Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Announcing the PITCHf/x article catalog
Posted by Mike FastSince Sportvision and MLBAM introduced the PITCHf/x pitch tracking system in the 2006 World Series, people have been analyzing the data and writing about it, starting with pioneers like Dan Fox and Joe P. Sheehan. When I began looking at the PITCHf/x data last summer, I quickly realized that I needed to know what had already been written on the subject. I developed a catalog of articles for my own use. I realized the catalog might be of value to other researchers and people who just wanted to read interesting baseball writing, so I started publishing and updating the catalog at my blog.
When I first published the catalog in August 2007, it contained links to 47 articles by 14 different authors. That total grew quickly throughout the fall, and my index expanded to over 200 articles as the calendar turned to 2008. A list-based catalog soon became inefficient and impossible to maintain. Fortunately, with the expert help of Hardball Times web developer Bryan Donovan, we have ported the catalog to a database and updated the article index through June 1, 2008. The new PITCHf/x article archive is now available at the Hardball Times site and includes over 700 articles by over 40 different authors.
The archive is sortable by date, author, Website, category, and related player. I'd love to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on what you find useful or suggestions for improvements. If you're an author of PITCHf/x-related work, please check the catalog to see if I've included all your articles. Each entry in the catalog includes a short text description of the subject of the article. I'd welcome better descriptions from either readers or authors; many of the descriptions are just short notes I wrote for myself several months ago and probably don't do justice to the topic of the article.
As I mentioned, I've updated the catalog through June 1. An update of articles written in June is in progress, but if you've written a PITCHf/x-related article (or are aware of one) that was published prior to June 2008, and it's not included in the catalog, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). I do my best to find everyone's work eventually, but the World Wide Web is a big place, so I'm sure I've missed some good writing out there.
Mike Fast is a Royals fan who enjoys investigating baseball questions using data of many sorts. He is a member of Complete Game Consulting. He welcomes comments via e-mail.