A New View
Pitching in the game today has become just like Real Estate, location, location, location. Ever since the game has evolved into a lap top statistical approach, coaches, scouts, and now even players are able to view everyone’s tendencies. A batter knows that on a 2-2 pitch with two outs in a tie game, a certain pitch will be thrown 88% of the time in a certain location. That is one reason Boston is able to hit Mariano so well. They know where is pitch is going each time he throws it. Then when you get a pitcher that misses his spots he becomes a sitting duck for batters. You are Kevin Millar; Dotel comes in and is not throwing the ball to where the catcher is giving his target. Now you know you have a chance that if he misses his location, and you are waiting for that spot, you can hit it to the light tower. All this has come about from players looking at, and understanding pitch sequence charts, and pitchers knowing batters hit spray charts. It was one thing when the scouts and coaches understood the advantage of these computer generated statistics, but now many of the players are taking advantage of this information. The MLB player of this millennium does not just go up to bat with the idea of just seeing the ball and hitting it anymore. He must be able to digest statistical analysis in his head, and use this to his advantage on every swing. In this realistic video generation we live in, more numbers are being used to help batters and pitchers gain on edge. One can only guess where the next piece of useful information will come from. My guess is defense, the last frontier of statistical information. The first way to look at the field is from a different angle. A new view. Most of the game viewed from a camera shows the view from behind the pitcher, toward the batter. What if you reverse the camera, and looked from the batter toward the field? Defense will be viewed in a new light. When a left fielder like Byrnes ranges 45 feet, dives and makes a catch on a ball that took 3 seconds from the bat to the glove, you can now measure what a great play it really was. Simply dividing that time 3 by the distance 45 gives you a Reaction and Range statistic of .067. Then when you take missed plays this number becomes even more valuable. Right before Byrnes hit his home run off Foulke Wednesday he hit a high fly that landed foul, but nobody reached. Once you get the player (Payton) to look at the play and show him that in the 5.5 seconds that it took for the ball to land foul, he should have been able to cover the 50 feet from where he was positioned on the play, and make the catch. Soon in the future, just as pitchers and batters understand new statistical information, fielders too will understand if they can’t make plays they will be held accountable for poor plays in the field. Conversely a player like Orlando Hudson will have so many great numbers on his defensive resume, that not only will his value as a superior second baseman go up, so too will his contract. Once teams start using these numbers in arbitration players will not only understand their short comings in fielding, they will also improve on reacting better and ranging further, because they will figure out it will put more cash in their pockets, by improving their defense.
I am The Fan’s Commish
Rick Swanson