Gameday Radar Gun

[Superdude]

I'm watching Homer reach mid to high 90's occasionally last night on FSN, and then checked the gameday thing and he was topping out mostly at 92-93. I didn't get to watch the game tonight, but Belisle has been getting it up 93-94 pretty frequently on the FSN gun, but hardly reached 90 on the Gameday speed. Is the gameday MPH a different type of reading, or has George Grande been juicing the gun? Just a little conspiracy to throw out there.

[dougdirt]

The gameday/tv guns are always off. When Bailey was pitching in Oakland, one inning Bailey was throwing 2-3 MPH faster on TV. The next inning, he was throwing 2-3 MPH slower on the TV.

[TOBTTReds]

I wanted to jump in on this, bc I use the gameday radar every day. It has become MUCH better as the year has gone on. One major problem is if it misses a pitch in an AB, the readings will be off one pitch for the whole AB, but if watching the game, you can figure it out. It is a completely different reading from TV. TV uses one gun behind home plate, and gameday uses two different guns, and like 5 cameras to track the movement.

The gameday guns, break, and pfx are getting increasingly more accurate. Actually, they are the most accurate reading ever, because of the technology they have. Many times, the gameday gun is a bit faster than the tv gun (except in Detroit, go figure), but I still think it is more accurate, and definitely more consistant. I love the gameday readings. They can help decipher between cutters and FB's, and bad sliders and changeups from lefties.

I imagine next year it will be in every stadium and be very good.

[Superdude]

It is pretty cool. They didn't have all the pitch information last year did they?

[dougdirt]

Originally Posted by Superdude

It is pretty cool. They didn't have all the pitch information last year did they?

No. It was introduced last year during the playoffs and they are implementing it in all of the stadiums this year I believe. The Reds were one of the last places to get it.

[remdog]

At what point do they measure the speed? In tennis you will see serve speeds recorded and that reading is at about 1 foot after the ball leaves the racket. However, when you measure the speed of the ball as it reaches the receiver (the ATP tourney at Cincinnati had a major study on this) it has slowed (on average) about 40%. So, while a 140 mph serve is certainly impressive, the ball is usually traveling about 85 mph when a swing is taken. The major difference in tennis, of course, is the speed that is worn off of the ball as it bounces in the service box.

Rem

[dougdirt]

The speed measured is as it leaves the pitchers hand. The drop off is not nearly the same in baseball. Rough guess here, but a 94 MPH FB is reaching the plate still going about 88 MPH.

[jojo]

There is an important thing to note with the gameday speed data... the recorded speed can vary from stadium to stadium depending upon their setup. At Safeco (one of the flagship stadiums for the enhanced gameday), the speeds even varied during the season as they fiddled with things. There was a three week period in July where everyone's speed at Safeco dropped roughly 3 mph because they system was being tweaked. Right now, enhanced gameday is a bit of a work in progress but even so, it is much better now than in April. It's here to stay and it's going to allow some really cool and innovative stuff to be done from a sabermetric standpoint.

[TOBTTReds]

Here's a little info:

The system begins tracking the ball at 55 feet from the plate, at roughly the release point. The average pitcher is 6 feet tall and strides 80% of his height. The pitch is measured at intervals as the ball approaches the plate. From that data, a release velocity and the velocity just in front of the plate is recorded. The highest speed recorded of any pitch as it left the pitcher's hand was the first pitch to Jose Guillen thrown by the Angels' Francisco Rodriguez in the bottom of the ninth inning at Seattle on May 17th: 104.3 miles per hour. That pitch, however, crossed the plate at just 82.0 mph. The fastest pitch to reach the plate was one thrown by Kyle Farnsworth of the Yankees to the Rangers' Victor Diaz on May 3rd, which was clocked at 92.4 mph.

What is more interesting is to note that the average pitch starts out at 87.6 mph and ends at 78.8 mph, while the average decrease in velocity is 8.8 mph. When averaging the percentage decrease, the average pitch ends up losing 10 percent of its velocity on the way to the plate. The average pitch is released 6.1 feet from the ground, and drops an average of 3.7 feet, so on average, it's losing 60% of its height on the way to the plate.

For you BP subscribers. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=6269