Web based PITCHf/x tool
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The Hardball Times found this 11/14/2007 on www.hardballtimes.com [flag] |
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MLB
Comments (16)
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joshkalk Yes the next version will allow you to choose the count and will have a table that shows the strike percentage and things like that. If you check out the player cards on my blog you can already see the distribtuion of pitch type by count but you can't do any selection with them. -
newguy Pretty cool little tool, Josh.
I do have one suggestion. Being a color-blind person, I cannot tell the difference between the called strike and ball markers. It would make it easier for me (and probably others who are broken like me) to read if these two were drastically different; specifically it would make it easier to interpret with just a glance. Are they red and green? Perhaps changing one of them to blue or purple would really make them stand apart.
Otherwise, consider me thoroughly impressed.
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joshkalk Yeah they are red and green and I totally didn't think of that. Thanks for reminding me and I will choose a much better color scheme next time.
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profpepper Why not use letters instead of symbols?
Something like:
b=ball, s=strike... S=single, D=double...
Anyway great tool Josh!
Will you consider adding to the output mean values (for every pitch type) of ax, ay, az, vx, vy, vz?
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crashburnalley Josh, thanks for the early Christmas gift! No doubt I'll be toying around with this for a while.
This looks like it took a lot of hard coding -- did you do it yourself?
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joshkalk I like the letter idea a lot profpepper and I will definitely give that a try and see what I think. That would sure save me from more potential color issues as well. I am indeed planning on adding a table with the means for some variables and certainly the velocity and horizontal and vertical break but I am not sure if I am going to put the acceleration or each part of the velocity. But I will think about it. Can you think of a good reason to put the vector components in instead of the velocity and break?
Yes crash I programmed it myself. I am a C++ programmer by trade but this tool required I use PHP and mysql which are two things I have never used before so the code currently looks pretty ugly. I am getting better and the next version should be not only better for the user but better code as well.
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studes Letters can be extremely hard to distinguish when they're jumbled together. How about a compromise that might work best, such as color code (with symbols) all balls that weren't hit (balls and strikes) and use a letter/number symbol for all batted balls (1B, 2B, 3B, HR, Out).
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TheAnswer1313 Is there anyway to split the data..........like say I wanna compared what Tom Glavine threw in his first 10 starts compared to his last 10 to see if theres any difference? -
joshkalk Splitting the data by date and vs. lefties and righties is something that certianly will be implemented but probably not in the next version. Probably by Christmas time though that should be in. -
will Josh-this is really cool. I also enjoy your player cards on your site. One thing I would like to be able to see if how batters do against certain types of pitches, I know I can find out for instance that Bonds has a .385 BA & .827 SLG against fastballs. I think it would be neat to drill down even more though. For one, out of the 250 fastballs he faced, how many were balls, called strikes, swinging strike, fouls, etc. In addition, how does he do against FBs 95+ MPH vs. 90-94 MPH vs. <90MPH. Thanks again. This whole Pitch/FX thing is like discovering the Bill James Abstract in a bookstore back in 1982 all over again. -
joshkalk Will,
Thanks for the kind words. Splits like you describe are something that will be hard to do for the player cards but are exactly what the tool is intended for. The next release which should be sometime next week will not have quite as detailed splits as you suggest but there will be more options and splits like you describe will be coming I just will need more time to implement them.
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crashburnalley Josh, that you code it all yourself makes me appreciate even more the hard work you put into it. I dabbled in Visual Basic and know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and even those rudimentary languages are enough to make my head spin at times.
This has a ton of potential. I wonder if scouts and such can break down the data like this.
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profpepper Can you think of a good reason to put the vector components in instead of the velocity and break?
I would like to be able to figure spin direction and spin rate for each pitcher's pitch, so if you mind to include those two variables I won't be so anxious about knowing all the components!
One more thing. ultxmxpx has some nice calculated variables on his site (http://www.theuniverseas.com/baseball/baseball.html), like the distance of each pitch from the closest strike zone edge (both for balls thrown inside and outside the zone).
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joshkalk Thanks for the link profpepper. It looks like they have some interesting stuff but some stuff I don't trust. Like they say A.J. Burnett throws about 30% curve balls but when you move to the right and look at the PITCHf/x data there are zeroes in many columns and some divide by zero errors.
As for the spin direction and rate now I see what you are after. If I make the same appoximations that Mike Fast (http://fastballs.wordpress.com/) does and put the spin information in a table above the plot would that be ok?
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profpepper If I make the same appoximations that Mike Fast (http://fastballs.wordpress.com/) does and put the spin information in a table above the plot would that be ok?
I would not have done it differently.
Cheers!
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Links (5)
links for 2007-11-15
Published 11/15/2007 by billfer at The Detroit Tiger Weblog
... Now former Tigers minor league manager prospect Matt Walbeck was named manager of the year in the minors.
Web based PITCHf/x tool — The Hardball Times
Now everyone can use enhanced gameday data. Great work by Josh Kalk. ...
How Does He Do It?
Published 11/16/2007 by Alex Nelson at Mets Geek
... Speaking of Josh Kalk and The Hardball Times, he just posted a new web tool that provides the location of every pitch, sorted by type and opposing batter, that a pitcher threw. For instance, you could look at ...
Friday Links (15 Nov 07)
Published 11/16/2007 by Geoff Young at Ducksnorts
... Web based PITCHf/x tool (Hardball Times). In decidedly happier news, Josh Kalk has developed a tool that just rocks. Really, go play with it. ...
Visual Aid
Published 11/17/2007 by StatsGuru at Baseball Musings
Josh Kalk introduced his first version of a web based tool for viewing PITCHf/x data . Right now, it allows you to see in two dimensions where a pitch passed the batter. For example, ...
Turkey Day Link Dump
Published 11/22/2007 by Justin at On Baseball and the Reds
... You've likely already seen this, but Josh Kalk put out a fabulous pitchf/x tool. It only does a few things so far, but it has the potential to be a great resource for folks like me who are too lazy to put together their own pitchf/x database. ...
Awesome stuff, Josh. Thanks for the work and all future work.
Are there plans to have non-graphical, data outputs? For example, I'm currently intrigued by analyzing pitch patterns by certain pitchers. Things like type of pitch thrown in each count, percentage of the time each pitch is thrown for a strike, or percentage of the time that a fastball follows a changeup.