that Dominican players play an outsized role in Major League Baseball today. In fact, the Dominican Republic, which has a population roughly...
Using Decision Trees to Classify Yu Darvish Pitch Types
Last year, I wrote a post which outlined the application of a K Nearest Neighbors algorithm to make pitch classifications. This post will be, in some ways, an extension of that as pitches will...
Will the Trend of Defensive Versatility Resume Its Rise?
It should come as no great surprise that versatility is an attractive trait in just about any profession; baseball is no exception. Defensive prowess and versatility, skills that have become more clearly quantifiable in...
Rather Unnecessarily Juxtaposing Two Rangers Prospect Lists
Baseball fans love to speculate on their teams’ top prospects. It is a way to embrace (or perhaps more often, disparage) front office decisions (all from the comfort of your couch!) as well as...
What is Being Thrown: Pitch Usage in 2021
Several weeks ago I took a rough hack at quantifying the variation of any given pitcher’s pitch mix. As a step back, and tangential extension of that exercise, below is a very general summary...
The Early Season Emergence of Adolis García
Adolis García has been a revelation for the Texas Rangers this season. García, who didn’t make the Rangers Opening Day roster, has been quick to make up for lost time since being promoted on...
Popular Metric Trends Through the Lens of Percentage Change
Earlier this week I read a really interesting piece on Fangraphs by Brendan Gawlowski relating to league-wide batting averages. Gawlowski remarked that the league’s cumulative batting average, through just a few days ago, was...