Anyone Know of Any Pitch F/X Variations in any Stadiums This Year?

by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 28, 2010 9:11 PM EDT in Pitch f/x Goodies

I have found that the radar gun at Kauffman Stadium (Royals) reads high by about 2 MPH compared to other parks the Royals have played in. Has anyone else noticed any other abnormalities that other would find useful? I will try to keep them listed here for people to use throughout the season.

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Is it me or are the pf_x and pf_z in Kauffman also a little wonky?

by Jeff Sullivan on Apr 28, 2010 9:51 PM EDT reply actions

First, the umpires were horrible (especially game 20, but it seems OK

It would have to be consistently off.

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by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 28, 2010 10:19 PM EDT up reply actions

PITCHf/x at Rangers Ballpark is flat out missing a lot of pitches.

And, as usual, it seems to be 1-2 mph slower than every where else they play. There was a long discussion about that last season, and I can’t recall if any conclusions were drawn from it (some physical issue with the mound vs configuration issue with the tracking).

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by NoNameOnCard on Apr 28, 2010 11:53 PM EDT reply actions

I have a hunch that the gun at the New Yankee Stadium is running slow

I haven’t tested it against road velocities, but so far, the gun has at least seemed to be running 1-2 mph slow.

by Lucas Apostoleris on Apr 29, 2010 1:31 AM EDT reply actions

And over the past few games, the velocity's looked pretty consistent with the other parks

But the pfx_x values look unusual; it seems like they’re shifted a few inches, making left-handed four-seamers look like they’re cutting.

by Lucas Apostoleris on May 6, 2010 1:48 PM EDT up reply actions

It would not surprise me if Citifield gun was a bit slow.

There’s been problems from park to park since the inception of pitch fx I believe.

I believe some people have tried to do their own corrections…maybe Harry.

by TheAnswer1313 on Apr 29, 2010 10:58 AM EDT reply actions

Thanks everyone

Royals fans were amazed at some speeds we were seeing like >97 MPH from Luke Hochevar. I just want to make available a list of systems that are off so people don’t wig out when they goto that stadium and see speeds they didn’t previously.

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by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 29, 2010 11:09 AM EDT reply actions

I analyzed Cole Hamel’s release points at Nationals Park and Citizens Bank but thanks to Harry Pavlidis I think the Pitch F/X machinery were calibrated differently.

http://crashburnalley.com/2010/04/13/hamels-and-release-points/

The six pitchers who tossed in both games:

Jason Marquis: http://img443.imageshack.us/i/marquis.png/

Ryan Madson: http://img580.imageshack.us/i/madson.png/

Jesse English: http://img88.imageshack.us/i/english.png/

Chad Durbin: http://img526.imageshack.us/i/durbin.png/

Cole Hamels: http://img688.imageshack.us/i/colee.png/

Danys Baez: http://img72.imageshack.us/i/baez.png/

Crashburn Alley

by Crashburn Alley on Apr 29, 2010 1:06 PM EDT reply actions

Post is flagged for 5 or more links.

I am trying to unflag it.

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by Jeff Zimmerman on Apr 29, 2010 1:50 PM EDT up reply actions

Don't think you can

Doesn’t matter, though. Only bothers the moderators.

by Jeff Sullivan on Apr 29, 2010 3:20 PM EDT up reply actions

I'll second the Texas problem.

Tigers were just there and gameday was basically non existent for entire innings at a time. First game there I think it wasn’t working for 3+ innings collectively. It was awful as I’m one to have Gameday open while watching the game.

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Now I write at Bless You Boys.

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by Mike Rogers on Apr 29, 2010 3:36 PM EDT reply actions

Jeff

My calculations show that the PITCHf/x system was reading about 1.4 mph too fast for the first homestand in KC and +2.0 mph in the second homestand. So that agrees pretty well with what you found.

I’m just taking my first comprehensive look at the 2010 data, so I don’t have anything new to add, but checking some of the other parks mentioned…Yankee Stadium speeds look about 0.7 mph too slow, and CitiField 1.1 mph slow.

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by Mike Fast on May 1, 2010 12:23 AM EDT reply actions

At this stage, aren't those numbers just noise?

Have pitchers really thrown in enough parks to be able to figure this out yet? Couldn’t a road trip to slow park throw off the numbers at a normal park, making them look high?

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by NoNameOnCard on May 1, 2010 2:08 PM EDT up reply actions

If you were looking at 2010 numbers in isolation, perhaps so

Although I bet that there would be enough data from enough pitchers even then to get very good results.

When I ran my numbers, I was using 2008-2009 as the baseline for comparison. That Jeff and I got similar results for Kauffman Stadium probably indicates that whether you use 2008-2009 or 2010 as the baseline doesn’t matter a whole lot.

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by Mike Fast on May 2, 2010 11:13 AM EDT up reply actions

How general is your work on this?

I’ve been considering several methods for “normalizing” park effects, but I can’t decide which is best.

(1) Get pitcher/park averages for the basic PITCHf/x data and then average them. This essentially eliminates the home park effect in a pitcher’s basic data by reducing the frequency of the home park’s data to the equivalent of a road park. The downside is that if you want to find the park effect, there’s more work to be done. Also, the fewer parks a pitcher has pitched in, the less reliable his data will be.

(2) Average the data from all road parks and compare it directly to the home park averages. This gives a home park effect for each home team pitcher, but practically neglects road pitchers because of sample size issues.

I’m sure I’ve thought of at least three or four other methods but they aren’t coming to me off the top of my head right now.

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by NoNameOnCard on May 2, 2010 2:34 PM EDT up reply actions