Baseball Graphs

Batter Types

Using Batted Ball Info to typecast batters.

One thing I’ve wanted to do is use the batted ball library to investigate ways to categorize batters.  When we think of pitchers, we automatically think of strikeout pitchers, or groundball pitchers.  But when we think of batters, we tend to think of home run hitters, or hitters for average.  Nothing wrong with that, but I’ve wondered if there’s a more insightful way to categorize the men at the plate.

So here’s what I did.

Dave,

Minor (unimportant) mistake: A player 2 SD above the mean is actually in the 97th percentile (97.5% of players are worse), 1 SD above the mean is in the 84th percentile, etc. The 68/95/99.7 rule refers to both tails of the distribution.

Thanks, David.  I love the Internet.

This is terrific.  Can’t wait for the pitcher spreadsheet….  :>)