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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Fan Graphs: Cartwright: What I Hate About Line Drives

From ponderosa to ponderates…LD, that is.

Today I am going to start off by climbing up on my soapbox to address one of my pet peeves, the use of Line Drive rates as a predictor for Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). The standard practice is to estimate BABIP by LD/Balls in Play + .12. It is claimed that LD rateas are more stable than BABIP from year to year, and that when the actual observed BABIP varies from the predicted by a large margin, this indicates a future regression to the mean.

I’m in the process of updating my park factors for 2008, along with adding in 1999, 1955 and 1953 that the folks at RetroSheet have included in their most recent release. I’ve added a couple more categories, foul flies and line drives. Now, I’ve never heard anyone mention park factors when using LD rates, but in fact they are quite large. I might guess that there could different opinions of what is a line drive from one ballpak to another, or maybe it’s the air or the hitting background. I limited my LD factors to 2003-2008, when the RetroSheet data has complete information on whether a ball is a line drive, ground ball, fly ball or popup on every batted ball, including hits. In Arlington, a batter is 18% more likely to have a batted ball coded as a LD, which may have helped Milton Bradley to have the 2nd highest LD rate in 2008 - while in Minneapolis, it’s 20% less likely. Four of the lowest six LD rates belong to Michael Bourn, Geoff Blum, Ty Wigginton and Hunter Pence, and Minute Maid Park has the second lowest LD park factor at 0.82. This is not saying that Houston batters hit fewer line drives - it’s that Houston and it opponents both have 18% fewer balls scored as liners in Houston than they do on the road.

Repoz Posted: January 07, 2009 at 05:10 PM | 27 comment(s) | Login to Bookmark
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1. Drew (Primakov, Gungho Iguanas) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 08:47 PM (#3045765)

This seems completely bizarre. How can park have such a big effect on line drive rate?

2. Drew (Primakov, Gungho Iguanas) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 08:52 PM (#3045775)

I thought of hitters' backdrop, but the comments suggest that human biases in reporting LD rate may be to blame.

3. Der Komminsk-sar Posted: January 07, 2009 at 08:58 PM (#3045780)

I'm sure fliners are even easier to categorize...

4. Voros McCracken, Human Shield Posted: January 07, 2009 at 08:59 PM (#3045781)

There may also be some reverse causation going on with Line Drive rates and HBIP as well.

That is it might not only be that LD% causes HBIP but also that HBIP cause LD%. IOW whether a ball falls in for a hit or not may have some influence on whether certain balls are judged to be line drives or not. You'd likely need computerized analysis to fix that if it is the case.

5. Designated Sitter (GGC) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 09:30 PM (#3045821)

Today I am going to start off by climbing up on my soapbox to address one of my pet peeves, the use of Line Drive rates as a predictor for Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP).

How common is this? There has to be 100 people in the world who do this tops.

6. Delino DeShields & Yarnell Posted: January 07, 2009 at 09:54 PM (#3045845)

Pretend it's not observational errors. Could high LD% parks be inversely correlated with low HR% parks as batter behavior/discipline/whatever is affected? [A cursory look at the rankings doesn't support this, I guess.] [Can a HR be a LD?]

7. Justin T contains indigenous nudity Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:02 PM (#3045851)

How common is this? There has to be 100 people in the world who do this tops.

Well, those 100 people are clustered in one small segment of the population; people who like baseball stats. So someone who is also interested in baseball stats is going to be exposed to it quite a bit. And I don't see why someone should be precluded from having a pet peeve if not a lot of people are offenders.

8. galaxieboi Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:02 PM (#3045852)

I believe any HR is classified as a FB.

9. Jim (jimmuscomp) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:20 PM (#3045861)

I believe any HR is classified as a FB.

Is this true? That seems silly and arbitrary if it is true. I have seen many HR's that were laser-beams. Wasn't McGwire's #62 just crushed down the LF line and just over the fence? That didn't feel like a FB - but I might be completely out of line here - lord knows I'm not the guy to go waxing poetic about LD% and BABIP data...

10. Designated Sitter (GGC) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:33 PM (#3045875)

Well, those 100 people are clustered in one small segment of the population; people who like baseball stats. So someone who is also interested in baseball stats is going to be exposed to it quite a bit. And I don't see why someone should be precluded from having a pet peeve if not a lot of people are offenders.

I suppose, but it seems even more hardcore than the typical fare here. It sounds like the type of discussion they'd have at that old Fanhome board that Tango used to hang out at.

11. Justin T contains indigenous nudity Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:41 PM (#3045880)

You are referring to the tone of the article? Aside from that first sentence it came across as level-headed to me.

12. Barnaby Jones Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:50 PM (#3045886)

How common is this? There has to be 100 people in the world who do this tops.

I see it quite often on team/theme specific boards. It mostly used by people who have no idea from whence it is derived or how it should be used, but just like to have authoritative statistical reasons to win petty arguments. I would guess it is these types that bother the author so much.

13. Designated Sitter (GGC) Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:50 PM (#3045887)

No, I was just curious how often folks will look at a Nick Swisher and expect him to improve due to his LD%. I haven't RTFA, but I have heard that about scorers not having uniform definitions for liners and flies. Did they ever come up with the fliner category yet?

14. Justin T contains indigenous nudity Posted: January 07, 2009 at 10:55 PM (#3045891)

No idea there, GGC. I'm not on the cutting edge of any of this stuff, I just read some of it and retain far less. But if I am understanding you correctly now, I don't think the article is too hardcore for BTF. It definitely speaks to some of us, and may even lead to a solid discussion such as the one about positional adjustments recently.

15. KJOK Posted: January 07, 2009 at 11:00 PM (#3045894)

There are certainly biases with the Retrosheet scorers, since a different set of scorers are used in each city.

But I thought most of the people doing this type of analysis were at The Hardball Times, and they use BIS data I believe not Retrosheet, and the BIS data is input by a central team in Pennsylvania, so IF there are biases in the Retrosheet scoring, it should be easy to see by comparing it to the BIS data.

16. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 12:31 AM (#3045953)

How can park have such a big effect on line drive rate?

Ballpark, scorers, environmental - has yet to be sorted out.

IOW whether a ball falls in for a hit or not may have some influence on whether certain balls are judged to be line drives or not

I will look into that

There has to be 100 people in the world who do this tops

And many of them write for Baseball Prospectus

17. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 01:06 AM (#3045970)

I believe any HR is classified as a FB.

Not true. 12% of the out of the park HRs are coded as LDs

18. John DiFool2 Posted: January 08, 2009 at 01:32 AM (#3045977)

You'd likely need computerized analysis to fix that if it is the case.

What they need is either stopwatches to measure time of flight off the bat (or feet/second for grounders) to glove or ground (or fence), or some way for a computer to measure that off a broadcast. If I know that a 300 foot ball hit off of Dustin Pedroia's bat on average will have a time of flight of 3.2 seconds (by all means get the SD and such too), while Jason Giambi averages 3.8 seconds for the same distance, that tells me a lot more than their "line drive" percentages do. We could model a game of baseball in a very detailed way, if someone were to go to said lengths to measure it.

19. a bebop a rebop Posted: January 08, 2009 at 01:32 AM (#3045978)

No, I was just curious how often folks will look at a Nick Swisher and expect him to improve due to his LD%.

It's something I've picked up for my fantasy leagues -- I don't consider myself a hardcore stathead but it stuck. (Of course Nick Swisher never quite made it happen this year.)

20. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 02:23 AM (#3046001)

Currently, each batted ball in RetroSheet is coded with FLD_CD for which position it was hit to, and BATTEDBALL_CD or whether it was LD, FB, PU or GB, and then of course the result. Eventually we could have Horizontal Angle, Vertical Angle, Distance Traveled, and Speed Off Bat. (Well, Greg already has that at his site, for HRs)

21. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 02:27 AM (#3046003)

Or horizontal angle, distance and hang time (several of these can be computed from one another).

Then if we have a ball hit 300 ft to right-center (+20 degrees) with a hang time of 3.1 seconds, then for each ballpark, what percent are outs, singles, doubles, triples, inside park homeuns. How do those percents vary by who's playing the outfield?

22. Francoeur Sans Gages (AlouGoodbye) Posted: January 08, 2009 at 02:54 AM (#3046012)

Even so, some pitchers consistently defy the estimates. Roger Clemens, Brian Bannister, Chien-Ming Wang, Carlos Zambrano, Dan Haren, Brandon Webb, Chris Young and Greg Maddux all do at least .020 better than estimated.

I look at this list and to me it screams "groundball elite."

This seems completely bizarre. How can park have such a big effect on line drive rate?

In addition to the above suggestions, the size of the foul area could be a factor.

23. Mike Emeigh

Posted: January 08, 2009 at 03:11 AM (#3046017)

Even so, some pitchers consistently defy the estimates. Roger Clemens, Brian Bannister, Chien-Ming Wang, Carlos Zambrano, Dan Haren, Brandon Webb, Chris Young and Greg Maddux all do at least .020 better than estimated.

I look at this list and to me it screams "groundball elite."

Yup. And the other side of the list - Duke, Ponson, and Rusch - are all flyball pitchers without a real swing-and-miss pitch.

-- MWE

24. greenback

Posted: January 08, 2009 at 03:40 AM (#3046027)

Yup. And the other side of the list - Duke, Ponson, and Rusch - are all flyball pitchers without a real swing-and-miss pitch.

Ponson's a groundball pitcher.

Chris Young's one of the leading flyball pitchers.

A year ago you said Haren had "flyball tendencies". I don't know what he is though.

25. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 03:51 AM (#3046036)

Yup. And the other side of the list - Duke, Ponson, and Rusch - are all flyball pitchers without a real swing-and-miss pitch.

But I got those numbers by taking (GBHlg/GBlg)*GB+(FBHlg/FBlg)*FB+(LDHlg/LDlg)*LD - it takes into account how mahy grounders, flies and liners a pitcher throws. These pitchers are, over a multi-year sample, getting better (or worse) results than the league average on their LD, GB & FB.

Part of this is certainly the defense they are playing in front of, probably less the ballpark, and even less the batters they face (over up to six years there should be close to a random sample of batters). These can all be measured and accounted for by using play by play. What is left should be the pitcher's true talent.

26. Jim (jimmuscomp) Posted: January 08, 2009 at 03:59 AM (#3046041)

Not true. 12% of the out of the park HRs are coded as LDs

Thanks StillFlash. That didn't seem like it could be right. And, anecdotally, that 12% feels right.

27. StillFlash Posted: January 08, 2009 at 04:05 AM (#3046047)

I look at this list and to me it screams "groundball elite."

Yup. And the other side of the list - Duke, Ponson, and Rusch - are all flyball pitchers without a real swing-and-miss pitch

LD/GB/FB/PU
League 20/46/30/08

Clemens 19/51/28/06
Bannister 22/42/31/10
Wang 19/62/17/04
Zambrano 17/54/25/08
Haren 22/47/27/08
Webb 17/68/17/03
Young 20/31/38/16
Maddux 20/56/24/05

Duke 20/54/25/06
Ponson 18/55/25/05
Rusch 22/44/31/09

Chris Young gets a ton of popups (PetCo foul fly PF 1.00) and a lot of fly balls in a big park.

Duke & Ponson's batted ball mix are virtually identical to Zambrano & Maddux's.

Do pitchers who don't get swing & miss get hit harder? Didn't seem to affect Maddux. Defense needs to be accounted for. Coming soon.

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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Fan Graphs: Cartwright: What I Hate About Line Drives

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