DOCSLIB.ORG

Does Pitch Type - Zone Uncertainty Matter to a Pitcher’S Performance?

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Does Pitch Type - Zone Uncertainty Matter to a Pitcher’S Performance? New Physics: Sae Mulli, Vol. 68, No. 6, June 2018, pp. 624∼629 http://dx.doi.org/10.3938/NPSM.68.624 Does Pitch Type - Zone Uncertainty Matter to a Pitcher’s Performance? Hyunuk Kim Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea Woo-Sung Jung∗ Department of Industrial and Management Engineering & Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea (Received 20 February 2018 : revised 30 March 2018 : accepted 1 May 2018) Baseball is a game of numbers. Large-scale baseball data have been utilized in decision making process by team managers. Recent studies with PITCHf/x, a system that tracks every pitch, provide new insights on the role of the pitch-type sequence in the pitcher’s performance. These studies are based on the assumption that the pitch-type uncertainty puts the hitter at a disadvantage. However, the pitch-zone uncertainty, another factor of pitching uncertainty, is neglected in many cases. Here, we introduce normalized mutual information for pitch type and pitch-zone as an indicator of pitching uncertainty. A pitcher with less of a repertoire with respect to type-zone combination has high normalized mutual information in pitching. We calculate the pitch type - zone uncertainties for major league baseball starting pitchers and compare the results with field independent pitching, a metric of pitcher’s performance. Our analysis shows that normalized mutual information is uncorrelated with performance in nine distinct subgroups extracted from revealed comparative advantage in pitch type. This result underlines the importance of the pitcher’s repertoire and ability to be competitive in professional baseball. PACS numbers: 89.70.Cf, 89.75.-k Keywords: Pitching uncertainty, Normalized mutual information, Major league baseball, Starting pitcher, Revealed comparative advantage I. INTRODUCTION and statistics, gains worldwide popularity by the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game [6]. Sports industry has grown with massive interests on Sabermetric indicators for baseball players are used in players and teams. It is worth hundreds billion dol- practices, and successfully describe player’s style even lars, covering from commercial products to sports events they consist of simple equations [7]. [1]. Along this trend, sports analytics become more im- Cutting-edge technologies about camera, sensing, and portant for efficient decision making and for analyzing visualization recently offer a great variety of resources individual player’s movement to predict future perfor- to collect information on game plays. Since 2008, mance. Publicly available sports databases attract re- PITCHf/x, a system that tracks every pitch, has been searchers to develop new approaches, which are based exploited for investigating game events in detail (up- on machine learning algorithm [2], complex networks [3, graded as “Statcast” with new radar and video technolo- 4], and Bayesian statistics [5]. gies in 2015) [8]. The system infers pitch types based on Baseball is one of popular sports in quantitative anal- ysis. Sabermetrics, a field that examines game records ball movements. High resolution PITCHf/x data cap- tures changes of pitching mechanisms [9,10], and helps ∗E-mail: [email protected] to estimate player’s ability: framing [11], hitting [12,13], This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Does Pitch Type - Zone Uncertainty Matter to a Pitcher’s Performance? – Hyunuk Kim · Woo-Sung Jung 625 Fig. 1. (Color online) Starting pitcher classification in season 2017 which are extracted by revealed comparative advantage in pitch type. Links of which correlation higher than 0.74 are included in the figure. These clusters are consistent over ten seasons from 2008 to 2017. Figure is drawn by Gephi [24]. and the quality of pitches [14]. PITCHf/x data discloses tool for automatic Major League Baseball data collec- the role of pitching uncertainty in pitcher’s performance. tion. PITCHf/x data consists of 79 data fields such Discussions on pitching uncertainty rely on assumption as game date, pitch type, release speed, zone, event that pitcher’s uncertainty makes hitter puzzled at bat. description, and etc. Our unit of analysis is start- Pitcher’s performance including strike out rates are ex- ing pitchers who were the first pitcher in more than plained by pitch type uncertainty [15] and pitch type 10 regular season games and threw more than 1,000 sequence [16–20]. pitches (except unidentified ball, intentional ball, and Besides pitch type, deception and pitch zone are also pitchout) in a season as we need enough samples to important factors of uncertainty [21], but they are ex- estimate pitching uncertainty. The number of start- cluded in many studies. Here we examine pitching un- ing pitchers of our interests ranges from 166 to 184. certainty by considering type and zone simultaneously in Their pitching performance is downloaded from Fan- the concept of mutual information. During ten seasons Graphs (https://www.fangraphs.com/). (2008 - 2017) of Major League Baseball (MLB), we com- pare pitch type-zone uncertainty of starting pitchers with their performance to check whether uncertainty mat- 2. Classifying starting pitchers ters. Correlation between pitch type-zone uncertainty and performance is not significant in nine subgroups of We minimize the effect of different pitching style on pitchers which are clustered by revealed comparative ad- uncertainty analysis by classifying subgroups of pitch vantage in pitch type. Our contribution is to suggest type. Subgroup corresponds with starting pitcher’s ace information-theoretic indicator of pitch type-zone uncer- that is effective throughout the season. Pearson correla- tainty and to confirm the importance of powerful pitch- tion in revealed comparative advantage (RCA) [23] iden- ing repertoire to be competitive in professional baseball tifies subgroups of pitch type clearly (Fig. 1). RCA is league. calculated as Eq. (1) where Aij is the frequency of pitch type j for player i. P II. DATA AND STARTING PITCHER Aij ij Aij RCAij = P P (1) CLASSIFICATION j Aij i Aij 1. Data Nine subgroups, Changeup (CH), Curveball (CU), Cut- ter (FC), Four-seam Fastball (FF), Splitter (FS), Two- We collect PITCHf/x data for ten seasons from 2008 seam Fastball (FT), Knuckle-curve (KC), Sinker (SI), to 2017 with the aid of R package “baseballr” [22], a and Slider (SL), are consistent for ten seasons (Table 1). 626 New Physics: Sae Mulli, Vol. 68, No. 6, June 2018 Table 1. The number of pitchers who throw more than 1,000 pitches as starting pitcher in more than 10 regular games. Number of starting pitchers Group 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Total 164 176 173 169 177 174 177 180 173 184 Changeup (CH) 11 13 11 9 9 15 11 16 11 17 Curveball (CU) 18 20 15 18 19 18 21 21 21 26 Cutter (FC) 26 26 29 27 25 24 21 26 25 24 Four-seam Fastball (FF) 14 12 9 12 13 13 8 11 13 11 Splitter (FS) 15 15 16 15 14 13 15 15 14 14 Two-seam Fastball (FT) 31 30 29 28 29 23 24 22 24 23 Knuckle-curve (KC) 6 9 14 16 18 22 23 22 16 17 Sinker (SI) 28 31 30 23 30 27 25 25 18 23 Slider (SL) 13 19 17 19 19 17 27 20 29 28 Others (KN, EP, SC) 2 1 3 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 in normalized mutual information (NMI), which is cal- culated as Eq. (3) for variable X and Y , to measure pitching uncertainty. X p(x; y) I(X; Y ) = p(x; y) log (2) p(x)p(y) x2X;y2Y I(X; Y ) NMI(X; Y ) = p (3) H(X)H(Y ) Pitching uncertainty indicator summarizes pitcher’s repertoire in a comprehensive way. For instance, Hyun- Jin Ryu, a Korean starting pitcher in MLB, frequently throws changeup to zone 14 (Fig. 2), the bottom right Fig. 2. (Color online) Hyun-Jin Ryu’s pitching profile zone at catcher’s perspective. His four-seam fastball in 2017 with respect to zone and type. X axis is zone index and Y axis is pitch type. Value in a cell is the (FF) is distributed throughout the entire zone while off- probability of throwing type-zone repertoire. His pitch speed pitches are often located at boundary of strike zone type-zone uncertainty, normalized mutual information of pitch type and zone, is about 0.075. (Zone index 11-14). Pitching profile like Fig. 2 is inef- ficient when comparing uncertainty of starting pitchers. NMI gives a simple metric that could be directly used Each subgroup has sufficient number of players for cor- in sabermetric analysis. Hyun-Jin Ryu’s NMI in 2017 is relation analysis. Minor pitch types such as Knuckleball about 0.075, which is slightly higher than average NMI (KN), Eephus (EP), and Screwball (SC) are classified as in the same year, 0.070. Others. Our subsequent question is whether predictable pitcher performs worse than unpredictable others. We compare NMI with field independent pitching (FIP), a III. PITCH TYPE-ZONE UNCERTAINTY value of pitcher’s performance that removes defense fac- tors such as field error. FIP solely depends on pitcher’s Mutual information of two variables measures the ability as it is the linear combination of the number amount of shared information between them (Eq. (2)). of home runs, unintentional walks, hit-by-pitches, and Two variables are independent when mutual information strike outs. FIP is recognized as better measure of is zero. We consider pitch type and zone as variables pitcher’s performance than earned run average (ERA).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • What a Way to Earn! Ulatlon About Whether the New Saddened to Hear of His Death
    PAGE TWENTY-TWO MONDAY, MAY 1, 19TO -Agencies Make Ending The Weather Zoning Decisions. Cloudy, humid, chance of. Manchester dore, Odjir Swamp Rd., Cov^ Preceptor Gamma caiapter. showers becoming more wide­ entiy; Fatlwr James Francls^' Gase Mt. Debris A bout T o w n Beta Slgpna Phi,' will have its spread with occasional thtmder-' Hospital Notes PUcoN 70 Main St.; Mrs. Karen annual Founder’s Day dinner to­ ^ ■ Page 5 • ■ . storms through Wednesday. To­ Removed by Pair night 60 — tomorrow 70. VISmNO HOlTto- Currier, Marlboroueli; T-hn The Five Point Club of Tem­ morrow at 8:30 p.m. at the Manchester— CUy^of Village Charm Intermediate Care Semi- Butterworth 38 Creetwood Rd.; Manchester Country Club. FUNERAL HOME Last Friday's disturbance at ple Chapter, OES, wiU meet private, noon - 3 p.m„ and 4 t*wrent Qenard Jr., Baltic; Case MMpitaln In Highland Wednesday at 7:80 p.m. at the YOL. XCI, NO. 181 p.m. • 8 p.nu; private rooms,* Poirier, Loveland HSl Rd., MysUc Review, NABA, will (SIXTEEN PAGES) Park, although resulting in ar­ homa of Mrs. ManhaU Hodge, MANCHESTER, CONN., TtJESDAY, MAY 2, 1972 (ClaasUled AdverUsiiig on Page 18) PRICE FIFTEEN CENTS 18 a.m. - p.m., and 4 p.m. • Dorothy M. Lucas, 94 meet tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Odd 1 8 rests of five 18-year-olds, also 121 Falknor Dr. Membelrt ars p.m. Walker St. Fellows Hall. gave local youths a chance to reminded to bring projects to 142 Eaat Center Street Pediatrics: Parents allowed Also, 'Mrs. Karen OBrlberf show their good side.
    [Show full text]
  • 『MLB the Show 20』ROAD to the SHOW用会話対訳表
    『MLB The Show™ 20』ROAD TO THE SHOW用会話対訳表 英文テキスト 対訳 カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：Runner on 1st 状況：一塁走者有り テキスト：The team's behind early but has one man on. Good at bats are all one can ask for to try and erase this テキスト：チームは今のところ負けているが、1人走者がい deficit. る。この打撃が形勢逆転のチャンスだ。 選択肢：Advance runner 選択肢：走者を進塁させる 選択肢：Advance runner within the first 3 pitches 選択肢：最初の3球以内で走者を進塁させる 選択肢：Drive in a run 選択肢：安打を放って走者を生還させる カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：Leadoff Hitter 状況：先頭打者 テキスト：Set the tone against their lead off man. テキスト：先頭打者を抑えて試合の流れをつかめ。 選択肢：Record an out in 3 pitches or less 選択肢：3球以内で1人アウトにする 選択肢：Record an out in 2 pitches or less 選択肢：2球以内で1人アウトにする カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：RISP 状況：得点圏に走者 テキスト：Your team is in a hole early, but a momentum テキスト：チームは序盤でつまずいた。だが、流れを変えれ shift here may help change that. ば逆転の可能性がある。 選択肢：Drive in a run 選択肢：安打を放って走者を生還させる 選択肢：Hit a homerun 選択肢：ホームランを打つ カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：Hey, Batter Batter 状況：ヘイ、バッター！ テキスト：At least your swing looks good. Turn this around テキスト：スイングは評価するよ。形勢を逆転して認められ and get aboard. ろ。 選択肢：Only swing at pitches inside of the zone and get on base 選択肢：ストライクだけを振って出塁する 選択肢：カウントでストライクを先行させることなく出塁す 選択肢：Work the count even or full and get on base る カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：Defend The Plate 状況：ホームベースでの粘り テキスト：Defend the plate as best you can. テキスト：全力を尽くして出塁しろ。 選択肢：Only swing at pitches inside the zone 選択肢：ストライクだけを振る 選択肢：Only swing at pitches inside the zone and get on base 選択肢：ストライクだけを振って出塁する カテゴリー：Dynamic Challenge カテゴリー：ダイナミックチャレンジ 状況：Runner on 1st 状況：一塁走者有り テキスト：Settle in and move that runner over.
    [Show full text]
  • Rules Handbook
    Rules Handbook Tallahassee Fast Pitch Softball Association April 2018 Table of Contents Emergency Procedure-------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Philosophy--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 Role of the Volunteer Coach ----------------------------------------------------- 4 Standards of Conduct-------------------------------------------------------------- 5 Purpose of our Softball Program ------------------------------------------------ 7 Fast Pitch Softball Program ------------------------------------------------------ 8 Pitching Regulations -------------------------------------------------------------- 9 The Catcher ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14 Rules and Regulations ------------------------------------------------------------ 15 League ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Number of Players -------------------------------------------------------- 15 Eligibility of Players ------------------------------------------------------ 15 Rosters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Game ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16 The Playing Field ---------------------------------------------------------- 19 Equipment ------------------------------------------------------------------ 19 Coaches --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Umpires ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    [Show full text]
  • Key Concepts for Injury Prevention in Baseball Players
    Baseball Key Concepts for Injury Prevention What kind of injuries occur in baseball? Traumatic injuries occur suddenly. These are typically prevented with proper equipment, rules, regulations and fair play. Overuse injuries occur over time. These can be prevented by knowing early warning signs, general conditioning and following recommendations for rest. What is forced rest? Body tissues can become worn out and painful when they get too much stress with certain activities. Forced rest is taking a strategic break from motions or activities that cause damage and sometimes pain. What else can be done to reduce injury risk in baseball? • Avoid playing on multiple teams in one season • Be smart about side session work, this counts toward pitch counts too. • Play multiple sports • Take 2-3 months off from pitching each year • Cross train during season and in the off-season • Ramp up slowly in pre-season Cross training ideas for young baseball players? • Flexibility exercises • Sprinting drills • Strength training with body resistance • Core stabilization and shoulder blade stabilization Who is more likely to get an overuse injury? • Pitchers that also play in other heavy throwing positions when not pitching, i.e. catcher, shortstop • Pitchers who play year-round or on multiple teams • Players who continue throwing through fatigue and/or pain. 469-515-7100 • scottishritehospital.org Continued on reverse Baseball Training Tips Balance baseball skills training with cross training. Focus on Proper Technique Age Recommended for • HOW is as important as HOW MANY Learning Various Pitches • Too many pitches leads to fatigue and poor form Pitch Age • Limiting total pitch count allows proper technique Fastball 8 during practice and games Change-up 10 See Little League recommendations for pitch counts and rest periods Curveball 14 Flexibility Exercises Knuckleball 15 Dynamic stretching activities or static stretching of major Slider 16 muscle groups including: hamstring, calf, shoulder, trunk Forkball 16 rotation.
    [Show full text]
  • Coaching Manual
    The East Torrens Coaches Manual is a resource designed for use by coaches and players to gain a comprehensive understanding of the philosophies, skills and plays of the East Torrens Baseball Club. This manual should be used by teams from T-Ball right through to Division One and provides the guidance and support in order to develop the best possible baseball players and coaches we can. The aim of this manual is not to create robots but sound baseball players and coaches who have a passion for the game and a desire to be the best baseball person they can. To achieve this, the East Torrens Coaching Manual provides information to coaches focusing on how athletes learn and develop, a breakdown of fundamental skills to help improve your players and detailed instruction on key elements on the mental aspect of baseball, so everyone can raise their baseball IQ. The key to the manual is that every player and coach in the club needs to know the contents and have an understanding on how to apply it. As a coach it is up to you to ensure all the players are able to execute all aspects of the manual and when in doubt regarding content please seek clarification from the senior coaching staff. This manual however, will not enforce how you chose to run a game. This is up to you as a coach and your individual baseball philosophy. This manual hopefully is the bases for that philosophy and the attributes we want in all our players and coaches. This manual will always be evolving just like the game of baseball itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Rule Book Is Designed with the Knowledge That We Provide a Printed Copy of the Rules with Registrations Each Year
    North American Fastpitch Association Rules of Softball The North American Fastpitch Association (NAFA) gratefully acknowledges it’s Rules Committee, State Directors, Managers, Umpires, and others for their contribution to these rules. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. NORTH AMERICAN FASTPITCH ASSOCIATION. North American Fastpitch Association http://nafa.mmfl.net/ & www.playnafa.com EFFECTIVE: January 1, 2010 The North American Fastpitch Association is constantly updating the rules of fastpitch. This on-line rule book is designed with the knowledge that we provide a printed copy of the rules with registrations each year. This provides the general rules, but may not have the latest update of rules for the NAFA Youth 8U to 18U. Several pages are also included for NAFA Adult specific. What is the North American Fastpitch Association? NAFA is the North American Fastpitch Association. We are a very successful Fastpitch Organization that is the fastest growing Fastpitch Association in North America. Due to our success many directors from multiple Fastpitch groups have joined our group giving us an even greater presence throughout North America. We are dedicated to our teams, directors and umpires, this contributes to our success. It is the goal of our Youth Group to put the teams and parents first. We are leading the way with Our Primary Goal that in the coming years we will help control the costs of the sport through offering a National Tournament policy of 4 day tournaments to help reduce the costs of motels.
    [Show full text]
  • Mlb the Show 17 Pc Iso Download Free MLB the Show 21 Torrent Download PC Game
    mlb the show 17 pc iso download free MLB The Show 21 Torrent Download PC Game. How do you want to own the show? In a nail-biting competitive game or maybe a chill game where you can kick back and watch the dingers roll in. No matter what you’re playstyle MLB The Show 21 has you covered. MLB The Show 21 will feature cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play against anyone, regardless of what console they’re using. It also supports “cross progression,” which lets you pick up where you left off on another platform, even if it’s a different console generation. MLB The Show 19 PC Download Free Full Version [2021 Updated] MLB The Show 19 PC Download is a real-time strategy game developed in 2019 by Sony Interactive Entertainment for Windows and PlayStation 4 . Overview. MLB The Show 19 is out of nowhere ends up in a phenomenal position. The COVID-19 coronavirus has disturbed games over the globe, and baseball is the same, like Opening Day of the 2020 Major League Baseball season was as of late deferred for in any event the following two months and even that appears to be hopeful. It’s an unbelievable unforeseen development, yet it likewise implies Sony San Diego’s most recent baseball sim is presently one of the main approaches to encounter the 2020 period of America’s preferred side interest. It’s a great job, at that point, that MLB 20 keeps up the arrangement’s reliably high caliber. Refinements to handling and hitting may just be steady this year, yet they add more profundity to what is as yet one of the most convincing sporting events available, while new options and modes off the field increment the game’s assortment as you diagram a course towards World Series greatness.
    [Show full text]
  • Bunt Defenses
    King Philip Pride Chalk Talk Bunt Defenses How we call the play: Two digit number second one is the defense. Ex. 54 means defense 4; 41 means defense 1 Bunt Defense 1 (standard bunt defense) - 1B & 3B (Corners) charge in. Normally start 5 to 7 steps in from base depending upon how quick you are. 2B covers first, SS covers second base, and whoever doesn't field the ball between 3B, C, & P covers third base. Bunt Defense 2 (lefty slap hitter) 3B & P charge in. We are defending against a lefty slap hitter so 3B 7 steps in & closer to line & 1B off line a bit. 1B goes back to cover first, 2B covers second base (on steal as well), & SS covers third base. SS should be even with base path shaded toward third base. 2B should be shaded toward second base and two steps behind bath base. Bunt Defense 3 – (fake bunt defense) - P & 1B charge in (3B plays normal depth (3 steps in)). With a runner on second base & TWO OUTS, many teams try to steal a run by stealing third on a fake bunt. The batter fakes a bunt to draw the 3B in and hope that the SS doesn’t cover in time and the catcher’s throw goes to the outfield allowing the run to score. We will have our 3B go back to at third, P cover third base line & 1B charge, 2B covers first. SS back up 3B (feet should be on outfield grass) Bunt Defense 4 – (Bunt defense against possible squeeze bunt with runner at third) – We are going to fake throw to see if we can catch the runner at third.
    [Show full text]
  • * Text Features
    The Boston Red Sox Monday, April 15, 2019 * The Boston Globe David Price pitches seven shutout innings, leads Red Sox past Orioles Nora Princiotti When the Red Sox starting pitching struggled over the opening weeks of this season, that problem begat a second issue. Already going through 2019 without a traditional closer, the Boston bullpen found itself taxed less than a month in. That made David Price’s sparkler Sunday badly needed. Price (1-1, 3.79 ERA) went seven innings on an efficient 92 pitches, 64 of them for strikes. He gave up no runs and only three hits with seven strikeouts and no walks. More, he set things up nicely for Ryan Brasier to pitch the eighth and Matt Barnes to pitch the ninth in an economical 4-0 Red Sox win against the Orioles. “Everybody knew where we were pitching-wise today and for [Price] to go seven, give the ball to those last two guys, it was very important for us,” said manager Alex Cora. “Now tomorrow we kind of reset and we’re ready for the game tomorrow.” Baltimore starter John Means went five innings and gave up just one run but the Red Sox did the bulk of their scoring against Orioles relievers in the eighth inning when Xander Bogaerts hit a hanging slider off Josh Lucas to the batter’s eye for a three-run home run. “I was looking for off-speed the whole at-bat,” Bogaerts said. “After he threw me that first slider I thought [darn], I might be struck out right now because his first slider was nasty.
    [Show full text]
  • Dynamical Chaos in a Simple Model of a Knuckleball
    Dynamical Chaos in a Simple Model of a Knuckleball Nicholas J. Nelson, Eric Strauss Department of Physics California State University, Chico 400 W. 1st St. Chico, CA 95929 Abstract The knuckleball is perhaps the most enigmatic pitch in baseball. Relying on the presence of raised seams on the surface of the ball to create asymmetric flow, a knuckleball's trajectory has proven very challenging to predict compared to other baseball pitches, such as fastballs or curveballs. Previous experimental tracking of large numbers of knuckleballs has shown that they can move in essentially any direction relative to what would be expected from a drag-only trajectory. This has led to speculation that knuckleballs exhibit chaotic motion. Here we develop a relatively simple model of a knuckleball that includes quadratic drag and lift from asymmetric flow which is taken from experimental measurements of slowly rotating baseballs. Our models can indeed exhibit dynamical chaos as long In contrast, models that omit torques on the ball in flight do not show chaotic behavior. Uncertainties in the phase space position of the knuckleball are shown to grow by factors as large as 106 over the flight of the ball from the pitcher to home plate. We quantify the impact of our model parameters on the chaos realized in our models, specifically showing that maximum Lyapunov exponent is roughly proportional to the square root of the effective lever arm of the torque, and also roughly proportional to the initial velocity of the pitch. We demonstrate the existence of bifurcations that can produce changes in the location of the ball when it reaches the plate of as much as 1.2 m for specific initial conditions similar to those used by professional knuckleball pitchers.
    [Show full text]
  • Cincinnati Reds' Pitching Staff Will Total Saves
    Cincinnati Reds Press Clippings March 31, 2016 THIS DAY IN REDS HISTORY 2003-Cincinnati hosts the opening of Great American Ball Park. The Reds lose to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-1, before a sellout crowd of 42,343 MLB.COM Get the season started with 30 cool Statcast stats for 30 teams MLB.com analyst Mike Petriello looks back at the some of the best Statcast findings in the inaugural year of the new analysis tool By Mike Petriello / MLB.com | @mike_petriello | March 30th, 2016 + 0 COMMENTS This marks the second season of Statcast™, and that means we have an entire season of data about exit velocity, spin rate, extension, arm strength, lead distance, launch angle and just about anything else you can think of, for every team. Let's get the season started in style by running down an interesting Statcast™ stat for each team -- in many cases, something that never could have been measured prior to 2015. AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST Blue Jays: 1.07 seconds: Ryan Goins' baseball-leading exchange time, which is a way to measure the time that elapses between a fielder receiving the ball and releasing the throw. What that means is that no infielder in the game managed to get rid of the ball as quickly as Goins did, which makes sense given his stellar defensive reputation. Orioles: 82.2 mph: Darren O'Day's average exit velocity against on four-seam fastballs, the second lowest among 407 pitchers who threw at least 100 of them. Despite averaging just 88 mph on his otherwise unimposing fastball, O'Day's swing-and-miss rate of 36.8 percent was better than every pitcher other than Aroldis Chapman, and the hitters that did make contact against O'Day's funky sidearm delivery failed to make good contact, leading to a .097 average against it.
    [Show full text]
  • Title Ix and Baseball: How the Contact Sports Exemption Denies Women Equal Opportunity to America’S Pastime
    \\jciprod01\productn\N\NVJ\14-3\NVJ311.txt unknown Seq: 1 5-JUN-14 7:37 TITLE IX AND BASEBALL: HOW THE CONTACT SPORTS EXEMPTION DENIES WOMEN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO AMERICA’S PASTIME Brittany K. Puzey* INTRODUCTION Imagine yourself as a child. I know, I know, it seems a little silly and perhaps even oxymoronic to try to imagine simpler times while reading a legal article, but I implore you to do so. Each of us had something that we aspired to become, be it a racecar driver or a rock star, a ballerina or a ball-player. Do you remember what your aspiration was? For many kids, early dreams and aspira- tions planted the seed for a real career—a seed that gradually blossomed as those children learned what they liked and what they ultimately desired. That tiny seed of “make believe” helped them to decide how to achieve their particu- lar career choice. Would-be doctors began studying extra hard and taking advanced classes. Hopeful singers belted out tunes at the top of their lungs and enrolled in vocal lessons. Aspiring baseball players joined local teams, where they worked hard at practice—running sprints, catching flies, taking extra cuts, and lifting weights. Slowly, but surely, dreams began to morph into reality. In today’s society, laws of equal opportunity generally promote and encourage children of both genders to pursue whichever career choice they desire.1 Little girls who dream of becoming baseball players, however, do not have this opportunity. Instead, Title IX’s Contact Sports Exemption essentially denies women the chance to pursue baseball as a legitimate career, or even to play the sport at the collegiate level.
    [Show full text]