Inspired by this article at Baseball Analysts I’ve started digging through the XML data in the MLB.com Gameday archives. What you’re looking at here is a graph of the release points of the three Padre pitchers last night, Chris Young, Cla Meredith and Trevor Hoffman:
A few surprises here, at least to me. Despite his 6′10″ height, Chris Young’s release point isn’t that much higher than Trevor Hoffman, who’s nearly a foot shorter. Trevor appears to be pitching from the far first base side of the rubber, I’ll try to verify that at the game tonight.
You can see the huge difference in release point when Cla Meredith comes on in relief. The ball is coming in at waist level from behind a right handed batter’s back, that can’t be easy to deal with.
I’m still trying to decipher some of the variables in these XML files. I think the Y axis is feet above the pitching mound, not feet above the playing field, but I want to find confirmation of that.
Next up: using these on a pitch by pitch basis to analyze individual at bats. I’ll be taking a look at last night’s Cla Meredith - Barry Bonds showdown, including velocity and movement analysis.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Geoff Young // Apr 10, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Great stuff, Anthony! I’ll be very interested to see data on Meredith vs Bonds. Might be neat to compare with their matchup from last week.
2 Didi // Apr 10, 2007 at 3:28 pm
This is very cool, Anthony. Congrats on the new venture.
That is surprising about Young vs. Hoffman. Wow. Perhaps, he falls towards the home plate before releasing the ball?
Ah, Cla vs. Bonds. Can you also compare the two showdowns? Thanks. This should be interesting.
3 Anthony // Apr 10, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Here’s a little tidbit: That blue dot that’s the lowest and farthest left is his last pitch to Bonds, the one that was pretty far out of the strike zone. It didn’t break any more than the first two, he just dropped down about three or four more inches and reached out to his right a little more.
4 Clayton // Apr 11, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Cool stuff! Now, paint in the batter’s eye background in Petco and we can see whether Cla gets any “extra” benefit from going way out there.
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