Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Tracking Technology

The Hardball Times compares PITCHf/x to Statcast in terms of errors tracking pitches:

The big takeaway from this analysis is that the accuracy of vertical location and vertical movement readings have degraded since MLBAM phased out PITCHf/x in favor of Statcast for pitch tracking. On the brighter side, overall precision is nearly unchanged for horizontal location and horizontal movement reporting. And the sunniest outlook comes from velocity, the pitch realm where the Statcast transition has brought the biggest leap forward in accuracy.

With all that in mind, if you’re an analyst who wants to evaluate pitches, how should error be handled? As was necessary in the PITCHf/x era, park biases should be pinpointed and rectified. Certainly, the importance of this endeavor has increased for the two vertical pitch attributes, but that doesn’t mean the others are out of the woods either.

The density distributions affirm offsets can change significantly after road trips, even in the face of unchanged or diminished bias overall. Over some home stands, the radar last season reported velocity drops exceeding 0.5 mph and horizontal movement decreases exceeding two inches. Changes at those levels are enough to raise concern about a pitcher’s health and ability, even though culpability lies solely with faulty data.

Well worth the read.



from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2G9H3ZL

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