What would baseball be without its numerous over-analyzed statistics? Instead of making the game simpler, statisticians have found a way to make baseball more complex.
Statcast is a new revolutionary tracking tool that can tell the exit velocity of a baseball off a hitters bat. It collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks.
But Statcast hasn’t made the lives of front office executives any easier. The FiveThirtyEight article I took a look at showed that the technology isn’t full proof. Apparently, not all of the hits are being tracked. After discussing with several MLB executives FiveThirtyEight discovered which types of hits weren’t being tracked.
They then displayed this through a graphic, which was well thought out. The graphic showed that Statcast has become more accurate in the last year, however is still missing several types of hits. Now missing is kind of a relative term in this situation. An MLB Exec wants as much information as possible to determine how profitable a player may be, so 5 percent of the hits not being tracked is a big deal.
That 5 percent represents the most missed type of hit; the popup. The graphic continues to show which types of hits yield the most missing data and how it has either improved or gotten worse over the past year. Only the popup has gotten worse. Groundballs, flyballs and line drives are all under 2 percent of its data missing.
The article then goes into to explaining why popups might be the most missed category. Statcast works best with intermediate angled hits. Popups have a high trajectory and are therefore hard for the radar to pick up. Also pop-ups come off the bat at a low velocity which is also difficult to pick up.