RIP Defensive metrics: MLB announces new fielding tracking system

[Wonderful Monds]

http://regressing.deadspin.com/mlb-a...200504/@kylenw

Sounds pretty interesting.

[lollipopcurve]

Yep.

The switch has been flipped. Time to finally see about defense.

[_Sir_Charles_]

That is PHENOMENAL!!! Tracking the exact route? The defenders' jump on the ball? Mercy! All of the problems I had with the SABR versions of defensive metrics...this one seems to completely cover. Can't wait to start seeing actual figures. Love it!

[drowg14]

Did I miss an announcement about MLB sharing their batted ball data? The video had hit speed, launch angle, distance and hang time. And this fielding data? This is the best article I've read all offseason

Completely overhauling fielding metrics as well as giving us better batted ball data than LD% GB% etc.. is so freaking awesome.

[jojo]

BAHBOOM!

[PepperJack]

You might want to consider a title change for the thread Monds, because this system will eventually change everything.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/mlb/...&vkey=news_mlb

BOSTON -- Baseball is a game of inches, and those inches will be measured in a brand new way.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media on Saturday introduced a revolutionary plan for in-ballpark infrastructure designed to provide the first complete and reliable measurement of every play on the field and answer previously unanswerable analytics questions.

"This is going to be pretty exciting," Bowman said. "We think it's going to change the way we argue about the game, but we don't think it's going to settle any debates. We hope it starts more."

The goal is to revolutionize the way people evaluate baseball, by presenting for the first time the tools that connect all actions that happen on a field to determine how they work together. This new datastream will enable the industry to understand the whole play on the field -- batting, pitching, fielding and baserunning -- and enable new metrics for evaluation by clubs, scouts, players and fans.

"When you look at how scouting has been done in the past, there's a lot of subjectivity to the evaluation," he said. "Some guys I have found have varied, from scout to scout, in terms of their opinion of each player. There is a lot of quality defensive statistics out there, but they're not completely accurate. A lot of them are dependent on somebody charting, whether it's UZR or DIPS or Defensive Runs Saved, and they can only go so far. Some players . . . range to their left better, some range better to their right, some come in on ground balls better than others, some have better first-step quickness.

"The exciting thing about this new technology is, you can start to take the subjectivity that is given to you by the scout and blend it with raw data now, and come up with a truer picture of evaluating a player. So when you take that data and compare it to others in the game, you can really find out if that position player is the best at his position. You can measure potential free agents, you can measure current free agents."

"Just on the field, with the coaching staff and the manager -- when you start to look at positioning, and you start to see the exit velocity of the ball coming off the bat, and is he late or is he ahead of a lot of pitches, and then you move your infielders and outfielders accordingly," Duquette said. "Along with the spray charts that are already used. A ball goes into the gap and an outfielder picks the ball up, sometimes with his bare hand, and he throws it into the infielder, and the infielder gets rid of the ball as quickly as he can, and makes a strong, accurate throw to home plate to nail a runner. You can evaluate and measure each of those points in the relay.

"There's a speed component to the game from an offensive side, too. You can start to see how quickly they get down the baseline as they make contact, and as they hit a ground ball, or as they hit a double into the gap. If they didn't score, we always say that the game is a matter of inches, well if he gets thrown out or he is safe at home, you can actually go back and measure it from an evaluation tool, and say, did he get a big enough lead, was he running hard enough, did he take the right angle, you now have the ability to measure that, which we've never been able to do."

[RedsManRick]

Time to double-down on my brushing up on big data analytics skills...

Aside from the obvious learning, I'm goign to be very interested to see how "off" our current stuff is.

[kaldaniels]

So many cool questions to be asked and be answered. (In due time)

Regarding fielders taking direct paths and acceleration to the ball...on a lazy pop up, how badly will a player be dinged for loafing to the ball not on the direct path. Will that even cause a player's rating to be dinged?

[Wonderful Monds]

So many cool questions to be asked and be answered. (In due time)

Regarding fielders taking direct paths and acceleration to the ball...on a lazy pop up, how badly will a player be dinged for loafing to the ball not on the direct path. Will that even cause a player's rating to be dinged?

I bet they could account for that based on ball trajectory and hang time.

[dougdirt]

So many cool questions to be asked and be answered. (In due time)

Regarding fielders taking direct paths and acceleration to the ball...on a lazy pop up, how badly will a player be dinged for loafing to the ball not on the direct path. Will that even cause a player's rating to be dinged?

Personally, I don't think it should. It shouldn't matter how fast you get there, as long as you get there and make the play. Obviously if you don't make the play, then that matters. But if you are making the plays, does it matter if someone runs a better route to it (on an extremely similar play)? Maybe it matters on plays 6 feet beyond that one, and that is where the penalty should come in because the guy taking the best routes gets that one and the guy without the route doesn't. But on ones that both get to, a better route shouldn't matter. A 450 foot home run and 440 foot home run both count the same.

[Brutus]

There are a couple hundred advanced scouts that need to have another line of work ready to go within 2-3 years

[kaldaniels]

Personally, I don't think it should. It shouldn't matter how fast you get there, as long as you get there and make the play. Obviously if you don't make the play, then that matters. But if you are making the plays, does it matter if someone runs a better route to it (on an extremely similar play)? Maybe it matters on plays 6 feet beyond that one, and that is where the penalty should come in because the guy taking the best routes gets that one and the guy without the route doesn't. But on ones that both get to, a better route shouldn't matter. A 450 foot home run and 440 foot home run both count the same.

Absolutely. But I can forsee players being compared by their "route efficiency", when in fact it doesn't matter on many plays.

Just an off the top of my head question, many more to come.

[KronoRed]

So this is why Derek Jeter is retiring.

[bigredmechanism]

Personally, I don't think it should. It shouldn't matter how fast you get there, as long as you get there and make the play. Obviously if you don't make the play, then that matters. But if you are making the plays, does it matter if someone runs a better route to it (on an extremely similar play)? Maybe it matters on plays 6 feet beyond that one, and that is where the penalty should come in because the guy taking the best routes gets that one and the guy without the route doesn't. But on ones that both get to, a better route shouldn't matter. A 450 foot home run and 440 foot home run both count the same.

What if someone took a bad enough route that a runner could advance or score?

[Wonderful Monds]

So here is an interesting comment from under the Deadspin article

Didn't think that comment would get any traction. Obviously, that is an remarkable amount of data. SVP of mlbam Joe Inzerillo is the one that said it. The answer came out of one of the post panel questions asked by the crowd. Maybe he misspoke, maybe that was with the video, maybe, maybe. Even with video though, that is an absurd amount of data.

Regarding the optimal path, Joe noted that for simple things like batted ball to caught ball, it is pretty simple. They are able to calculate that. For things like base running, it is a lot harder. They showed two examples. 1. Jason Heyward making a diving catch. 2. A runner getting nailed at home plate.

Heyward had a jump of .02 seconds on the hit ball. His first step was only 6 degrees off optimal direction, and he ended up traveling something like 85 feet, when optimal was 83. His path was 97% perfect - - off a .02 jump. That.is.insane.

The base running was far more interesting. Infante had a 12 foot lead and actually started running .06 seconds before the ball was hit. The third baseman dove for the grounder and missed it by .02 seconds (or something like that). Infante actually only reached his top speed feet from home plate. The reasoning guess was that he didn't go into third as fast as he could for worry of being pushed so far outside of the line.

Joe noted that they use center mass to determine location. The cameras aren't good enough to base distance on limbs and digits.

That is some crazy stuff.