Friday, July 1, 2016

Nike designing Shoe Specifically for Taysom Hill

With injury prevention the next frontier in analytics, I think it's fascinating that Nike's R&D department is designing a shoe specifically for Taysom.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Wei-Chung Wang doesn't recognize FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), or does he?

A little dated, but in this interview with Kyle Lesniewski of Reviewing the Brew, he fielded this question about awareness of advanced pitching statistics:

The advanced stats say you may be suffering from some bad luck this season, given your high BABIP rate (.357 despite low 32.8% ground ball and 13.6% line drive rates) and low FIP. Do you look at the advanced stats at all, or do you focus more on the traditional things like wins and ERA?
This was Wang's reply: 

Wins and losses mean little at this level of the minors, so I don’t really pay attention to my win-loss record and I don’t look at my ERA. I keep my focus on the things I can specifically control during the games I pitch, especially walks and home runs. 
So though he did not assent to knowledge FIP, he appears to know that he could only control things like BB and HR, which along with K, comprises FIP. This is the FIP Formula;
(13*HR+3*(HBP+BB)-2*K)/IP+3.2

Friday, January 15, 2016

Wei-yin Chen and the Art of Changing Speeds

According to this Fangraphs article, Chen is among the top twenty pitchers in changing speeds, averaging a 18.2 difference between his fastball (92 mph) and his curve (73 mph).

Wei-yin Chen and Exit Speed Suppression

FiveThirtyEight.com has an article on exit speed, the speed of the ball as it comes off the bat. Apparently, Chen leads the MLB in suppressing said speed.