Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 20, 2008
Post Season Scouting

Jim Salisbury writes about the Phillies efforts to prepare themselves for their post-season opponents:

In the first inning of that game, the Dodgers' Manny Ramirez drew a two-out walk. The next batter, Russell Martin, worked a 2-2 count against Cole Hamels. The Phillies' scouting report on Martin, a righthanded hitter, said that he became very aggressive with two strikes and often tried to hook the ball to the left. Aware of the report, Phillies coaches moved third baseman Pedro Feliz a half-step toward the line. Martin pounded a ground ball to third, and Feliz threw to second to force out Ramirez.

These are the little nuances that can help a team win a big ball game, the little observations provided by advance scouts.

I have to believe databases make this job easier. Observations the scouts make can now be confirmed by examining pitch selection and hit charts, allowing teams to filter out good impressions from bad ones.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:45 AM | Post Season | TrackBack (0)
Comments

You need the advance scouts to lay eyeballs on the players, but the use of observational analysis (PITCHf/x, and, eventually, HITf/x and FIELDf/x) will not only augment the old-fashioned (still valuable) analysis, but make it cheaper (less cross-checking) and evens the playing field.

I'm anxiously (hah) awaiting MLBAM and Sportvision to come up with a model that makes money for them by installing the system in minor league (or even NCAA) parks. That would lead to a big boom in baseball scouting.

Posted by: Harry Pavlidis at October 20, 2008 12:40 PM

What are MLBAM and Sportvision? Where is the best source of f/x data? MLB.com?

Posted by: Sean at October 20, 2008 01:27 PM

Sportvision provides the pitch tracking technology, MLB Advanced Media does Gameday and all the cool stuff you see on mlb.com. And the data can be downloaded from mlb.com.

Posted by: Harry Pavlidis at October 20, 2008 09:04 PM
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