Follow up to yesterday's proposal....

Sportsline logs the pitch data on a day-by-day basis! So I think it will be enough to do what I'm looking to do; by combining the play-by-play data and the "Game Charts," I can synthesize some numbers on a game-by-game basis. The sample game will be Game 2 of the New York Mets' season, the April 6 game against the Cincinnati Reds. This is entirely based off of Sportsline's judgement of where the pitches were (and a called strike is a called strike, even if Sportsline had it out of the zone).

Click here for tonight's information

I ended up recording the following numbers:

TFP% - Taken First Pitch Percentage - percent at bats in which the batter took the first pitch.
P/PA - Pitches per plate appearance
AF - Aggression Frequency - Swings on pitches out of the zone divided by total pitches.
CF - Contact Frequency - Swings with contact divided by total swings.
PTF - Pitches Taken Frequency - Number of pitches taken divided by number of pitches seen.
CSF - Called Strike Frequency - Percentage of pitches taken for strikes.

There are a lot of other derivations you can get from the information....these are the five I chose for this particular version. (I considered doing a "pitch judgement" feature, comparing balls taken to total pitches taken, but taking strikes isn't necessarily a bad thing.) As of now, I think that the best thing here to have would be to evaluate all hitters based on their aggression frequency, with the lowest AF being the "most disciplined." I'm still fooling around with comparing things to total pitches seen or total swings.....but getting the information is most important.

Anyway, I recorded every plate apperance for the Mets with the following numbers, using the Sportsline data:

• First pitch result? (swing / take)
  
• Strikes looking
  
• Foul balls (in the strike zone)
  
• Foul balls (out of the strike zone)
  
• Strikes swinging (in the strike zone)
  
• Strikes swinging (out of the strike zone)
  
• Balls
  
• Batted Balls in Play (in the strike zone)
  
• Batted Balls in Play (out of the strike zone)
  
• Total Pitches
  
• Total Strikes
  

I then combined each player's plate apperances into one line and took the percentages. I think that this information would be best with a large sampling rather than one game, but this is what I'm looking at. It takes around an hour to do one team, though, using the Sportsline information....it's very involved, unfortunately. I could theoretically track the Met starters for the year b/c that wouldn't be too involved....I could even record it while listening to the ballgame. I doubt I could keep up for a full season, though.

And I did this from around 11-12 tonight, while I should have been studying for bio.

Oh, so what were the observations from this?

- Wright, Matsui, and Beltran made contact each time they swung.
- Only Matsui did not swing at anything outside of the zone.
- 3.13 P/PA is extraordinarily low for a team. The NL average last year was 3.75...only AJ Pierzynski's 3.08 was lower.
- In his first four at bats, Reyes seemed really, really predictable (from listening to the radio broadcast and looking at the numbers). He took the first pitch each time, and then he hacked. Reyes is far, far too aggressive at the plate. His fifth plate appearance showed this clearly; he was overanxious and attacked the first pitch.
- I'm going to keep monitoring when Wright swings and misses at his first pitch.....I think that frequent contact in swings demonstrates excellent bat control....Wright and Beltran seem very good in that already.

I do want to keep looking into this....I'll see how it goes.