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October 04, 2009

What should we call Rivera’s other fastball?

Mariano Rivera is famous for his cut fastball. So famous, in fact, that it's a common misconception that he only throws one pitch. Of course, from PITCHf/x data, as well as some newspaper reports, we know he throws another type of fastball. I've often seen it referred to as a sinker or two-seam fastball, but its spin deflection certainly looks like a classic four-seamer.

In a discussion about Dave Allen's post about Mariano Rivera that took place at the Book blog, I had the occasion to look for images of Rivera's two fastball grips. I thought I'd share them here for yuk-yuks with the other two of you in the world who care about what to properly name Rivera's "other" fastball.

First, here's his cutter grip, with index fingertip and middle fingertip on the seam. As far as I can tell this is close to a typical cutter grip--a four-seam grip with the ball set a little off center in his hand. (There's a better picture here, but I don't have permission to post the image.)

Rivera throws a cut fastball against the White Sox, July 16, 2006. (Icon/SMI)

Now, here's the other fastball, the one I tend to call a four-seamer because of how it moves. It's the one others call a two-seamer, though I'm not sure why. If you look at how many seams he's holding, should we call it a one-seamer?

Mariano Rivera throws his other fastball against the Rangers, August 7, 2008. (Icon/SMI)

Posted by: Mike Fast

September 18, 2009

Is Sportvision ruining baseball?

This morning the Baseball Think Factory newsblog published a piece by Diane Grassi in which she details her beefs with the use of PITCHf/x data to grade umpires and worries about the impact that forthcoming ball tracking technologies from Sportvision will have on the effectiveness of scouting.

To extent that the adoption of new technologies always results in the degradation of skills with older technologies, she probably has a point. The advent of the typewriter and the word processor have combined to deal a heavy blow to the art of penmanship amongst the masses. Better automated ball tracking will probably render some currently essential skills in the baseball industry obsolete or quaint over time. It does not follow, however, that the human element will depart the game of baseball along with it. Did the value of good writing go out the window with the quill?

In addition to my disagreement with her conclusions, I would also like to set the record straight on some errors of fact about the PITCHf/x, HITf/x, and FIELDf/x systems in her article, particular some of the erroneous facts she states in support of her argument that the use of PITCHf/x for umpire grading is fatally flawed. Her information on the Sportvision systems seems to come from an interview with Ryan Zander, director of business development at Sportvision, and perhaps an unnamed source at Major League Baseball.

She alleges that the umpires have been graded against an inconsistent system, newly introduced and not applied evenly across all stadiums.

During the 2008 MLB season, the PITCHf/x camera system was installed in every major league park – with certain exceptions made for the last year of Yankee and Shea stadiums in New York, as both the Yankees and Mets relocated to new stadiums in the 2009 season. The object of the PITCHf/x system was to gather data from the stadiums in order to composite requisite information for the camera system technology to go live in 2009.

Data was collected during the 2008 season by the PITCHf/x system that included tracking nearly all pitches thrown for the entire season for supposedly all 30 teams, totaling approximately 700,000. And that data is now being used as the base measure to evaluate MLB umpire accuracy for 2009. – Unfortunately, the umpiring data for the new Yankee Stadium and the Mets’ Citi Field was not included; unaddressed publicly by MLB.

In fact, the system was installed and brought live in all parks but two, Baltimore and Washington, during the 2007 season. This included installations in old Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium in 2007. Baltimore and Washington were added to begin the 2008 season. PITCHf/x data for 2009 does include new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. I can't see any reason why MLB would choose not to include that data in the umpire grading data; if Ms. Grassi has a source that says they don't, I'd love to know.

She then turns her argument against umpire PITCHf/x grading to allege that Sportvision and MLB don't understand the rule book strike zone definition.

PITCHf/x takes 25 pictures of the ball in flight between the pitching mound and home plate. Sportsvision® software then uses a ‘best fit’ algorithm in order to calculate compensation for different variables of the ball’s flight path, including the position of the ball when it crosses the plate.

But here is where the disparity arises, as a strike is not called at the front of the plate but where it crosses the plate as it makes its way into the catcher’s glove. The camera, however, starts reporting data 5 feet in front of home plate; reminiscent of the ill-timed traffic light camera that incorrectly tickets a driver for going through a red light while traveling through the tail end of a yellow caution light in an intersection.

Here again she is simply incorrect. It is true that MLBAM reports the pitch location at the front of the plate for its entertainment-focused Gameday application. However, the data used for grading umpires contains knowledge of the whole trajectory of the pitch, and Sportvision's umpire grading does take into account the 3-dimensional nature of the zone over home plate. In fact, the umpire grading system offers the umpires a measure of leniency, giving them a two-inch margin around the 3-D zone and considering factors such as the position of the catcher's glove in counting calls in the umpire's favor.

She also has some misunderstanding about the naming, nature, and capabilities of the two newest systems from Sportvision: HITf/x, which is the calculation of initial batted ball speed and direction from existing PITCHf/x camera footage, and the as-yet-unnamed but popularly-called FIELDf/x, which will use new cameras mounted to capture a view of the whole field in order to track ball and player movements throughout the whole game.

For after PITCHf/x, the upcoming HITf/x will be used for scouting in the not too distant future by MLB teams and it also will be a supposed tool that will measure every aspect of every player’s mechanics. Such technology will put sabermetrics to shame and will again rely upon technology which again, the naked eye cannot see on its own. “Every moving event within an actual game will be tracked,” according to Sportsvision’s General Manager of Baseball Products, Ryan Zander. It will track the pitcher, the ball and the fielder with individual stats.

HITf/x is already in existence, and the so-called FIELDf/x is coming, but neither measure a player's mechanics. FIELDf/x measures a player's location on the field over time.

It appears Ms. Grassi's not quite clear on what type of scouting these systems could be used for. For scouting of players already in the major leagues, yes, whether for advance scouting of upcoming opponents or possible trade targets or coaching and improvement of a team's own players, this system does have scouting applications. However, it has no use in the sense she uses scouting in her article, that is, finding future players like Derek Jeter on the high school ball fields around the country. Sportvision is not encroaching on the domain of the amateur talent scout.

She also seems concerned that this system uses technology that can see things the naked eye can't see on its own, as if its secret maneuverings can be used like a hacked Diebold e-voting machine to steal an election, arbitrarily anointing good players or umpires without regard to the vast and valuable store of baseball knowledge handed down over the decades. However, these systems in fact mostly track things that the naked eye can see, like where a pitch was located, or how hard a ball was hit, or how far a fielder had to run to catch a sinking line drive.

It's just that our naked eyes and unassisted brains are not very good at measuring and cataloging these things they see. Automated tracking systems from Sportvision allow us to remember much more accurately, find otherwise hidden patterns, and quickly query large data sets for the answers to multitudes of questions. All of this enriches the experience of baseball for many, and, I would hope, enriches the play of the game on the field as well.

Such technology does not put sabermetrics to shame; it gives sabermetricians new and powerful tools and integrates them with the flow of the game on the field in ways that were heretofore impossible and unimaginable. No longer will the accusations against sabermetricians of being a blogger in the basement or having a nose stuck in a spreadsheet hold much water. The sabermetrician in tune with these new data sources and committed to understanding the game of baseball with them will be more "on the field" than the writer in the press box. He will have the ability to gain an experience of the game as meaningful and helpful to the player as the scout sitting behind home plate. In fact, the enlightened sabermetrician will learn to converse with that scout as an equal, and the enlightened scout will enlist these new sources of knowledge to leverage his knowledge and experience of the game in new ways.

Greater collaboration between new and old, "beer and tacos" to quote Dayn Perry, will become the name of the game for successful franchises.
Posted by: Mike Fast

August 24, 2009

2009 Fan’s Scouting Report - call for ballots

As he does every year, Tom Tango is compiling the Fans' Scouting Report. He is seeking help from baseball fans to rate the defensive abilities of the players they have watched this season.

Baseball's fans are very perceptive. Take a large group of them, and they can pick out the final standings with the best of them. They can forecast the performance of players as well as those guys with rather sophisticated forecasting engines. Bill James, in one of his later Abstracts, had the fans vote in for the ranking of the best to worst players by position. And they did a darn good job.

There is an enormous amount of untapped knowledge here. There are 70 million fans at MLB parks every year, and a whole lot more watching the games on television. When I was a teenager, I had no problem picking out Tim Wallach as a great fielding 3B, a few years before MLB coaches did so. And, judging by the quantity of non-stop standing ovations Wallach received, I wasn't the only one in Montreal whose eyes did not deceive him. Rondel White, Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, Andre Dawson, Hubie Brooks, Ellis Valentine. We don't need stats to tell us which of these does not belong.

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you've seen play in at least 10 games in 2009, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

If you've watched a lot of baseball in 2009, or at least enough to meet the guidelines, please participate in compiling this valuable resource.
Posted by: Mike Fast

July 10, 2009

From PITCHf/x to HITf/x…now GAMEf/x?

Sportvision is taking leaps and bounds with expanding their ability to track the game of baseball. The Second Annual PITCHf/x Summit convenes in San Francisco this upcoming weekend, and if I could be anywhere other than with my newly expanded family, it would be at the summit. One of the main topics of the summit is sure to be the recently released HITf/x data, but potentially more exciting is the news that Sportvision and MLBAM are undertaking a project to install cameras at every stadium to track not just every pitch and the flight of the ball leaving the bat but the entirety of the game!

If this project works out as early data promises it will, defensive positioning, routes of fielders, baserunning plays, and perhaps even umpire positioning will all be tracked and digitized. The potential to revolutionize analysis of the game and even the game itself looms large!
Posted by: Mike Fast

October 27, 2008

Scouting report on Cole Hamels

Prior to Game One of the World Series, I brought you my scouting report on Rays' starter Scott Kazmir. I intended to bring you my scouting report on the Phillies starter at the same time, but I ran into a little wrinkle because I realized at the last moment that Cole Hamels had added a new pitch in September, so I had to redo my analysis with that in mind.
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Posted by: Mike Fast


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