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I know BtB is a stats-based community, but sometimes, you just have to appreciate the aesthetics of the game. The Giants announcers called this "the best pitch ever thrown." It came as a strikeout in the bottom of the 2nd on Monday.
If you wanted to see data though (I know you do), it was 99mph with 5" of break and 10" pfx. Here's the screenshot.
Hat tip to Andrew Martin, to LodoMagicMan.
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Wait for Strasburg
He lives on that pitch. He’ll front door it to lefties, which is devastating.
by Harry Pavlidis on Jun 3, 2010 11:02 AM EDT up reply actions
Is there any chance of a
Strasburg-Jimenez matchup later this year?
Ceterum censeo, Ron Washington esse delendam
Not this year
unless it’s in the playoffs …. they played their series in April and May.
by Harry Pavlidis on Jun 3, 2010 2:31 PM EDT up reply actions
I can't wait for this.
It’ll be like Maddux … plus 15 MPH.
My old blog is Tigers By The Numbers.
Now I write at Bless You Boys.
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ironically
That was the exact description of Ubaldo Monday by a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on Jun 3, 2010 5:47 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Technically,
That pitch is independent of professional location.
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Unless Stras is so unnerved by the sight of Ronny Cedeno in the batters box
that he forgets how to pitch.
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on Jun 4, 2010 1:34 PM EDT up reply actions
aw you could've at least linked in my ridiculous commentary
such as forming one’s own religion around it
It's...beautiful!
See Data Differently. Beyond The Boxscore. | Follow me @justinbopp
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The BRK value from Gameday, I assumed
i.e., the break_length field in the PITCHf/x data.
Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009
Pitch f/x break is measured as the distance of the ball from where it would have been if thrown with no spin
There’s horizontal and vertical. There’s tons of good stuff about pitch f/x out there. Read it!
Yeah, I'm familiar with that definition.
I expected the break length to be measured at the destination point, rather than what appears to be the 55% mark (or so).
So, I’m curious as to how MLB chose that particular point. Or, does MLB measure the break length the way I said, and the graph just moved the length to a different part of the arc?
I'm guessing MLB is measuring break as the length of the "hump"
In other words, the spot at which the deviation from the shortest path from the release point to the end point and the actual path is greatest.
I do not understand your definition here at all.
are you saying that they’re looking for the point where the actual pitch is farthest away from the “no spin” pitch?
No
That’s what the movement/spin deflection values measure.
I’m guessing that “break” is measuring the maximum difference of the “hump” of the pitch.
Just forget you ever saw the BRK value if you don't use Gameday online
VEP’s description is correct.
However, nobody else besides Gameday uses it, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it hadn’t been in the original post.
Everybody else uses the pfx_x and pfx_z, i.e., spin deflection, numbers. People will often refer to those as “break” or “movement”.
But Gameday reports a value that is measuring the amount of bend in the trajectory of the pitch, and their term for that is “break”.
Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009
That is absolutely insane.
I use Gameday to “watch” games when I’m at work, but had no idea that’s what they were measuring. I guess that’s why I thought it was the x/z numbers.
What’s the point of that measurement? To tell you how “fast” a pitch moves in a particular direction?
In the early days of PITCHf/x
there were no standards for how people were going to use the data and no accepted practice for what everything meant. So Sportvision and MLBAM were just trying ideas to see what made sense. One of the things they experimented with was different definitions of the break of a pitch.
The idea behind measuring the “hump” or bend of a pitch was that perhaps that was the way the batters perceived it. They wanted a number where a curveball broke more than a slider which broke more than a fastball.
For some reason MLBAM has stuck with their old definitions from early 2007 even though the rest of the community has formed up around using the spin deflection values (pfx_x and pfx_z). Probably because they believe that the casual fan won’t understand why a fastball “breaks” more than a slider or curveball.
As analysts, we often want to be able to separate the effect of spin from the effect of gravity. That’s why the analytical community coalesced around pfx_x and pfx_z.
Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009
Interesting.
That makes sense — I thought through what you said after writing my reply, and forgot to change the title as well — as a developer, I very much understand the “I have no idea how will use this information” feeling.
I can see using those values to differentiate pitch types. If I understand your explanation correctly, the break_y value along with break_angle could provide a clear picture of when a pitch really started breaking, and how far it broke before it cleared the plate. I could see using this information to explain “late break” to lay folk.
Yes
That was the idea. However, it turns out that it’s a really poor way to find “late break”. Or more correctly, break doesn’t happen later for one pitch over another. The acceleration is very, very near constant.
Thus, the break_y value is completely useless. It is between 23.5-24.0 feet for every pitch type. It’s very marginally smaller for a fastball, like 23.6 vs. 23.7 for a curveball, but that’s not useful.
Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009
Pulled from the GameDay pitch data
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on Jun 5, 2010 11:30 PM EDT up reply actions
This pitch is absolutely mesmorising to me.
I can't resist clicking "Rec" when I see a post with four [of them] already.
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