Mr. Rogers always said each of us is unique and special but thanks to Josh Kalk and his terrific article on using Pitch f/x data to generate similarity scores, we can see that some players are more unique than others.
Specifically, Kevin Cameron’s use of the cut fastball makes him the most unique pitcher in baseball. Interestingly, the data bears out the comparisons to Mariano Rivera:
Pitcher Uniqueness
Kevin Cameron 103
Mariano Rivera 100
Another neat aspect of this method is that even though it doesn’t take into account arm angle, it does pick up the spin of the pitch and ends up grouping Cla Meredith in with Byung Hyun Kim, as well as fellow sinkerballers Brandon Webb, Brian Lawrence and Derek Lowe.
This is another example of all the great work being done with the Pitch f/x data and it’s only going to get better as MLB refines the system.
5 responses so far ↓
1 MB // Feb 19, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Good to see you back, Anthony!
I just read that article last night and saw Cameron’s name. I of course don’t understand the math, but I get the concept … anyway, I really feel this stuff is groundbreaking (particularly Kalk’s work with these similarity scores).
As these guys continue to get feedback from people and the system gets refined, like you say, (and more data is gathered) there’s going to be even more great work coming out. It’s really awesome.
Are you going to use the PITCHf/x data again this season?
2 Phantom // Feb 19, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Agreed with MB, it’s great to see you up and running again.
3 Anthony // Feb 20, 2008 at 8:22 am
Hey thanks for the kind words guys.
I’ll probably do a little with the Pitch f/x data again this year but it takes a lot of time, something that’s in short supply recently.
4 Andy // Mar 14, 2008 at 8:29 am
Ive had a couple of padres wallpapers created. Would you be interested in posting them for users to download?
5 Andy // Mar 14, 2008 at 11:55 am
a web designer friend of mine created some cool padres wall papers. I thought more padres fans might enjoy these
http://gorirra.com/wallpaper/
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