A zone of their own
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The Hardball Times found this 11/28/2007 on www.hardballtimes.com [flag] |
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Comments (7)
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halejon I just ran a quick look at that game and you're right, Bucknor wasn't particularly generous low that game, though he called a pretty good game otherwise. Maybe he doesn't care for soft-tossing lefties?
bjays.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/quick-and-dirty-location/
I'm not sure about Vegas- you'd have to think that they would start mining this data, but I've only ever seen a basic statistical umpire report (K's/BB's per game, etc). If you just think that umps are either big or small then that's enough.
I'm on a Mac so I can't help you with that way of doing it, but you can always just save the file to your desktop and then open it in Excel.
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newguy Any thoughts to breaking this down by batter handedness? I remember that the Walsh articles determined that there was a distinct difference in the strike zone as called for right and left-handed batters.-
halejon I didn't want to break it down L/R for individual umpires because the sample sizes would start to get really, really, small. I can tell you that there seem to be differences between umps for this as well, though (I would guess depending on where they set up in the slot).
In general, though there is definitely a big difference between the zone called for lefties and right handed hitters (and I use that skewed strike zone that Walsh calculated), and to a lesser degree between R/L pitchers as well.
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rob Any thoughts of breaking down the data by home vs away for the umpires as a group? If there is a difference in how those extra balls and strikes are distributed, that might explain part of what we see as home-field advantage.-
halejon I'm working on that right now, as well as a team by team breakdown. Any predictions? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the crowd doesn't have as much of an effect on calls as we would think.-
rob I think I read on Tango's blog a guesstimate as to how many "wins" a ball-strike call going the other way is worth. The comment was made that a relatively small number of such pitches called in the home team's favor could account for a considerable part of the home field advantage.
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Links (9)
The Umpire Zone
Published 11/28/2007 by StatsGuru at Baseball Musings
John Hale presents an excellent piece of research at The Hardball Times on the strike zones of individual umpires . Roger Clemens was well known for taking rigorous notes and studying umpires--when they can differ as much as this, you'd think that every pitcher would. Umpires don't just have big or small zones, they have very specific preferences for the four edges of the strike zone and are rarely simply "big" or "small". Often an ump expands the zone one way but plays it by the book in the other directions. As I was watching the playoffs and tinkering with this data, I was ...
IT'S HARD TO USE THE INTERNETS WITH A BROKEN HAND
Published 11/28/2007 by AE at SPORTS UNFILTERED
... been active on the eBay front looking for baseball cards. I missed out on this, but made out like a bandit on this. Since I am discussing the magic of the internets, the Worldwide Leader in Sports had a free insider preview on Buster Olney's blog. I was disappointed. Instead of having any true insight into baseball from Olney himself, his blog has a lot of links to other journalists/bloggers insights. Fuck, I can do that. Just watch: 1. Not all strike zones are the same 2. This dude is straight up crazy and no one in the Mets ...
Strike Zone - Double Take
Published 11/28/2007 by halejon at The Mockingbird
... If you haven’t checked out my article at the Hardball Times, get to it already! The hot stove is already officially cold for the Jays so I’m going to spend the next two months until the sun shines getting my nerd on with the pitch f/x data. If you missed it, here’s my breakdown ...
Thinking About Pitching and Umpires
Published 11/28/2007 by jscape2000 <info@pinstripealley.com> at Pinstripe Alley
... If you haven't spent fifteen minutes reading Jonathan Hale's breakdown of umpire's strike zone tendencies, get a cup of coffee and check it out. ...
Umpire strike zone study from Hardball Times
Published 11/29/2007 by susan mullen at XM MLB Chat
They vary. No one has the courage or desire to manage the umpires. They should all be replaced with machines in the first place. Allen H. "Bud" Selig talks about fan "love" overlooking all baseball's problems. He's giving you your excuse for not questioning anything he does including endorsing the umpires. This study from Hardball Times, "A Zone of Their Own," by Jonathan Hale, 11/28/07, via ...
Friday Links (30 Nov 07)
Published 11/30/2007 by Geoff Young at Ducksnorts
... A zone of their own (Hardball Times). Jonathan Hale examines the strike zones of various home plate umpires. This is a fascinating line of research, and I’ll be interested to see where it leads. ...
Framing the Debate
Published 4/5/2008 by Dan Turkenkopf at Beyond the Box Score
... Back around Thanksgiving, Jonathan Hale broke down the strike zones of various umpires over at The Hardball Times. He used the PITCHf/x data and the ...
Poolside pitch f/x
Published 4/13/2008 by halejon at The Mockingbird
... So a few gifts of 4-5 inches off the outer half, but if you go back to this Hardball Times article, it will tell you that Laz Diaz has the 3rd largest strike zone on that side of the plate in the majors. Add to that the fact that pitchers with Cy Youngs on their mantle ...
A Strike Is a Strike, Right?
Published 23 days ago by Dan Turkenkopf at Beyond the Box Score
... Before I start examining the different factors, let me outline the methodology. It's the same basic approach as the catcher framing article, which in turn is based on Jonathan Hale's article at The Hardball Times. Each called pitch is compared to the ...
Very intriguing read. Surprised to see C.B. Bucknor with one of the larger low strike zones... I remember when he called a September 25 game between the Braves and Phillies, Jamie Moyer -- heavily dependent on a consistent and accurate strike zone -- couldn't buy a strike from Bucknor anywhere, especially low.
No doubt the Pitch F/X data will have an effect on betting on the games. Doesn't Vegas have a rough version of this?
Not sure if you or anyone else can help me with this or not, but I'm having trouble using Pitch F/X data in Excel. Following the directions from Friar Watch, I go to Import New Web Query, put in the URL of the data (this, for instance) and it just puts everything in A1 and it's just the XML code itself. If it means anything I'm using Excel from MS Office 2000.