The great Ty Cobb once said, “If a man pretends to be a major leaguer, he should stay in the lineup no matter who is pitching.” This is coming from someone who was 1 of 2 guys to ever have over 4,000 MLB hits. For the rest of the 99.99% who don’t have the highest... Continue Reading →
While many were aware of Shohei Ohtani's two-way potential when he was posted by the Nippon-Ham Fighters back in the winter of 2017, few could have imagined it was possible for him to accomplish what he did during the 2021 season. It is certainly not unheard of for someone to enter pro-ball with two-way potential.... Continue Reading →
Throughout the history of baseball, there have only been 2 players to lead their league in OPS and defensive WAR in the same season. One of them is Willie Mays (in 1954) which should come as no shock to anyone. The other...was Snuffy Stirnweiss (in 1945). When we think of the year 1945, the ending... Continue Reading →
Have you ever noticed that good pitchers seem to reach back for a little extra velo when they need it? This blog post will look at the top 20 starting pitchers by average fastball velocity. I chose starting pitchers because they have to pace themselves throughout a game more than relievers so I expected to... Continue Reading →
One of the best tools available to programs around the country is HitTrax. With HitTrax, batters hit off a pitching machine or live pitcher and get feedback from the system that includes batted ball outcome (hit, ground out, fly out, etc.) and metrics like exit speed, launch angle, and even point of contact from home... Continue Reading →
For the link to my code, my GitHub page is here. Introduction The launch angle revolution has changed the way baseball teams develop hitters. There have been many hitters that have raised their launch angles and had success such as J.D. Martinez, Max Muncy, and, just recently, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. However, throughout the launch angle... Continue Reading →
As the Tigers focused on pitching during the early stages of the rebuild, it has started to make its presence felt at the Major League Level. The organization has now started shifting its focus to positional talent. While this has resulted in a lack of starting pitching talent in the farm system, there are now... Continue Reading →
Hitters are often told by their coaches to “hunt the fastball,” to look to drive a fastball rather than seek out a breaking ball that exchanges velocity for movement. However, amid the Moneyball Era, a group of baseball misfits were already looking to the future and what would become the Statcast Era. In 2003, professors... Continue Reading →
In his 2019 Big Board update, Fangraphs' prospect expert Eric Longenhagen only awarded one player a future value of 65+ in both his future hit and future game power tools. In his description of this hitter, he said "This is the best hitter in the minors and the stick will play anywhere." With strong baseball... Continue Reading →
Baseball analytics have long been focused on helping teams gain a competitive advantage by finding players their competitors have overlooked for one reason or another. While this started by using very basic statistics such as on-base percentage, recent decades have seen the methods for doing this become increasingly advanced. Major League teams are now pouring... Continue Reading →
In the field of statistics, we use the the law of large numbers to explain that as the sample size of something increases, the average of that sample will fall closer to the mean of the population as a whole. The proof of this law has existed since the publishing of the book Ars Conjectandi... Continue Reading →
Last night a big update was made to the Batted Ball tab on player profiles for BCTeam! After some time of just showing average exit velocity, we have added six additional dropdown options to the Heat Map visual for both pitchers and hitters. Each of these metrics will be broken down in this blog. Average... Continue Reading →
Continuing down the unbeaten path of draft models; the last version of this was less than a week ago when I discussed a tricky metric in vertical approach angle. This time I'll be going over a rather broad pool of data. Batted ball profiles can be as simple as exit velocity and launch angle, or... Continue Reading →
Even though I spend ~95% of my life thinking about baseball related questions, one was recently posed to me that I had never previously given much, or any, thought to. Since hitters will likely lose exit velocity when hitting the ball to the opposite field, how big of an advantage would being able to maintain... Continue Reading →
When DJ LeMahieu signed his two year, 24-million-dollar deal with the Yankees, there were mixed reactions. Some thought that since he was a man without a position (the Yankees already had Didi Gregorius, Gleyber Torres, Troy Tulowitzki, Miguel Andujar, Luke Voit, and Greg Bird), he wasn’t worth the money. Others preferred the Yankees would have... Continue Reading →
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