
Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles - jaydub
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/sports/mlb-launch-angles-story/?utm_term=.bf67cdee5d05
======
Lukeas14
>"The increase in frequency and efficiency of defensive shifts. According to
FanGraphs, teams are shifting at a rate nearly 10 times greater than six years
ago"

This should be more prominent and is likely the root cause of guys swinging
for homeruns more often. Every hitter will eventually fall into a pattern
where they're hitting certain pitches to only a certain part of the field.
With the increase in data it's much easier for teams to recognize these
patterns and position their fielders to compensate. So if you made your living
hitting line drive basehits to shallow left field, halfway through the season
every team will pick up on that and place an extra infielder right in your
sweet spot. The same hits that got you through college and into the major
leagues are now outs. This has been such a huge change that MLB thought about
outlawing defensive shifts (I personally enjoy seeing the constant back and
forth of strategy between offensive and defense which has always been a part
of the major leagues). The obvious solution like the article mentions comes
down to "the one ball that can’t be caught is the one that lands in the
seats".

This is also highly dependent on the type of hitter. If you're Yankee's 6'7"
right fielder Aaron Judge then swinging for the fences with a higher launch
angle makes perfect sense. However, if you're Dee Gordon, one of the fastest
players in the league who weighs about 175lbs, keeping the ball low is
probably still going to result in higher batting and slugging percentages.
Guys like Bryce Harper who can hit for power and average do seem to be leaning
more towards power, which used to only happen later in their career (ex. Barry
Bonds). In my observation, it seems like players such as Dee Gordon are slowly
becoming obsolete as teams are prefering the long ball to playing "small
ball". You certainly don't see as many teams with a true, stereotypical
"leadoff guy" these days and many teams seem stacked with guys who would have
been labelled "cleanup hitters" 10 years ago.

~~~
bryanbuckley
Does it suggest that leadoff guys will be cheaper in the future? The next
moneyball trend will be fast guys who can accurately place hits?

~~~
pgodzin
There's been a trend recently to put high OBP bats at leadoff regardless of
their speed (see Kyle Schwarber)

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jjuel
And Schwarber as leadoff was a horrendous failure. See his .162 avg and .289
obp this year.

~~~
spike021
Yet he's still in the top 5 for the All Star pick; meh.

~~~
pgodzin
All Star voting doesn't mean anything other than popularity

~~~
spike021
Exactly. That then means actual performance doesn't matter to many fans, which
is unfortunate considering how interesting this kind of data is and how
players use it to improve their game.

~~~
pgodzin
Of course performance matters, just not for voting for a meaningless game
(that was stupidly given meaning). Schwarber isn't going to be suddenly become
thrilled with how well his season is going just because he finishes fifth in
ASG voting.

~~~
spike021
> That then means actual performance doesn't matter to many fans

of course performance matters, but you missed my point: a large amount of fans
completely ignore statistical performance. This is most evident with Giants
fans in particular this season who absolutely despise Hunter Strickland and
say he should be kicked from the team when he's been pitching at least league
average, if not better, and has been the best relief pitcher on the team. Not
to mention they call him a "home run vending machine" when he's only given up
4 in the past 1.5 seasons.

~~~
pgodzin
I think Giants fans would treat their players better if the team was 11 games
over .500 instead of under and if their best reliever wasn't league average.
I'm not saying all fans are rational, many are emotional/ignorant and act on
perceived performance rather than real performance. Don't know much about
Strickland's career, but if he was perfect with a 3 run lead but awful with a
1 run lead, it makes sense why fans wouldn't be thrilled despite the
underlying stats. But most do care about performance, and they won't pretend
like Schwarber has been good this year. His popularity is heavily reliant on
his past performance, including the World Series.

~~~
spike021
Nah, their complaints about Strickland happened last year as well, even into
the NLDS, when he had only given up 4 home runs all year. He does well in most
situations. If anything when he was still a rookie he needed to improve
because he only had one pitch, but now he has a few.

------
kodablah
Regardless of analytics, baseball is a game of reactions. Pitchers who
traditionally made pitches to induce popups will inevitably change to induce
grounders (by pitch choice, location, and/or speed). The beauty of the sport
is that the sample sizes can get large enough to make legitimate inferences
from the data unlike many other sports.

For those specifically curious about baseball and statistics, both
[http://www.fangraphs.com/](http://www.fangraphs.com/) and
[http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/](http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/) are
great sites.

~~~
phamilton
For those not too familiar with professional baseball, there are 162 games in
a season. A player starting every game would likely see 600+ at bats. A
starting pitcher pitches every 5-6 days and will face 600+ batters per season.
League wide there are about 125k outs recorded per season on 700k pitches.

That's a ton of data. It allows you to ask questions like "What is the
likelihood that a curveball is thrown for a strike on a 3-0 count in the 8th
inning?" and get statistically significant results.

~~~
kodablah
For those wanting to play w/ the data, there are a lot of resources [0]. I
personally have combined older retrosheet data [1] with modern MLB data to
some neat uses, not the least of which to try out tech like Druid (big data,
live slicing, etc). E.g. If you wanted data from Sunday's Houston vs Texas
game, GDX has tons of XML for parsing at [2]. There are plenty of guides that
tell you what is what of course. It has been on my mind to develop a
tensorflow graph trained w/ existing data to help me win some
FanDuel/DraftKings money, but I haven't as of yet (and I should note the MLB
data has restrictions against bulk or commercial use).

0 - [https://github.com/baseballhackday/data-and-
resources/wiki/R...](https://github.com/baseballhackday/data-and-
resources/wiki/Resources-and-ideas)

1 - [http://retrosheet.org/](http://retrosheet.org/)

2 -
[http://gdx.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2017/month_06/da...](http://gdx.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2017/month_06/day_04/gid_2017_06_04_houmlb_texmlb_1/)

~~~
jarrettch
Thank you so much for these links. Recently I've thought about building
something data viz and stats related using baseball stats.

I know MLBAM has a bunch of data they keep to themselves, but I should
definitely be able to find something to play with here. Many thanks for
sharing!

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habosa
As many have said this is a tactical reaction to changes in pitching and
defense.

It always amazes me how balanced the game of baseball is compared to other
sports. It's been around for more than a century and people have become so
much stronger and faster on both sides of the ball. Still, offense and defense
remain so perfectly matched. The bases remain 90 feet apart and the pitcher
still throws from 60 feet away. A home run is still 400 feet.

Consider basketball which has had to dramatically rebalance the rules over
time. Restrictions on time in the paint, the 3 point line, perimeter defense,
etc. Or how hockey changed all the rules after the lockout. Or how football
has totally re worked pass defense and special teams.

Baseball is just baseball.

~~~
Twirrim
Rugby has remained Rugby, pretty much.

There's been various changes over the years, juggling points for tries and
penalties, introducing sin bins, and so on, but it isn't really anything
fundamental.

Where you do see changes has been in the physique of players, and to some
extent it's cyclical. Teams adapt to circumstances, player sizes and types
change, and then some outlier will come along and with a visionary coach shake
things up again.

Wings used to be lighter sprinters, then Jonah Lomu came along and proved that
wings could be big (at 6' 5" he towered over most players, average height for
the time was 6' 1") and still fast.

People just didn't have the strength or weight to stop him, especially out on
the wings. Players of sufficient size would typically be one of the forwards,
the bigger players that dominate a scrum.

Teams adapted to the new paradigm though, wingers started getting bigger and
stronger as tactics changed, and we've seen size and weight fluctuate back and
forth a bit, sometimes internationals favour lighter faster, sometimes
slightly slower but stronger.

~~~
unethical_ban
Ehh, I'm in a club with some old timer alumni, and the stories they tell (and
1970s rugby videos on Youtube I've seen) tell a different story.

Even 20 years ago at a club level, many things were allowed that aren't now:
Quicker scrums, high tackles, raking the ruck with cleats, and general
hooliganism seem to have been more par for the course than today.

I saw a match from 1977, and there was no Croutch/Bind/Set. The scrum just
walked up toward each other and engaged immediately. More dangerous, but a lot
different than today. The line-outs didn't lift; the hooker threw the ball in
like a football lob.

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mtalantikite
Reminds me of an old episode of Seinfeld, where George teaches the Yankees how
to hit based on simple physics:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTwE7xDZkPk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTwE7xDZkPk)

~~~
dogruck
Brilliant. "In 6 games."

~~~
RoutinePlayer
I absolutely love that line... Yes, you just won a WS, but it took you 6
games!... LOL

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huangc10
The scrolling infographic was a very nice touch, especially with the DBZ style
animation.

It's only natural that in little league coaches tell players to hit ground
balls because kids have trouble fielding (it requires extreme precision,
speed, and dexterity).

It's also quite obvious that you have to hit the ball high and hard to get a
triple or home-run. Good to know data backs this up.

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nickysielicki
In the past week, a new record was set for the amount of grand-slams occurring
on a single day. 7 grand slams!

Fun time to be a baseball fan.

[http://m.mlb.com/news/article/234270104/7-players-hit-
grand-...](http://m.mlb.com/news/article/234270104/7-players-hit-grand-slams-
in-one-day/?topicId=27118122)

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brianzelip
The data visualization animation with descriptive text scroll on mobile is
awesome, nice work WaPo webdevs.

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aidenn0
Five Thirty Eight did an article claiming that the results of this strategy
have been mixed:

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-fly-ball-
revolution...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-fly-ball-revolution-
is-hurting-as-many-batters-as-its-helped/)

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howeyc
Interesting how the article mentions it would seem intuitive to someone new to
the game as well. Just hit where there's less defense and more area to cover,
the outfield.

~~~
pgodzin
Sure, more area to cover but also a lot more time to get there. It's less
trying to hit to the outfield, but rather hit homeruns. The problem is that
it's easier said than done, and the old philosophy (look at Ichiro for
example), was higher average and putting the ball in play was preferable to
loading up and trying to hit a homerun. Now strikeouts and homeruns are way
up, but batting averages are down.

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mannykannot
I wonder if it is just chance that the 2016 average launch angle appears as
though it may have favorable outcomes over the broadest range of exit
velocities, and just below the angle where the distribution begins to go
bimodal? It would be interesting to see how the featured players' hitting is
distributed over speed and elevation (and if I am really interested, I am sure
I can find the data...)

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melling
This a recycled WSJ article from May 18. Here's the story, if you can get
access:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ryan-zimmerman-became-a-
slu...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ryan-zimmerman-became-a-slugger-
again-on-the-fly-1494873943)

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bryanbuckley
Was there an answer to the question in the title? Just better analytics on the
offensive side of things? They mention Oakland A's value approach in getting
players.

Clearly wouldn't have been a good choice for Ichiro..

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bitwize
Doubtless for the same reason I'm concerned with them while playing as
Junkrat: the relation between launch angle and flight distance.

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idibidiartists
Taking the fun out of sport, for profit. :)

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oso2k
I may be that the moneyball strategy becomes an architectural one; make the
walls taller or less conventional like they used to be in the 1920s and 1930s.

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ckirksey
NY Times is so freakin beautiful

~~~
pgodzin
It's the Washington Post

~~~
craigvn
Yeah, but his point still stands. :-)

