Paulie's Baseball F/X

Vertical-movement vs horizontal-movement graph

2009-10-12T21:16:00.012-04:00

I thought I was going to post a day after the movement graph of Fu-Te Ni, but then I procrastinated and nothing got done. Whoops. Nonetheless, here we go.

I usually get frustrated in things that I don't fully understand. As such, when I get frustrated, I tend to not listen and get bored with whatever topic is at-hand. I think this is human nature, actually. If you don't understand something, why bother learning the more comprehensive aspects of said topic? So, in this post, I'll try to define the vertical-movement versus horizontal-movement graph as best as I possibly can -- once you understand it, it really is pretty interesting.

This post is going to be long as hell. As well, credit goes to Beyond the Box Score, The Rays Party, and Son of Sam Horn. Being the geek that I am, I had made a whole document that was presented in my college speech class last summer that was influenced a lot by their interpretation of F/X graphs. Why I did this and not something easier and probably more entertaining for students, I do not know.

Last post you saw a graph of Fu-Te Ni's movement of his slider and 4-seam fastball plotted on a graph.

From this, we can see the pitching of baseball player Fu-Te Ni from the view of the catcher (from behind the plate). Now, with this type of graph, you have to be careful, as a graph of v-movement vs. h-movement can be deceiving to the untrained eye.
Looking at this type of graph, as if it were a grid of 4 quadrants, helps understand it easier.

Every pitch has some sort of “spin” to it; whether it be topspin (it’s not dropping down with a magnitude), dropspin (it is dropping down with a magnitude) or sidespin (it’s moving to the left or right with a magnitude). When the pitch is above the x-axis, it’s considered to have topspin. When the pitch is below the x-axis, it’s considered to have dropspin. As well, when the pitch is located to the LEFT of OUR VIEW of the graph, it’s considered to have RIGHTspin; when the pitch is located to the RIGHT of OUR VIEW of the graph, it’s considered to have LEFTspin. Now, think about this for a moment. The reason this is so is because we are looking at a right-handed pitcher throwing to us, not vice versa. Because of that, their right is our left point of view. Basically, we're the catcher with the pitcher throwing the ball to us.

You might think that since a ball has topspin, wouldn’t that also mean that it’s elevating? No, anything but, actually. The vertical break in the positive direction does not mean that the ball is going up. The baseball never rises without an external force, or an angle above 0 degrees from their angle slot. You can’t throw a baseball in such a way that it will continually go up after a certain force is exerted on it based on the aforementioned conditions. The positive vertical break represents pitches that fall less than they would due to gravity because of their spin. So, a fastball wouldn’t be rising, it just would not go down quite as fast as, let’s say, a curve ball, or a slider (don't use a comma).

For a rough approximation on where a pitch will most likely end up, see Son of Sam's break guide, or just look at it right now:

(this is only my interpretation of hmovement vs vmovement. Don't take my word for it. Even though I think you should)

Couldn't wait

2009-10-07T00:02:00.001-04:00

I want to put up something that has some relevance with what I'm trying to do with this blog, and was so excited about it that I'd figure I'd take 20 minutes and do it. I am so excited for this post, even though I will most likely be the only one reading. Ah, the little things.

The data is taken from brooksbaseball.net of Detroit Tiger Fu-Te Ni's stuff -- it was from tonights' win-and-in game against the Minnesota Twins . Right-click and "View image" to see the whole brilliance that is my graph.

Unfortunately, I'm a dumbass and left the "Chart area" visible when I pasted it onto here. More on what this graph represents tomorrow in the next exciting episode of "Danny is a big nerd."

Ve are getting ahgravayted

2009-10-06T20:55:00.000-04:00

Yes, ve are.

Obscure Matrix reference, but it embodies my emotion. Simply put, the program works, but Penn State doesn't. Penn State's broken.

This website might take ~2 weeks to get off, but believe me you, it will get off. And once it's off, it will blaze with the fire of a thousand suns.

Or just be another baseball blog. One or the other.

However, I don't want to go black for those two weeks. In the meantime, I will most likely try to post some other F/X-related data that doesn't have to do with compiling data through programming. Excel is still a great vessel to use in statistics like these; as such, I might just do that for the time being.

Penn State is ruining everything

2009-10-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

I have the program up and ready on Perl, but for some reason, Perl is on the fritz at Penn State. Obviously it's something I'm missing, and since my own PC is out of commission, I can't find a solution to the abortion of a problem I have.

So, where do I go from here?

1.) E-mail the helpdesk wondering why the hell Perl isn't working on the PSU servers.
2.) Cry.
3.) Get frustrated as shit.
4.) Figure it out myself.

I can tell you from personal experience that Option numbers 3 and 4 didn't help me. Regardless, I'm going to go with e-mailing the helpdesk and seeing what the hell is going on.

2009-10-04T17:40:00.000-04:00

Well, here goes nothing.

I follow baseball way too much. So much, in fact, that I've been a little annoyed that no one has started up the type of f/x data that Josh Kalk had in his now-defunct website.

So, I thought I might as well try to make one in his glory for my own amusement. And if anyone out there finds this helpful, bonus!