Visual baseball: visualizing game score

Here’s a way to visualize a pitcher’s season using Bill James’ Game Score stat. I found that shapes were more revealing than a simple line graph and I was able to spot patterns more easily. Here are a few pitchers from 2010:

Roy Halladay: I was struck by the weirdly repeatable pattern he had in the first half of the season. Maybe he’s some sort of a cyborg or robot and trying to cover it up with intentional inconsistency.
image

Kevin Millwood: He faded in mid-summer, then career survival instincts seemed to kick in (or an urgent call from his agent).
image

Mat Latos: He had an amazing stretch of pitching, book-ended by two hideous starts. The Padres sure could have used “May, June, July, or August Latos” during their rough home stretch.
image


Kevin Dame is a writer and visual designer who brings sports information to life in new and meaningful ways. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @kevintdame.
3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bob B.
13 years ago

This is pretty cool! I really like how these end up looking and the story they tell. Thanks!

David
13 years ago

I definitely agree that these are better to look at than traditional graphs.  How were they generated?  Is there an easy way to do them?

S.F. Giangst
13 years ago

A simple line chart with a filled area under the line would have sufficed, i.e. put zero on the bottom. Improve it perhaps by adding a horizontal line through the game score value for the season which tends to set likelihood of winning p = 0.5.