Fun With Pull Charts
by danmerqury on Mar 2, 2010 6:00 AM PST
45 comments
Have Spring Training games started yet? No? Since there's nothing new to talk about (unless signing Tomko and Jennings is "news"), all we have left is reorganizing and regurgitating old baseball. With that in mind, I generated pull charts for our 2010 lineup, based on 2009 data. Each chart is divided into three field sections, simply showing the player's wOBA on batted balls to that area of the field. Pure white is set at the average wOBA for 2009, with shades of red and blue corresponding to above and below the average, respectively. Chart after the jump.
The whole point of these charts is to show how much each batter pulls to his side. Take, for example, Mark Ellis. His pull split is relatively strong, meaning most of his batted balls are hit to his side of the batter's box. Ryan Sweeney, on the other hand, tends to spray balls all over the field in a balanced fashion.
Of course, the main advantage of hitting balls to all fields is that the defense can't "cheat" and reposition themselves. Recall that Jason Giambi, who exhibited a very pronounced pull effect, would always find the defense shifted over onto the right side of the field, which clearly put him at a large disadvantage.
Don't look now, but the first Spring Training game is in two days. Two days!
Odds and Ends
- You can click on the chart for a larger version. Alternatively, here are links to each player's chart individually (Suzuki, Barton, Ellis, Pennington, Kouzmanoff, Davis, Crisp L, Crisp R, Sweeney, Cust).
- If you're wondering why all three field sectors for Jack Cust are at a higher wOBA than his season wOBA, it's because this chart only looks at batted balls. Assume, for the sake of example, that he is a theoretical pure Three True Outcomes player. Since every ball that he hit into fair territory would be a home run, Cust would have an exorbitantly high wOBA for all field sectors, even though the strikeouts would drag his actual wOBA down to somewhat normal levels.
- The reason Crisp has two charts while Pennington has one is because Pennington barely got a handful of plate appearances as a righty in 2009. Crisp got enough as a switch hitter to justify a second chart.
- Oddly enough, Crisp as a righty shows a reversed pull from what you'd expect. I'm going to attribute this to a small sample size fluke as a result of dividing his plate appearances between two stances.
- Also, the technical glitches have been solved (sorta) and the new ANcillary Terms is up and live!
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It would be nice
To see this broken down to infield and outfield too.
by A's10thMan on Mar 2, 2010 6:39 AM PST via mobile reply actions
Is this showing quality or frequency?
In the intro, you say it’s based on wOBA (quality), but in the post-chart comments about Ellis and Sweeney you say it’s about frequency.
Also, is the wOBA compared against the league average wOBA overall, or the league average wOBA when a ball is pulled/opposite field?
Quality.
I suppose I could have worded that better. And it’s all compared to the overall league-average wOBA, not split by field sector.
Taken down with hearts alive, our hearts alive.
Thanks.
Another question: where is this data from?
For example, Fangraphs has Sweeney with a .363 wOBA to LF, .365 to CF, and .285 to RF. Baseball-Reference has Sweeney with a .821 OPS to LF, .754 up the middle, and .957 to RF. They also have very different frequency numbers. They must be defining zones very differently…
It's Fangraphs.
I saw those Baseball Reference numbers too. Wasn’t exactly sure what to make of them. There has to be some kind of incongruence in the two definitions of field sectors.
It looks like according to B-R, Sweeney hit 55%-ish of his batted balls to center. Fangraphs has 33%. And yet, if you add up all of the batted balls to left, center, and right from both sites, they come out to the same number (424). Is it just that B-R has a larger field area denoted as “center field”? Seems like an odd thing to do.
Taken down with hearts alive, our hearts alive.
They're using different data, and possibly different zones
BB-Ref doesn’t use actual hit location data; they use the play-by-play descriptions from Retrosheet. I asked Sean Forman what zones he was using back in 2008 when they released these splits, and he said:
I used the retrosheet fielding codes and up the middle. The field is divided into seven pie slices and I put the two end ones in pull and opp. field and the rest in up the middle.
http://www.retrosheet.org/location.htm
I’m guessing his “up the middle” zone is bigger than the one Fangraphs uses.
Also, I just realized I was looking at BA instead of wOBA for Sweeney’s Fangraphs splits. Whoops.
Aha, that makes sense.
B-R doesn’t use the terms “left” and "right, but rather “pulled” and “opp fld”. Looks like a smaller zone than Fangraphs’s “left” and “right”.
Taken down with hearts alive, our hearts alive.
That's a staggeringly huge center field zone
No wonder BBRef claims 55% of balls are hit to center field… think I’m going with Fangraphs on this one.
Shawn Spencer: "I’m receiving a transmission from your husband. Really more of a voicemail, if I'm being honest. A status update. Perhaps a twitter."
Burton Guster: "I believe it’s called a tweet."
Shawn Spencer: "There’s no way I’m saying that."
As a non-sequitor....
I like the use of the pre-Mount Davis Stadium.
ken korach's voice is like peanut butter on velvet, not joe buck's.
You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find a usable picture of the Coliseum.
Originally, I was looking for a top-down view. Nothing. Google Maps had a picture that had the baseball diamond out, but the Raiders seats over the outfield.
Taken down with hearts alive, our hearts alive.
I'd Mount Davis.
Rajai, that is.
Keep in mind, of course, that "the best defense of Derek Jeter's life" ranks somewhere in between "the best fiscal responsibility of Mike Tyson's life" and "the best not-getting-assassinated-ness of James Garfield's life." -FJM
About Crisp's splits
I initially though Crisp was just a stronger hitter batting left handed— that is, he’d be more like to pull for power batting left handed; when batting from his weaker side (ostensibly right handed) he’d instead be more of a situational hitter and taking what the pitcher gave to him (i.e., looking to go the other way).
Then I checked his career splits. Everything is pretty close to equal from both sides, except that he has an extra 27 points of slugging batting right handed. And that appears to have translated into a higher HR rate from that side, too (23 bombs in 1047 PAs right handed, 36 dingers in 2404 PAs left handed).
Then I wondered how much of that was due to the Green Monster in Fenway and oh my God I’ve gone cross-eyed. Games need to start soon.
"Smokey, this be not the foul jungles of the darkest East Orient. This be ninepins. We are bound by laws."
It seems like someone like him would benifit from the GM. High warning track fly balls would have just enough juice to carry it out
by A's10thMan on Mar 2, 2010 9:39 AM PST via mobile up reply actions
Of course Davis does have less of a record of being good
So there’s less reason to expect continued goodness.
www.zekeishungry.com
we should be training our batters to hit everything to the opposite field
/bernazard
A's v Giants "is kind of like the difference between going to see the Ramones and going to see the Bee Gees. A's fans will go see the Ramones."
-BB 07/27/05
park effects
Has anyone seen anything about Coliseum park effects for left vs right handed hitters? I would expect them to be small, since the field is quite symmetric, but prevailing wind directions could skew it.
I believe that the wind is more favorable to LHHs/balls hit to RF
With stout hearts, and with enthusiasm for the contest, let us go forward to victory. ----Hero Defector Montgomery
That would make sense
assuming that the prevailing wind is coming in through the Golden Gate and then sweeping southeast along the East Bay shore.
Shawn Spencer: "I’m receiving a transmission from your husband. Really more of a voicemail, if I'm being honest. A status update. Perhaps a twitter."
Burton Guster: "I believe it’s called a tweet."
Shawn Spencer: "There’s no way I’m saying that."
FYI,
I got arrested the last time I had fun with my pull chart.
Granted, I was in the lobby of the Holiday Inn.
sock puppets have never successfully defended castles. -nm
with Chingy?
They call their best player "Kung Fu Panda" and they complain that people aren’t taking them or the game seriously enough? -Nick
were you there, too?!
sock puppets have never successfully defended castles. -nm
by Leopold Bloom on Mar 2, 2010 5:31 PM PST up reply actions
For a past tense of "sirb," he is quite droll.
I like Cindi. A. She never pretends to know more than she does. B. She has unbridled enthusiasm for her "Hotties," and isn't afraid to show it. -IM4Oakgal
lol
"The A's get some action but they do not score..." -Glen Kuiper
"Anyone who calls themselves the Angels Angels should have to start over and ride the short bus." -timmeh from McCovey Chronicles
there will be other chances, sb.
Promise.
sock puppets have never successfully defended castles. -nm
by Leopold Bloom on Mar 3, 2010 2:19 AM PST up reply actions
warning: annual Rene Lachemann Is the Sublime Baseball Ayatollah of the Universe campaign speech
first – great article Dan; I was/am always into the where-guys-hit-it aspect of stat accumulation
second – (opinion part) the whole key — OK not the whole key but maybe the one single factor that pushed us over the top in the regular season again and again in the early part of the decade just ended… maybe that one ingredient that won us who knows how many games was Rene Lachemann keeping exactly these kinds of tabs (to a pretty serious degree of specificity as far as batted-ball locations and each batter’s propensity in different counts to hit the ball to different areas, etc.) on every hitter in the league in these old-school binder notebooks, and positioning the defense in general and the outfielders in particular accordingly in situation after situation. Maybe I exaggerating (big shocker there) but I feel when he left something vital was lost and the team kind of lost a certain edge that he might have brought.
(OK, there’s my Rene Lachemann is an organizational lucky charm and a baseball veteran guru genius who should not just be made A’s manager but Commissioner of Baseball tomorrow rant for 2010; at least I got that one out of the way early and I’ll stick to my once-a-year quota, I promise.)
third – GREAT article, did I mention it was awesome? When I was a kid they would sometimes do this with the guy’s homers on the telecast, you know? Show where he hit them all in a sort of diagram of a baseball diamond with the spray of HRs going every which way wit the field divided into left, center and right fields, so it reminded me of that, only Greg Luzinski’s name was not mentioned.
Hey, I just bought the team from Lew Wolff... who wants to play third?
Lachemann is great
I don’t know how many times I’d see him interact with kids when he was the 3B coach and throw out balls and just have a good time out there.
Add in the fact that he curses like a sailor and has been in the game for forever and a day and you have a great baseball man.
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