Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
washingtonpost.com
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This should be more prominent and is likely the root cause of guys swinging for homeruns more often. Every hitter will eventually fall into a pattern where they're hitting certain pitches to only a certain part of the field. With the increase in data it's much easier for teams to recognize these patterns and position their fielders to compensate. So if you made your living hitting line drive basehits to shallow left field, halfway through the season every team will pick up on that and place an extra infielder right in your sweet spot. The same hits that got you through college and into the major leagues are now outs. This has been such a huge change that MLB thought about outlawing defensive shifts (I personally enjoy seeing the constant back and forth of strategy between offensive and defense which has always been a part of the major leagues). The obvious solution like the article mentions comes down to "the one ball that can’t be caught is the one that lands in the seats".
This is also highly dependent on the type of hitter. If you're Yankee's 6'7" right fielder Aaron Judge then swinging for the fences with a higher launch angle makes perfect sense. However, if you're Dee Gordon, one of the fastest players in the league who weighs about 175lbs, keeping the ball low is probably still going to result in higher batting and slugging percentages. Guys like Bryce Harper who can hit for power and average do seem to be leaning more towards power, which used to only happen later in their career (ex. Barry Bonds). In my observation, it seems like players such as Dee Gordon are slowly becoming obsolete as teams are prefering the long ball to playing "small ball". You certainly don't see as many teams with a true, stereotypical "leadoff guy" these days and many teams seem stacked with guys who would have been labelled "cleanup hitters" 10 years ago.
The increase in power hitting is also cyclical in baseball. Remember last time it dropped it was due to changes in drug testing policies and procedures which may also be a cat and mouse game.
I found this:
http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/01/reliving-the-hits-how-h...
Harper, Trout, Stanton, Bryant, Donaldson, Cabrera, Posey, Josh Hamilton, Pujols, Votto, Pedroia, Ryan Howard, Morneau, Mauer - none of them are defined by speed. Trout has stolen a few bases, but he's not particularly fast.
The actual results indicate it's quite the opposite, MVP hitters have been on the slower side. Power very clearly matters more than speed. What nearly all the last 20 MVP hitters have in common is substantial power production, while being on the slow side.
In the 40s-60s and into the 70s maybe, hitters were more balanced. I think of sluggers like Williams, Mays, Mantle, Yaz, Kilebrew, Foster, McCovey, Kingman, etc. The introduction of the forkball, splitter, and changeup in the late 70s and 80s had a lot to do with the down turn in power. Hitter's technologically behind so to speak. In today's baseball, there's almost no room for a more balanced hitter like Gwynn, Boggs, Rose, Carew. Guys who only got 50-60 RBIs, a dozen or two homeruns, stole 15 bases, but who could bat for .350 in a given year and over 200 hits.
It used to be taught, speed has no off days. That doesn't seem to be true anymore.
I've noticed it's a thing the Cubs seem to be doing a bit of; Anthony Rizzo (who maybe isn't a great example given he's not a speedy base-stealer) gets shifted on a lot, and has laid down a few bunt hits this year as a way to beat it.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to have two completely different shot mechanics that you have to practice and train. Aside from Rick Barry, every good free throw shooter seems to use a variation on their normal shooting mechanic, sometimes starting with a consistent dribbling ritual to get them into rhythm (e.g. Rip Hamilton or Klay Thompson). Poor free throw shooters tend to be people who either don't have great shot mechanics in the first place or people who struggle with the unique mental pressure of free throw shooting. In the flow of a game it's hard to overthink yourself and get psyched out, so even guys like Bruce Bowen who could nail catch-and-shoot corner threes sometimes struggled when the game slowed down enough for the pressure to sink in.
Bunting to me seems more akin to the kind of "dirty work" that great players master and good players think they're above doing, like setting hard screens and making an effort on defense. If you're a really good bunter, you're not gonna have the kinds of numbers and highlight plays that lead to fame or fortune. Similarly, if you set hard screens or close off passing lanes or do a lot of the hard work that leads to wins but don't really lead to great individual stats, people are going to ignore you and assume a stat-chasing ball hog like Russell Westbrook is better than you.
The main difference is probably that if you're seven feet tall and athletic, you have ways of providing value on the basketball court that outweigh being a liability from the free throw line. Not so much if you're much smaller than that.
I remember seeing a Red Sox-Blue Jays game at Fenway Park last year where the Blue Jays had Jose Bautista hitting first, which definitely fits this description.
Other examples are Carlos Santana, George Springer, etc
http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/79308/leadoff-h...
of course performance matters, but you missed my point: a large amount of fans completely ignore statistical performance. This is most evident with Giants fans in particular this season who absolutely despise Hunter Strickland and say he should be kicked from the team when he's been pitching at least league average, if not better, and has been the best relief pitcher on the team. Not to mention they call him a "home run vending machine" when he's only given up 4 in the past 1.5 seasons.
"This time it counts!"
*I'm on my phone so I can't find the source for this at the moment, but did see it in an article in the last few months.
It was arguably a net loss to have him bunt though, as a medium chance of a single might not make up for the loss of the extra-bases he would hit for otherwise.
For those specifically curious about baseball and statistics, both http://www.fangraphs.com/ and http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/ are great sites.
That's a ton of data. It allows you to ask questions like "What is the likelihood that a curveball is thrown for a strike on a 3-0 count in the 8th inning?" and get statistically significant results.
0 - https://github.com/baseballhackday/data-and-resources/wiki/R...
2 - http://gdx.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2017/month_06/da...
I know MLBAM has a bunch of data they keep to themselves, but I should definitely be able to find something to play with here. Many thanks for sharing!
Does it though? medicine is learning that when you do data mining the bar for statistical significance needs to be much higher. When you do the traditional hypothesis/experiment loop and a result hits 95% likely that is good enough. However when you data mine from millions of data points anything interesting is much more likely to be coincidence. Modern statistics is trying to figure out how to handle this.
Data mining is good for generating hypothesis that you can then test with a controlled experiment. It can be used in meta-analysis to find small effects that were not significant in individual experiments but when you combine them they are significant. However it is dangerous to use it alone.
In more depth, if you look at 100 data points and find 5 things that meet the 95% bar - that is 5 out of 100, odds are that all of them are false positives since you studied 100 things and found 5. (this is a gross simplification of things like p-values, real statisticians will cry about it, but the average person has a chance of understanding)
Biological systems are highly variable and absurdly complex, and most datasets come with a host of confounding factors. In comparison, baseball is extremely uniform, and the variability that does exist can often be quantified effectively, and more importantly, often is. Biologists can dream of such high-quality and thorough data, but that's a long way off. This means that the analysis used is quite different.
Genomic data depends greatly on the material used and the methods used. For instance, even with consistent genotypes and identical library preparation, if you collected your RNA a few hours later in the day, you now have a host of circadian changes to contend with that confound your analysis. No one can effectively keep track of all the confounding factors. This means that most analysis needs to be done with direct controls, biological replicates, etc.
In terms of actual analysis, I think the problem is somewhat overstated in your assessment. There are good statistical methods to adjust for multiple comparisons, and the field has largely caught-up to the biggest issues. This was perhaps more accurate 5 years ago, and was mostly the result of poor statistical literacy.
People tend to underestimate just how much information there is on baseball, and how well-kept it has been.
(Edited to fix NFL games per team per season)
Your point is still valid, though.
It always amazes me how balanced the game of baseball is compared to other sports. It's been around for more than a century and people have become so much stronger and faster on both sides of the ball. Still, offense and defense remain so perfectly matched. The bases remain 90 feet apart and the pitcher still throws from 60 feet away. A home run is still 400 feet.
Consider basketball which has had to dramatically rebalance the rules over time. Restrictions on time in the paint, the 3 point line, perimeter defense, etc. Or how hockey changed all the rules after the lockout. Or how football has totally re worked pass defense and special teams.
Baseball is just baseball.
Ground rule doubles were briefly home runs in some leagues, foul balls once didn't count as strikes, then you could strike out on a foul ball, intentional walk changes, spitballs outlawed, balk rules ...
Baseball was probably just as fluid in its first thirty-forty years as basketball, it was just a long time ago.
Edit: Another big one was the pitching changes in the 1960s after a wave of pitching dominance: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/History_of_basebal...
Interestingly the park sizes differ to try and keep the difficulty of a home run equal in lieu of differences in air pressure between locations. It is rumored the Red Sox added a bullpen to give their new recruit Ted Williams, who was a left handed batter, an advantage at home.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2011/09/13/q-why-are-majo... I hate to cite forbes but its hard to find source for something I've known by word of mouth.
http://bosoxinjection.com/2013/05/02/origins-of-baseball-in-...
For a full history of rule changes in baseball: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml
As others have noted, there have been some adjustments. But I agree with your basic point.
(Not that I could ever get through that particular series. It was longer than the Civil War :-))
There's been various changes over the years, juggling points for tries and penalties, introducing sin bins, and so on, but it isn't really anything fundamental.
Where you do see changes has been in the physique of players, and to some extent it's cyclical. Teams adapt to circumstances, player sizes and types change, and then some outlier will come along and with a visionary coach shake things up again.
Wings used to be lighter sprinters, then Jonah Lomu came along and proved that wings could be big (at 6' 5" he towered over most players, average height for the time was 6' 1") and still fast.
People just didn't have the strength or weight to stop him, especially out on the wings. Players of sufficient size would typically be one of the forwards, the bigger players that dominate a scrum.
Teams adapted to the new paradigm though, wingers started getting bigger and stronger as tactics changed, and we've seen size and weight fluctuate back and forth a bit, sometimes internationals favour lighter faster, sometimes slightly slower but stronger.
Even 20 years ago at a club level, many things were allowed that aren't now: Quicker scrums, high tackles, raking the ruck with cleats, and general hooliganism seem to have been more par for the course than today.
I saw a match from 1977, and there was no Croutch/Bind/Set. The scrum just walked up toward each other and engaged immediately. More dangerous, but a lot different than today. The line-outs didn't lift; the hooker threw the ball in like a football lob.
(That may be a somewhat generic pattern. In both tennis and table tennis, rules were adjusted when players started hitting the ball too hard. Similarly, in javelin throwing, the javelin was changed a few times to prevent players from throwing it out of the stadium)
EDIT: This is what I was thinking of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football)...
Doesn't say when the change in interpretation was made.
The stadiums change, though; 400 feet is just the warning track, sometimes. 310 can get you one in Fenway (on the left side of the field).
It's only natural that in little league coaches tell players to hit ground balls because kids have trouble fielding (it requires extreme precision, speed, and dexterity).
It's also quite obvious that you have to hit the ball high and hard to get a triple or home-run. Good to know data backs this up.
Fun time to be a baseball fan.
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/234270104/7-players-hit-grand-...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-fly-ball-revolution...
Now players are specifically working to beat the shift.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ryan-zimmerman-became-a-slu...
Clearly wouldn't have been a good choice for Ichiro..