WSJ: Everson: Baseball’s Nerd Machine

Since sportswriter Henry Chadwick ushered in the modern age of scorekeeping in the 1860s, the chief tool baseball analysts have used is the naked eye. Statistics in the box score cover only what can be observed: the number of runs the pitcher allowed, for example, or the doubles a hitter collected. Even the advanced “Moneyball” statistics developed in recent years also rely on what can be seen and recorded by hand.

Pitch f/x starts baseball down the path of learning how players do things—which batter hits the ball the hardest, which shortstop has the quickest reflexes, what pitcher has the nastiest slider. It showed, for instance, that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright had one of baseball’s most violent curve balls in 2007, with up to nine inches of vertical drop and more than seven inches of horizontal movement. Perhaps consequently, Mr. Wainwright had an unusually high rate of swings-and-misses against his curve (38% versus a league average of a little more than 25%), according to a sampling of data by Harry Pavlidis, a baseball analyst who writes a prominent blog about the Chicago Cubs.

Nearly everyone at the conference believed such advancements in measuring fundamentals could finally bring a “why” to the “what” of box scores and stat sheets. The same technology will spread to hitting and fielding, they say, and could be applied to other sports.

Thanks to the Bob T. summit.