A PITCHf/x primer

Links (15)

Statistically Speaking: Fast: A PITCHf/x primer
Published 1/14/2008 at BBTF's Baseball Primer Newsblog
Statistically Speaking: Fast: A PITCHf/x primer A late break on PITCHf/x? Well, Mike Fast is here with a much needed primer. Many of you are hopefully familiar with the PITCHf/x system and at least some of the data and analysis that have been produced on the subject over the past year, but it may be completely new to some of you. In either case, I thought it would be helpful to provide an introduction and tutorial on the information that is available. I’ll point toward some existing resources and try to fill in some of the gaps. I’ve divided this primer into sections so you ...

Offseason exercises
Published 1/14/2008 by Rowdy at Honest Wagner
... Another thing I'd like to do is delve into the more recent stats. The 2006 and 2007 seasons were so discouraging, I've barely studied the actual numbers from those seasons. And there is a lot more information available to us these days. One set of stuff is this pitch f/x data. This morning I learned from primer that Mike Fast has written a primer for MVN. I also saw that Dan Szymborski published his 2007 ZiPs ...

PITCHf/x primer
Published 1/14/2008 by Tangotiger (tangotiger@yahoo.com) at THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball
Brought to you by Mike Fast.

Paul from Las Vegas is back!
Published 1/14/2008 by thewizardsofoz <info@southsidesox.com> at South Side Sox: Front Page Posts
... , Mark Kotsay: .277/.334/388 (OPS+ 88), Emil Brown: .257/.322/.376 (OPS+ 86), Marcus Giles: .268/.348/.387 (OPS+ 84), Troy Glaus: .256/362/.456 (OPS+ 112), Scott Rolen: .245/.319.392 (OPS+ 84). BTW, the Blue Jays will send $1.8 mil to the Cards in that swap! The Rangers DFA'd 1B Chris Shelton to make room to add reliever Kazuo Fukumori. BA's (Phil Rogers') Sox Top 10 Prospects list. For entertainment value only. A Pitch F/X Primer by Mike Fast.

Roundup - Take Two
Published 1/14/2008 by Dave Rouleau at Baseball Digest Daily
... ahead 7-4 and Amos Otis tapped a dribbler down the third base line. Seattle third baseman Lenny Randle got down on all fours and proceeded to blow the ball over the line (yes, blow) causing it to roll foul! Royals manager Jim Frey, not surprisingly, argued the call while Randle claimed he was just praying that the ball would go out. The ump ruled that the Randle was indeed interfering at Otis scores a hit." There's also an i nterview with Pete Palmer posted at THT. - Here's everything you need to know about Pitch F/X. - Good article at MiLB.com about the 254 ...

THT Daily: New ground
Published 1/15/2008 by Bryan Tsao at THT Live
... - Tom Tango has an ambitious new project in the works that aims to measure clutch by asking fans to pick out clutch players and normal before the season—and then compares their relative performances in high leverage situations. Go check it out. Pitch f/x primer - For all you budding sabermetricians out there, Mike Fast of Statistically Speaking brings us a very comprehensive and well organized primer on how to get and analyze Pitch f/x, along with links to most of the current work on the system so that you don't reinvent the wheel. We get article submissions all the time at ...

Wednesday Links
Published 1/16/2008 by Dan Agonistes at Dan Agonistes
... Stark had a nice live blog post on the hearings yesterday for those of use who had to work. Some pretty good perspective I think and in answering questions he brings up a few other issues worth thinking about. Former BP'er Keith Woolner has a nice bio on the Science Magazine site that goes through his background leading up to his current position as Manager of Baseball Research and Analysis for the Indians. Very cool. Mike Fast writes a wonderful PITCHf/x primer on MVN that explains what you need to know about f/x in seven easy ...

Thursday Morning Mets Newsstand
Published 1/17/2008 by Eric Simon <amazinavenue@gmail.com> at Amazin' Avenue: Front Page Posts
... At the same blog, Mike Fast wrote a terrific primer on MLB.com's PITCHf/x system they rolled out during the 2006 playoffs and continued throughout the 2007 season in most MLB parks. In short, PITCHf/x provides velocity and trajectory information about every pitch thrown. ...

Indispensable Baseball Resources
Published 1/27/2008 by Geoff Young at Knuckle Curve - Baseball News
... This article at Statistically Speaking delves into the philosophy behind and fundamentals of statistical analysis. It’s a great starting point, and once you’re done, be sure to check out the rest of the web site; I find it to be very useful. A PITCHf/x primer Mike Fast discusses one of the hottest new items in Sabermetrics, PITCHf/x data, which allows for unbelievably detailed pitch-by-pitch analysis. This one also is at Statistically Speaking. (I told you it was a useful site.) ...

Johan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (and a good one too)
Published 2/27/2008 by Tommy at Breaking Balls
... (where he pitched 219 innings of 3.33 ERA ball, struck out 235 batters, walked just 52 batters, and made 33 starts for the fourth year running) and have people label it a down year. The Johaters point to his 33 HR allowed (which led the AL and was third in the majors) and, well, I think that’s it. They just point to the home runs. But in truth, Santana does have bad days. He is human. So what I have done is put on my spats and ventured into the brave world of PITCHf/x. I took Santana’s best and worst starts from 2007 (by Game ...

The Hardball Times: Jack Cust eats fastballs for lunch
Published 3/31/2008 by Mike Fast at THT Live
... and Resources Pitch f/x is a system developed by Sportvision and introduced in Major League Baseball during the 2006 playoffs and throughout most ballparks in the majors as the 2007 season progressed. It uses two cameras to record the position of the pitched baseball during its flight from the pitcher’s hand to home plate, and various parameters are measured and calculated to describe the trajectory and speed of each pitch. My primer for understanding Pitch f/x can be found here . The run values per pitch used in this article were calculated using Base Runs (linear weights). ...

The Hardball Times:How will ball tracking analysis change the game?
Published 4/15/2008 by Mike Fast at THT Live
... . It is an in-depth look at two games from the 1993 season, at-bat by at- bat, pitch by pitch, with Hernandez as the narrator and baseball teacher. It's a great book on baseball strategy and the pitcher-hitter confrontation. While I was reading the book again last week, I wondered what it would have looked like if Hernandez had written that book today, with all the information available from the PITCHf/x system. For those who haven't encountered PITCHf/x yet, it is a system that tracks every pitch thrown in the major leagues and records detailed information about the ...

Perplexed Over C.C. Sabathia
Published 4/17/2008 by Paul Moro at umpbump.com
... average. All those walks we just talked about is a big reason why almost 1/2 the guys that Sabathia has faced this year is getting on base. But aside from that? The stats look like he’s been throwing batting practice. He’s inducing far fewer groundballs than usual, and the line drive percentage shows that he’s getting tattooed, which helps explain the high BABiP as well (that, and suspect defense). By the way, I don’t mean this to sound like a complaint, but I really want this pitch f/x data to be tabulated and available quicker.  I know it’s an incredibly tedious process and ...

Wang: The Sultan of Sink?
Published 5/12/2008 by Joseph P. at River Avenue Blues
... could be better, right? Well, using PITCHf/x data, I hope to crown the true “Sultan of Sink.” For those new to PITCHf/x, it is a system developed by Sportsvision in use by Major League Baseball that uses two cameras to measure the position of the baseball between the pitcher’s hand and home plate, which can be used to determine various parameters about each pitch including velocity and break (for a more thorough introduction to PITCHf/x, refer here and here). Using PITHf/x data compiled by Josh Kalk of The Hardball Times, detailed pitch ...

Player spotlight: Johnny Cueto
Published 5/25/2008 by Derek Carty at THT Fantasy Focus
... batter has no idea if the pitch coming in is a slider or change-up (assuming they've first decided that it's slow enough not to be a fastball). Then, once they see it moving in one direction or the other, they need to decide how far it's actually going to move. On this topic, let's look at the late break Cueto is getting on his pitches. Excellent idea on the part of Mike, and a big thanks to him for teaching me how to put it together. Here's Mike's description of late break from his PITCHf/x primer . The goal is to show something close to what the hitter perceives as the ...