Sunday, March 03, 2019
Performance by Launch Angle
?
This is for all tracked balls, for players with at least 100 tracked batted balls.
It is a dual axis, but there's a good reason for it. I know there are graphistas out there who simply refuse the secondary axis. In this case, you will see why you are wrong. Join me.
Let's take it one at a time. The blue line is wOBA, and we see we maximize performance at either close to 12 degrees (which is where hits are maximized) or close to 28 degrees (which is where HR are maximized). A wOBA of .500+, which is better than Mike Trout, happens at launch angles of around 4 to 33 degrees.
The orange line is the HR rate. For you graphistas: BOTH axis apply. Work with me here. On the right side is the frequency, meaning the percentage of batted balls that are HR. So right close to 28 degrees, that's over 25%, which you can see by the axis on the right. In addition, each HR has a wOBA value of 2.000. And so, if you have 25% of batted balls that are HR, then you are adding 0.500 of wOBA value due to HR. Which you can also see with the axis on the left. And so, that orange line is represented by both axis! Yes, graphistas, you have met your match with the dual axis.
Finally, the gray line. What I did is for each hitter, I tagged his personal hard hit rate as his one-third hardest hit balls. And so, that gray line represents all the hardest hit balls, equally represented by all hitters. And we can see that the hardest hit balls are at the range of 8 to 16 degree launch angle. Which, not coincidentally, also coincides with the maximum wOBA at 12 degrees.
This is not to say that EVERYONE should have the same launch angle. But, there is a range in launch angle in which you need to have in order to find success. And that's why launch angles are important to know.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 150 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers