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...
Category: Quantitative
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),...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
One Way to Quantify Pitch Mix Variation
What follows is a general attempt to create a super simple, catch-all metric that aims to define how varied any given pitcher’s pitch mix is, relative to the rest of the league. My goal...