DePauw University Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University Student Research Student Work 12-7-2020 Can Statcast variables explain the variation in weighted runs created plus? Ryan Kupiec DePauw University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.depauw.edu/studentresearchother Part of the Categorical Data Analysis Commons Recommended Citation Kupiec, Ryan, "Can Statcast variables explain the variation in weighted runs created plus?" (2020). Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University. https://scholarship.depauw.edu/ studentresearchother/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Research by an authorized administrator of Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Can Statcast variables explain the variation in weighted runs created plus? Ryan Kupiec DePauw University 12/7/2020 1 Abstract The release of Statcast data in 2015 was revolutionary for data analysis in the game of baseball. Many analysts have begun using this data regularly, but none have used it exclusively. Often older, less reliable statistics (on-base percentage) are still used in favor of the newer statistics (weighted runs created plus). In this paper, we attempt to explain the variation in weighted runs created plus (wRC+) using Statcast variables such as exit velocity and launch angle. We find that exit velocity along with other Statcast variables, can explain as much as 70% of the variation in wRC+. Launch angle can significantly explain the variation in wRC+ but did not provide enough to the model to warrant keeping.