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Old 03-23-2019, 03:44 PM   #121
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Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave View Post
I'm not against having more information, and I agree that EV can augment available information. My point is that in of itself EV won't tell you anything you don't already know and is not a vital stat. If it went away tomorrow because Amazon stopped paying for the advertisement baseball life would go on and we'd still know who hits the ball hard often and who doesn't.
This statement is just simply wrong. Exit velocity itself in fact CAN tell you things you don't already know. Things exit velocity can tell you that you don't already know (which have basically all already been stated in this thread):

1) Gee looking at this box score (I'm looking at this box score since I went out to dinner with my wife and couldn't catch the game), player X looks like he had a horrible game, going 0-5...but wait, the average exit velocity on those outs was 95 mph. Seems like it wasn't really a horrible game after all, just a bit of misfortune.

2) I've never seen or heard of player X before, I wonder what his game is like. Wow he just recorded an exit velocity of over 115 on that batted ball! I can tell from this one event that Player X has the potential to hit 40+ homers annually!

3) Well player X had a down year homer-wise compared to his past seasons and I, like any other normal human being in this world, did not watch every single at bat of his this season. Is this the first signs of aging/decline? Was it simply bad luck? Wait a second, his average exit velocity actually increased a tick compared to his previous seasons?! This must mean his 'down' season was more of a mirage than a sign of bad things to come; his hard hits just wound up in gloves more frequently than usual. I'm fairly certain he'll revert to his usual homer levels next season (breathes sigh of relief).

Based purely on the stated scenarios above, exit velocity told you important things about both past and future events that you wouldn't have otherwise known.

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Old 03-23-2019, 04:42 PM   #122
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This statement is just simply wrong. Exit velocity itself in fact CAN tell you things you don't already know. Things exit velocity can tell you that you don't already know (which have basically all already been stated in this thread):

1) Gee looking at this box score (I'm looking at this box score since I went out to dinner with my wife and couldn't catch the game), player X looks like he had a horrible game, going 0-5...but wait, the average exit velocity on those outs was 95 mph. Seems like it wasn't really a horrible game after all, just a bit of misfortune.

2) I've never seen or heard of player X before, I wonder what his game is like. Wow he just recorded an exit velocity of over 115 on that batted ball! I can tell from this one event that Player X has the potential to hit 40+ homers annually!

3) Well player X had a down year homer-wise compared to his past seasons and I, like any other normal human being in this world, did not watch every single at bat of his this season. Is this the first signs of aging/decline? Was it simply bad luck? Wait a second, his average exit velocity actually increased a tick compared to his previous seasons?! This must mean his 'down' season was more of a mirage than a sign of bad things to come; his hard hits just wound up in gloves more frequently than usual. I'm fairly certain he'll revert to his usual homer levels next season (breathes sigh of relief).

Based purely on the stated scenarios above, exit velocity told you important things about both past and future events that you wouldn't have otherwise known.
Exactly.

Even more simply, exit velocity can tell you literally...how hard someone hit a ball. Which is not information we previously had.

It's the literal definition of telling you something you didn't already know.
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Old 03-23-2019, 04:45 PM   #123
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Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave View Post
I'm not against having more information, and I agree that EV can augment available information. My point is that in of itself EV won't tell you anything you don't already know and is not a vital stat. If it went away tomorrow because Amazon stopped paying for the advertisement baseball life would go on and we'd still know who hits the ball hard often and who doesn't.
It's almost as thought the concept of exit velocity has personally wronged you in some way.

I really don't understand what you're trying to argue here.

Exit velocity is information that people find useful and can be applied in useful ways. There's really not a debate here. Comparing it to actual events on the field captured by conventional stats is basically a strawman argument.

Are you against radar guns, too? After all, we can use our eyes to see who throws hard.

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Old 03-23-2019, 06:17 PM   #124
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nevermind
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Old 03-23-2019, 06:22 PM   #125
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Considering how the rest of his season went he had a rough month. It can happen to anyone. You don't evaluate a player based on a four week stretch anyway.
Yet teams do it every spring. Weird
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Old 03-23-2019, 07:05 PM   #126
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Yet teams do it every spring. Weird

Along with what they know about the guy from his minor league seasons if he's a rookie or in the case of a veteran his previous MLB seasons.

If y'all want to want to know the actual mph of the ball was when Stanton hits one halfway to New Jersey and think that will uncover something you didn't know about him then great, go for it. Enjoy the number. If knowing Mike Schmidt's AEV would have caused a re-evaluation of him as a power hitter, then we'll just have to lament that we didn't know just what the speed of the ball was off the bat after it landed in the upper deck of Veteran's Stadium. Woe is us, if only we knew, perhaps our opinion of Schmidt would have been different.

I wonder if Joey Gallo has a lot of power assuming he actually makes contact. I don't pay much attention to AEV so I guess I don't know. The balls he hits into the far reaches of various stadiums I guess doesn't tell me anything. I'm so old school, I'm totally in the dark. I bet I'm totally thinking the wrong things about him.

I think Mark McGuire was a really good power hitter because he had the best HR/AB ratio in history. I don't Ozzie Smith was much of a power hitter because he hardly ever hit any home runs. But that's old school. Y'all have convinced me. Without knowing the actual statcast powered by Amazon numbers it's just old school guesswork and using my eyes on my part.
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Old 03-23-2019, 07:37 PM   #127
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Anybody here know where Mike Trout ranked in terms of average exit velocity in 2018 among all players with at least 150 balls put in play? I do, and the answer will back up the fact that EV is a supplemental piece of data, not a "wonder stat" that some make it out to be.
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Old 03-23-2019, 07:39 PM   #128
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Are you against radar guns, too?

It depends what you're using them for. If you're scouting a kid and you want to know if he throws hard enough to make it in pro ball, the gun is a useful tool. If you're evaluating a veteran MLB pitcher, knowing the gun numbers doesn't matter much as long as the pitcher is still effective. The gun tells us Justin Verlander doesn't throw as hard as he used to. The Astros just signed him to a big money two year extension anyway.

Now before you say knowing the EV will help in evaluating a high school kid, first off no high school field is set up for statcast in the first place, Second, if you're watching a teenage kid and he hits balls 400 feet or more on a regular basis and you're in the market for a young power prospect, please state what knowing the actual EV is going to do for you in your evaluation.
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Old 03-23-2019, 10:44 PM   #129
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It depends what you're using them for. If you're scouting a kid and you want to know if he throws hard enough to make it in pro ball, the gun is a useful tool. If you're evaluating a veteran MLB pitcher, knowing the gun numbers doesn't matter much as long as the pitcher is still effective. The gun tells us Justin Verlander doesn't throw as hard as he used to. The Astros just signed him to a big money two year extension anyway.

Now before you say knowing the EV will help in evaluating a high school kid, first off no high school field is set up for statcast in the first place, Second, if you're watching a teenage kid and he hits balls 400 feet or more on a regular basis and you're in the market for a young power prospect, please state what knowing the actual EV is going to do for you in your evaluation.
The gun actually tells us that Verlander is a freak who has had a resurgence in fastball velocity in defiance of everything we thought we knew about aging curves.

Your basic facts are wrong, and you seem determined to be contrarian for some strange reason. But don't let me stop you from destroying your strawmen.
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Old 03-23-2019, 10:47 PM   #130
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Anybody here know where Mike Trout ranked in terms of average exit velocity in 2018 among all players with at least 150 balls put in play? I do, and the answer will back up the fact that EV is a supplemental piece of data, not a "wonder stat" that some make it out to be.
Can you name a single person making it out to be a "wonder stat?"
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Old 03-23-2019, 11:10 PM   #131
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It's also a logical fallacy to say it's useful because everyone looks at it now. It's an ad populum fallacy. The argument is MLB teams look at it now, so it must be useful. There's a reason why that fallacy is also called the bandwagon fallacy.

My original question was never answered: What does it tell us that we didn't already know?

This is from Hank Aaron's book "I Had A Hammer, p.119", writing about Spring Training 1954 before he made the Braves major league roster.

"I cracked one over a row of trailers that bordered the outfield fence-hit it so hard that Ted Williams came running out of the clubhouse wanting to know who it was that could make a bat sound that way when it struck a baseball."

So had we have known the exit velocity of that hit, the evaluation of Aaron in 1954 would have changed...how? For that matter had statcast been around during the time Aaron played it wouldn't have made a dime's worth of difference. No thinking person would have thought any less of him if someone else had a higher average exit velocity.

My issue with advanced metrics and statcast data is the blind acceptance by some adherents without any critical thinking about what it's saying. It's on FanGraphs so hey, it must be valid. I'm sure the math is valid, but that still doesn't mean the data is giving us any new insight. How many different ways are there to say Jacob deGrom was really good last year and Tyler Chatwood wasn't? (even with a reliance on analytics the Cubs still made a huge mistake on Chatwood) No matter how you crunch the numbers, the results will be the same.

Data mining is useful, but that's not advanced analytics. That's simply breaking data down into distributions. Before the Cubs played the Mets in the 2015 NLCS it was pointed out the Cubs had the worst batting average against fastballs 95+. Given that the Mets had hard throwers, that told me the series wouldn't end well for the Cubs and it didn't.

I'm a firm believer in data mining. I have a relative who is brilliant data miner, it's how she makes her living. She also played volleyball in college. Her average spike velocity wasn't that important to know if no one ever blocked them.
if someone argued that as a reason, yes, it is totally illogical, but irrelvant to what i said.

data mining is analytics, lol. they just use different buzz words now, if not familiar with that phrase. it's no different than a quality control system keeping track of data to reduce defects or improve efficiency. you need good data to make good decisions. it's not just an average and simple math. data mining is advanced analytics that go well beyond a simpl average or distribution curve.

all you have is misrepresenting real arguments and pointing out someone that doesn't really understand things, yet is taking a side -- which is a logical fallacy too. just because one person arguing for either side is abjectly wrong or illogical, means nothign else other than exactly that -- that person is wrong in how they are rationalizing a conclusion. it doesn't matter if the conlcusion is wrong or right at that point.

if there was just 1 valid argument against collecting this data, i'd admit i was wrong. there isn't. there is only anecdotal, ad hominem, tu quoque (touched on above) , etc etc logical fallacies... that's all your side has in this debate.

if anything it needs to be broken down further into it's components. swing speed and efficiency of transfwerring force to the ball -- well struck or not % etc... it's 2 components that need to be understood better to make better decisions with a lower percentage of error.

most of this you can sort of judge with your eye over time, yes. but, it is nowhere near as accurate or precise, and some will be abjectly horrible at it, even if well-experience professional coaches/players. it is infinitely better than the human eye's assessment (along with other required data)... that doesn't mean you ignore the human eye or other well-tested methods of talent evaluation... some things may be replaced, but that isn't the goal. the goal is better information for better decisions -- any way possible. sometimes that mean accepting tha twas done before is not as good.

whatever a human can do, we can build a machine to do it better... e.g. it's a shame we still have humans calling balls and strikes. they clearly have an inconsistent strike zone. that's just abjectly stupid. we have the tech to precisely and accurately do this... we just need somoene motivated to put it together. it's an "in" for corruption -- like influencing who goes to playoffs or gambling concerns... it's going to be tough fight to change this for these 2 reasons. people likely profit off of this obvious weak point.

a "right" conclusion with false logic is not a good conclusion to build anything upon. it will fall apart without real reason and cause.

i gave 2 good things it can help out with.

there are no 1 answer solutions to baseball. it is part of many other things that create a hitter's profile or a pitcher's profile.

a human eye cannot distinguish between a few percent differences over 600PA or ~200IP. it simply cannot... not even einstein could.

all current knowledge is built upon the back of previously gained knowledge. there's almost no truel new ideas except in sub atomic studies or astrophysics, and even that is just similar but different to what we already understand.

it's about detail and precision measurements. it is dumbfounding to say that these things cannot help understand baseball. clearly, for ~150 years it's been in the dark ages.

just look at old metrics... i can't even begin to say how stupid OPS is. an infant-like mentality created that one without recognizing all its faults and how it can easily confuse 2 vastly different types of players with the same resulting figure (i.e. ahigh BA vs lower BA with more XBH -- can look exactly the same but drastically different in results and value).

you just don't like it.. that's all... and that's fine. that's not an argument against it, though. if you only said you just don't like it, it's not an argument. it's an opinion. saying it is useless is just being purposely obstinate, because you clearly are not dumb. that's the confusing part for me when people with the ability to understand simply choose not to.

"rabble rabble rabble, i don't like change, rabble rabble rabble."

or, for others in a certain proportion

"rabble rabble rabble, i don't get it and feel insecure rabble rabble rabble."

then you got people who don't really get it, yet cheerlead it, nonetheless. they are equally detrimental, because they give the irrational side ammunition, albeit irrelevant ammunition. unfortunately, logic and facts are rarely relevant. it's all about feelings and long-held perceptions that would require some acceptance of being wrong, which nearly all struggle with no matter what side of any argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHpdgHTINik

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Old 03-23-2019, 11:45 PM   #132
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The gun actually tells us that Verlander is a freak who has had a resurgence in fastball velocity in defiance of everything we thought we knew about aging curves.

No, he doesn't hit triple digits on a regular basis in the late innings like he did when was young anymore. And yet, because he knows how to pitch and not just throw he like many other HOF (and others with who had long careers) pitchers continue to be effective as he gets older. If you don't like the Verlander example we can discuss other pitchers who just kept on getting batters out as their careers went on despite the loss in velocity. Does CC Sabathia (higher strike out rate now than when he was pushing 100 mph as a young pitcher) work for you or are you going to noodle over small details?

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Your basic facts are wrong, and you seem determined to be contrarian for some strange reason. But don't let me stop you from destroying your strawmen.

Said by someone who seems intent on challenging small details of a post rather than the overall point. It is a fact that Mark McGuire has the highest HR/AB rate in baseball history. Go ahead, look it up. And from that fact it is a very easy conclusion that his AEV must have been way above average. How far above average really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, the balls flew out of the stadium anyway. Knowing the actual number (then or now) won't change what he think of him as a power hitter one way or another and will shed no new light on his career. But of course you don't address that or any other example I gave because it doesn't support your point.



You want talk radar guns, I'm talking radar guns. When you're talking Major League pitchers, the gun gives you a number, it doesn't tell you if the guy is an effective big league pitcher. At lower levels it tells you who may have potential and who doesn't based on his velocity and other factors. But if you all you look at is the radar gun then Kyle Hendricks never makes it to the big leagues. Radar guns are nothing new, they've been around since at least the 70s. And since the beginning of their use teams have known which aging pitchers were losing velocity. But because they know that velocity has to be put into a greater context and is one indicator among many, and depending on the pitcher may not mean anything at all, smart teams didn't just start jettisoning pitchers because they lost their velocity but were still effective as they aged, and they don't do that now either.


What you call being a contrarian I call being a critical thinker. Blind acceptance is no more a virtue than blind rejection. Simply because a stat is new, or a there's a new way to measure something, does not automatically mean that either is meaningful. Fangraphs has data on average fastball velocities as well as average exit velocities. Neither tell you anything about how effective the pitcher is or how good a batter is. If you went by Fangraph's AEV data you'd think Joey Gallo was the best hitter in baseball last year, never mind he had twice as many strikeouts as hits. And if Gallo's AEV was a few tenths more than Stanton's, the follow up question becomes, "and?" Answer that question. And if we shockingly learn that Stanton's AEV is a lot higher than Dee Gordon's,(4 HRs in 556 at bats) I ask, what insight did that give us that we didn't already know about the two players?


If you want to accept this or any other stat without ever questioning its efficacy within a broader context of analysis, go ahead, it's your life. I've already stated EOV can at best under certain circumstances be a tool that helps augment other observations But I also say it's not a vital tool. I don't accept new things simply because they're new or reject them out of hand for the same reason. I analyze, I question. I read about BABIT (a new advanced metric) and see how it is used within a broader context of several other stats as it can not be used in and of itself, and I say yeah, it looks like they're on to something here. That's critical thinking. I see the exit velocity of a ball that flew clear out of Wrigley Field and I ask why I needed to know that.


I will now resume my life as a lying, trolling, contrarian old codger.
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Old 03-23-2019, 11:57 PM   #133
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you just don't like it.. that's all... and that's fine. that's not an argument against it, though. if you only said you just don't like it, it's not an argument. it's an opinion.
I appreciate the rest of your post and what you wrote was correct. I stopped at this particular spot because I have to correct something. It's not a matter of like or dislike. It's a matter of seeing the efficacy of the stat. I have said more than once that EV can be used as a tool within a broader context to augment other observations. What I don't like is the oohing and aaying over it without any critical thinking as if we've discovered something that will really help us learn brand new things about players that we didn't already know.

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then you got people who don't really get it, yet cheerlead it, nonetheless.
Which is another way of stating what I just wrote above.

The perception is that I'm some old fool who rejects any new ways of looking at things as if no critical thought (or actual knowledge of the game and quantitative analysis) at all goes into my opinions. But next time I see a ball fly 430' out of a park I'll still sleep without knowing what the actual exit velocity was.
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Old 03-25-2019, 12:25 PM   #134
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Said by someone who seems intent on challenging small details of a post rather than the overall point. It is a fact that Mark McGuire has the highest HR/AB rate in baseball history. Go ahead, look it up. And from that fact it is a very easy conclusion that his AEV must have been way above average. How far above average really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, the balls flew out of the stadium anyway. Knowing the actual number (then or now) won't change what he think of him as a power hitter one way or another and will shed no new light on his career. But of course you don't address that or any other example I gave because it doesn't support your point.
You seem intent on arguing that EV won't tell you much about the best power hitters in the history of the game. That's fine. But why wouldn't it tell you more about a rookie in May that you know nothing about and never watched play? Let's say that rookie is playing for the Yankees and he perfected the swing to right field and his average home run distance is 360 feet. (home run distance is also statcast data)

Then your favorite team with a much bigger RF trades a premium for that player and you decide you want to judge whether it was a good trade or not at the time it was made (not after their career is over when you can look at HR/FB ratio).

What stats are best in determining whether this is a player worth trading a lot for?

What is funny is that the Yankees do use this same data to find underperforming players on other teams who would do much better in Yankee Stadium. A bunch of stat nerds will come up with lists of players for their scouts to scout because they looked at this data.
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Old 03-25-2019, 01:23 PM   #135
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What stats are best in determining whether this is a player worth trading a lot for?

If I'm looking for a home run hitter I want to know his home run rate. I'll also want to know how many of those home runs were to right field (if that's the issue). I may also look at his R/L splits. The average distance the ball went is very useful because if he hits the ball 360' and my fence is 361' then I may think twice. If the distance of the home runs is known, and because speed is simply time over distance and easily inferred, the actual speed number isn't that important. The distance is already telling me how fast the ball traveled. I know it has to be going a certain speed (which can be calculated by a competent physicist) to go that far in the first place. To go back to my previous examples, if a ball flew clear out of Wrigley Field (without any help from the wind) it must have been going a certain speed, knowing the actual speed down to the tenth of a mph is not vital at all.

If our hypothetical batter has a good HR rate on balls to right field and the distance puts his average HR well beyond my fences,, acceptable R/L splits, and acceptable K rates (AEV doesn't help if you don't hit the ball very often) knowing the actual AEV really doesn't add much to evaluation and this is a player who may be worth an investment. Knowing the number to the mph is a nice piece of window dressing. It's not vital, especially if I know the average distance.

Finally, if any team is serious about trading for a player they send their scouts to look at him. There is no player a GM has never watched, either in person or on video and hasn't been thoroughly scouted.
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Old 03-25-2019, 01:56 PM   #136
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If I'm looking for a home run hitter I want to know his home run rate. I'll also want to know how many of those home runs were to right field (if that's the issue). I may also look at his R/L splits. The average distance the ball went is very useful because if he hits the ball 360' and my fence is 361' then I may think twice. If the distance of the home runs is known, and because speed is simply time over distance and easily inferred, the actual speed number isn't that important. The distance is already telling me how fast the ball traveled. I know it has to be going a certain speed (which can be calculated by a competent physicist) to go that far in the first place. To go back to my previous examples, if a ball flew clear out of Wrigley Field (without any help from the wind) it must have been going a certain speed, knowing the actual speed down to the tenth of a mph is not vital at all.

If our hypothetical batter has a good HR rate on balls to right field and the distance puts his average HR well beyond my fences,, acceptable R/L splits, and acceptable K rates (AEV doesn't help if you don't hit the ball very often) knowing the actual AEV really doesn't add much to evaluation and this is a player who may be worth an investment. Knowing the number to the mph is a nice piece of window dressing. It's not vital, especially if I know the average distance.

Finally, if any team is serious about trading for a player they send their scouts to look at him. There is no player a GM has never watched, either in person or on video and hasn't been thoroughly scouted.
You're good at ignoring just about everything, I'll give you that.

We're talking about a rookie in May, when none of his stats have stabilized or have become meaningful. Home run rate most of all. And splits would be even less meaningful.

You would not know the distance of any home runs if it weren't for statcast data. So I guess since you are evaluating a player using statcast data, then I'll assume you're just arguing against yourself. Exit velocity and launch angle estimates the distance!

Also, I guarantee you did not read this sentence:

Quote:
A bunch of stat nerds will come up with lists of players for their scouts to scout because they looked at this data.

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Old 03-25-2019, 02:53 PM   #137
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We're talking about a rookie in May, when none of his stats have stabilized or have become meaningful. Home run rate most of all. And splits would be even less meaningful.

He has no minor league stats? What's more if none of his stats have stabilized or have become meaningful his AEV is no more meaningful as it too is based on small sample size. The average can skewed one way or another on some outlier hits (soft or hard) that are not at all indicative of his ability. And y'now what's going to show up in his stats if he hits enough balls high enough and hard enough to be home runs? Home runs.



Quote:

You would not know the distance of any home runs if it weren't for statcast data. So I guess since you are evaluating a player using statcast data, then I'll assume you're just arguing against yourself. Exit velocity and launch angle estimates the distance!

If a batter, in a small sample size, has a good HR/AB ratio you don't need statcast to tell you that in that same small sample those balls were hit hard enough to clear the fence. If he didn't hit the ball hard enough and high enough the balls never would have gone out of the park in the first place. That's simple logic and it's simple logic that you are avoiding (yet I'm the one called the Troll). If, in a small sample size of say 100 ABs, our rookie has hit 15 home runs, I know from that alone that he has power and hits the ball hard and relatively high unless these were simply pop ups over very short fences or wind blown (I'll also know in what parks they were hit and I have data on whether these are good parks for home runs), data I can obtain without statcast.



I've said several times already that the AEV is not vital, you can evaluate without it if you know what you look for. You're arguing the opposite in the face of all logic and examples-real life and otherwise. In your world without knowing the actual mph number to the tenth you won't know if a player is a good home run hitter...never mind all of his actual stats that tell you that. If you must have statcast data to know who is a good home run hitter and can't go off of other stats, sorry, I can't help that.



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Also, I guarantee you did not read this sentence:

Get back to us when the Yankees make a major big money commitment to someone out of the blue who no one knew was a good home run hitter but we only knew because of AEV..
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Old 03-25-2019, 03:20 PM   #138
zrog2000
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There are tons of cheap home runs that only statcast tells you are cheap. Sometimes, they come in bunches.

Luke Voit says hi. It doesn't have to be a big money commitment. The point for front offices is to find great value, not just waste money when there are no competitors.

From his fangraphs page:

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Profile: Seemingly every season, a hitter comes out of nowhere to enjoy an insane 100 to 200 plate appearance run swatting homer after homer. In 1998, it was Shane Spencer. In 2017, it was Matt Olson. This past season, it was Luke Voit. Spencer followed up his debut by hitting two fewer homers in 150 more at-bats and Olson hit just five more homers in 450 more at-bats in his follow-up. Where will Voit end up at the end of 2019? If it matters, his Statcast power metrics were equally insane, with the second highest barrel rate in 2018 and fifth highest since 2015. While they didn't quite support a 40% HR/FB rate, his power was legitimately monstrous. Of course, this was in stark contrast to his surprisingly mediocre minor league record, in which his career best HR/FB rate stood at just 14.4%. The lack of major prospect pedigree, his age (28 in 2019), and his lack of minor league home run power make him an obvious power bust. But you can't fake the second highest barrel rate of the season, which makes him a real mystery for 2019.
Mediocre minor league player to MLB stud in the league leaders for statcast data all in his rookie age 27 season after being traded for a mediocre relief pitcher and a top 30 prospect.

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Old 03-25-2019, 04:11 PM   #139
Curve Ball Dave
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Originally Posted by zrog2000 View Post
There are tons of cheap home runs that only statcast tells you are cheap. Sometimes, they come in bunches.

Yes, only statcast can tell us that a pop up that barely clears the the short left field wall down the line at Minute Maid that would have been a fly out anywhere else, or a routine fly the 25mph wind blew over the fence at Wrigely were cheap....oooook. Thank goodness for statcast, we never would have known. I'm sure the Giants didn't know that balls that went 260' for home runs at the Polo Grounds were cheap. They needed statcast to tell them that. Poor souls. I'm convinced!



Quote:

Luke Voit says hi. It doesn't have to be a big money commitment. The point for front offices is to find great value, not just waste money when there are no competitors.

What kind commitment have they made to him after a short 39 game stretch that included 39 strike outs? He's on the roster...for now. Perhaps the Yankees still remember Kevin Maas (look him up) and don't want to make a major commitment (which I specified but you ignored) to an older guy who had a good short stretch.


The season is about to start. If you need statcast to tell you that the ball that just flew way over a major league fence was hit hard, and the guys who do that on a regular basis hit the ball harder than those who don't, and wouldn't know any other way and must see the mph figure to be convinced the ball was hit hard, well I don't know what else to say. Silly me, when I see a ball hit way out of a park I don't need to know the actual mph to know that hit was hit really hard. Maybe I have magic powers or something, or I'm just an old codger.
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Old 03-25-2019, 04:18 PM   #140
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Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave View Post
I appreciate the rest of your post and what you wrote was correct. I stopped at this particular spot because I have to correct something. It's not a matter of like or dislike. It's a matter of seeing the efficacy of the stat. I have said more than once that EV can be used as a tool within a broader context to augment other observations. What I don't like is the oohing and aaying over it without any critical thinking as if we've discovered something that will really help us learn brand new things about players that we didn't already know.



Which is another way of stating what I just wrote above.

The perception is that I'm some old fool who rejects any new ways of looking at things as if no critical thought (or actual knowledge of the game and quantitative analysis) at all goes into my opinions. But next time I see a ball fly 430' out of a park I'll still sleep without knowing what the actual exit velocity was.
"My original question was never answered: What does it tell us that we didn't already know? "

it tells us way more than a human eye can over the long-term. just as you can't tell the difference between a large gap in BA in any 1 PA or even many with your eye, just as you cannot tell if someone consistently barrels up the ball relative to another player with the human eye -- similar #'s and differntiation between players over time (ie. suitable sample to have any confidence). exit velo will directly correlate to the consistency of which a player transfers swing newons to the ball. i think they call it a hard hit rate? i hear that one alot... that's got to be any ball >Xmph is considered hard hit, right? (rhetorical, i'm not looking it up, lol)

pointing out some silly argument "for it" isn't relevant. ignore those people. i do even when they are on my side of a debate. in fact, i will gladly point out they are wrong even if it causes a negative perception to my side of the argument. truth and logic is all that matters. their conclusions are whimsical at best and more likely just ignorant on the topic, in general.

you went on to say it tells us nothing more than what we can observe with our eyes, and that is simply not true. it's never about 1 hit that goes 400feet or 550 feet. (although peak power + knowledge of distribution is really good info). so, i am not misrepresenting you at all. you've changed your tune a bit in this reply, or i missed the one sentence in a much larger bulk of your writing in this thread -- but, still....

this type of data is meant to be used in bulk. the 1-event nonsense is for spectator's instant gratification, like looking at a radar reading. (i will admit in single-serving use, though, the radar gun is more useful in the moment... you can clearly see a pitcher getting tired over time, so it's not a perfect parrallel.)

p.s.

you aren't an old codger, lol... i can't tell how old you are from these conversation. i do think you argued irrationally, if you believe the things you said in a portion of the quoted reply at top. nearly every reason you state was a misrepresentation of how the data can be used or some extreme context that isn't relevant to how it should be used.

i don't think you are dumb, either. you can find numerous threads where i engage in a logical fallacy... and i am wrong in that moment, too. not dumb.. just wrong. the one sentence notwithstanding where you say it's useful with other stuff.. i must have missed that part, my bad, but the bulk is not congruent with that sentiment at all.

i am wrong about something every single day of my life... just how it goes.
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