Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 04, 2009
Outfield Distribution

Mike Fast explores DIPS at The Hardball Times. He includes a graph of the distribution of fly balls and line drives to the outfield and notes they peak at the three outfield positions:

Oddly enough, we see both fly balls and line drives peaking around the typical positions of the three outfielders and dipping in the gaps and along the lines. I can't think of any reason for balls in the air to preferentially group around those three vectors, so I assume that must be a scoring bias. Accurately marking the location of a ball fielded in the middle of a vast outfield expanse free of landmarks is a challenge, and the MLB stringer may tend to mark the fielding location closer toward the typical fielding position of whichever outfielder fielded the ball. I don't know whether BIS and STATS data suffer from a similar bias.

As I wrote him, I don't think it's a bias, I think it's real. I noticed the same pattern when I worked at STATS, Inc. STATS uses up to three reporter accounts to determine placement of the ball, so their data shouldn't be biased. In addition, the primary reporter is at the park, so he doesn't get fooled by TV angles. The only explanation I have is that those are good vectors for getting line drives by infielders, so to the extent a player can direct his hits, those are good places for the ball to go.

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Posted by David Pinto at 08:00 PM | Statistics | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I can think of an explanation.

There must be some spots that get more fly balls than other spots. Obviously, a team is going to deploy its outfielders at those spots. Therefore, we should expect to see more fly balls hit to the spots where the outfielders are.

What's wrong with that explanation? It seems so simple.

Posted by: James at March 4, 2009 08:27 PM

Note that DiPS asserts the *pitcher* has little or no control over the ball's placement once it's put into play. As far as I know, there is no equivalent theory for hitters, for the simple reason that studies show hitters do have some control over where they put the ball in play.

Since they have that control, if there's a locus for those spots (perhaps based on observable swing paths), that's where the fielders will play.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying "What James said." :

Posted by: Subrata Sircar at March 4, 2009 09:00 PM
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