Tracking Home Runs
July 10, 2006
If you watch tonight’s Home Run Derby, you might want to follow along at Hit Tracker. At Hit Tracker, they plan to use their patented technology to measure the distance of every home run. True, ESPN will reportedly use “laser technology” to do the same thing, but Hit Tracker also calculates the speed of the home run off the bat, and measures home runs based on where it would have landed if it hadn’t hit the stands.
Actually, it may be most interesting to see where ESPN and Hit Tracker disagree, and why. The science of home run distancing really isn’t much of a science at all. At least, not yet.
Meanwhile, back in Win Probability Added land, Alan Schwarz wrote a weekend article for the New York Times (subscription required) using WPA to review some of the All-Star selections. It’s a nice effort, though I think Alan has it wrong when he says that “Good players on excellent teams tend to have higher W.P.A.‘s because they usually participate in more victories.” I’m pretty sure that good players on excellent teams are handicapped because they have less chance to impact a game if their team is ahead most of the time.
Players who might do particularly well in WPA are those who do well in high-leverage situations. In other words, good players who play in a lot of close games will tend to have higher WPA’s, just as top relievers in high-leverage situations will have higher WPA’s than top relievers in low-leverage situations.
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