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Originally Posted by x McLovin x
Secondly, your entire argument is predicated on the notion that you have the time and ability to watch and recall every single plate appearance for a hitter (or hitters). Do you understand this?
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Let's talk real life for a moment. General Managers, and or his people are up in the booth for every game. The manager and hitting coach are in the dugout for every game. All or some of these men are also watching video. There are also scouts in the choice seats behind home plate taking copious notes. So yes, there are people in baseball in real life who watch every inning of every game who make decisions on personnel. Now let's add a hypothetical player to the mix. He's a player who historically has not hit for power, strikes out rarely, and hits for high average. All of these men with trained eyes start observing that what were once line drives are now fly outs, sharp grounders that found holes for hits are now easy two or three hoppers for outs, and even if his strike out rate is the same his foul ball rate is up. The data backs the observations up as it shows a big drop in batting average. All of these observations are clear cut signs of a slowing bat, so the player isn't hitting the ball as hard. There is no other explanation. Knowing the AEV will no doubt show a decline in bat speed, meaning it validated the observation. But knowledge of the slow down in bat speed was known without AEV data. There are other tools in the box.
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How about if I, being a Yankee fan who watches maybe 10 regular season NL West games all year, want to see how a player in the NL West is performing power-wise as I would think he'd be a good trade target? What if his HR totals are moderately higher or lower than usual? Or what if there just isn't much data on him at all whether due to little service time/injuries, etc.? Wouldn't you admit Exit Velocity readings would be a pretty useful tool here, moreso than raw home run totals? In this scenario, lets say I'm a casual fan who has little visual or statistical history to work off but am interested in predicting what a player's power output will look like going forward. You think me randomly tuning in to a game to watch him play will be more informative than, say, a half-season's worth of Exit Velocity readings?
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Well, fans in the real world don't make trades for Major League teams, but I'll say you're a Fantasy player. If there's little data on the player that means there's little statcast data too and small samples are unreliable. Let's say statcast doesn't exist so you don't know the AEV. Raw home run totals tell you nothing and never have, you need to know the number of at bats. That's just two pieces of information that you need. HR rate is a pencil and paper calculation at its hardest, in some cases you can eyeball it. If you never knew AEV ever existed you can still make a determination about the player as a power hitter from that HR rate. Just knowing the AEV and nothing else won't tell you anything, the player can simply be hitting very hard ground balls. You need the second piece of data which is the actual HR number. But if AEV never existed, all you need is AB and HR, two pieces of information that is just as easy to look up. AEV, while a quick reference, is not vital in this case.
I'm going to pick a player from history at random from when we didn't know AEV. His career HR rate is 1 per every 14.85 at bats. Doing some quick math in my head that's about 34 home runs in 500 at bats in a season, 40 HRs in 600 at bats. Now let's say he's playing today, we don't know his AEV because statcast doesn't exist, has the same HR rate and you want to know if he's a good power hitter worth trading for. Would you say that he is? Be honest.
BTW, that player is Manny Ramirez.
Sure AEV can help you get certain information very quickly. My point is if we didn't have it, never knew of statcast as it was never invented, all we had was other statistical data which was the case for over a 100 years, if you know what data to look at and how to read it even if you can't watch the player in person and on video, you can still come to accurate conclusions about how hard he hits the ball and how often. And because there are other tools at our disposal, AEV is not a vital stat.