Friday, August 20, 2010
Visual Baseball: Introducing Bat Slicer
Posted by Kevin DameHappy Friday. Here's something new that I've been working on. It's called Bat Slicer and the idea is to visually represent a hitters' bat. I'm hoping the visuals are fairly self explanatory, but just in case: We start with strikeouts (represented by a hole in the bat, and then show walks, singles, doubles & triples, and home runs in successive rings. These stats are based on production per plate appearance, with a minimum of 200 PA's, and then converted into percentile rankings, with 100% being the best, 0% the worst. The legend on the bottom right of the visual gives you a sense of scale. Click here to see a slide show of lots more players.
Let's start with a player who's bat we'd expect to look pretty fearsome.
In contrast, here's a guy who carries a pretty light stick.
Here's a guy who is doing some serious damage, albeit with a lot of strikeouts.
And here's an "all or nothing guy." Lots of home runs and strikeouts. He also enjoys a nice walk down to first base.
"The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing." - Edward Tufte.
Feel free to send comments, questions, and suggestions to Kevin via email.
Pretty cool stuff, here.