Red Reporter: Slyde: Edinson Volquez and my attempt to explain a new graph

Whoa!...My Juxtapoz splash page just fell out!

Below you will see a graph of all of the pitches for Edinson Volquez in 2008 that registered with the Pitch F/X computers (3243 of 3389 pitches).  The pitches have been aggregated into circles that represent a specific zone around the plate. Width-wise, the circles are the size of an actual baseball, but for mundane reasons, the height of the ball is a calculated strike zone divided by 8 and usually comes out to about an eighth to a quarter of an inch smaller than the ball.  The balls on the perimeter represent every pitch that is more than the ball’s radius outside of the strikezone, so obviously those balls are nowhere near representative size, but they make the graph look nice.

The colors come in three hues.  The red circles represent zones where the batter makes better than average contact per swing in that zone.  Blue circles represent less than average contact and gray circles indicate that less than 0.5% of the pitches in the sample were in that zone.  The shade of the circle also has meaning as circles with a darker shade mean that the batter swings more frequently at pitches in that zone, while circles with a lighter shade represent fewer swings per pitch.

Finally, the numbers in the circle represent the slugging percentage of the batter(s) on pitches in that zone.  I feel like slugging is most representative of the type of contact being made by the batter, so that’s why I chose it over the batting average in the Ted Williams’ picture.