Analyzing analytics: sprint speed
If you like baseball, enjoy this piece because the 2020 season could end tonight...
See if this sounds familiar: I had a lot of plans for this summer and most of them didn’t work out because the world went batshit.
I was going to spring training, but then spring training got cancelled.
I was going to visit my mom in California to celebrate her 95th birthday (she thinks it was her 96th birthday and at this point I don’t see the need to correct her), but then decided traveling on an airplane, followed up by hugging mom was dumb and dangerous, which would make an awesome title for Donald Trump’s autobiography.
And I was going to write a series about baseball analytics, but then events – COVID-19, social justice protests, the West Coast catching on fire – made baseball seem less important.
I wrote this piece a while ago and if I’m ever going to use it, today would be a good day because the Dodgers play the Rays in Game 6 of the World Series tonight and if the Dodgers win, the 2020 season is over.
So after I did a little updating, here it is.
Sprint speed
This morning I read that during the 2017 season – when he was with the Padres – Royals outfielder Franchy Cordero recorded the fourth-fastest sprint speed in the major leagues. So does that mean Cordero was the fourth-fastest player in the major leagues that year?
As usual, when you look into this stuff, it’s more complicated than it sounds and sprint speed is no exception. In this case it depends on what you mean by “fastest” so let’s dig into that.
Statcast measures sprint speed using a player’s fastest one-second window which would be extremely informative if races were one second long, but they’re not and here’s why that matters:
Say you’ve got a 5-9, 165 pound fly guy (baseball slang for players who can fly) and because he’s low to the ground and doesn’t have that much weight to get moving, reaches full speed in two steps.
Now say you’ve got a 6-2, 215 pound guy and because he’s five inches taller and has 50 extra pounds to get moving, doesn’t reach full speed until he’s taken four steps.
There’s a good chance the fly guy would beat the big guy in a race from first to second base because he’d get a faster start, but if the race were from first to home the big guy might win because once he gets going his strides are longer.
So who’s “fastest” would depend on how far those two guys were running.
Turns
In baseball, there a right way to do pretty much everything and that includes making a turn at a base and here’s the deal on that:
As a runner approaches a base, he wants to veer slightly to his right and then start his turn before touching the base and when he does that, should step on the inside corner; the part closest to home plate. Starting the turn before reaching the base keeps the runner from looping way out of the base path after touching the base and touching the inside corner shortens his trip around the bases.
So a “faster” runner who does a lousy job making turns could lose a race around the bases to a “slower” runner who had better baserunning fundamentals.
And now a story about cheating, although as often happens in baseball, it’s not considered cheating; it’s considered smart baseball.
When a runner makes a turn and heads for the next base, a smart infielder might just accidentally drift into the runner’s path. If the runner tries go around the infielder, it can cause him to take a longer path to the next base. A guy gets thrown out trying to turn a single into a double and we never think to check the first baseman and see if he altered the runner’s path.
I asked the infielder who told me about this trick what the runner should do if he figured out the infielder was getting in his way on purpose and the answer was run into the infielder and start shouting “obstruction.”
As I’ve said before: there’s a lot going on out there if you know what to look for.
Jumps and first steps
When you think about speed you also need to consider jumps and first steps. Some guys wait for the ball to be put in play to start moving, other guys get a head start and here’s how that works:
The middle infielders can see the catcher’s signs and they let the corner infielders know whether the next pitch is going to be a fastball or something off-speed. They do that with a hissing noise and they do it during the windup, too late for a base coach (who can also hear the noise) to pass the information along to the hitter.
So if I’m a third baseman and there’s a right-handed hitter at the plate and I know he’s getting an off-speed pitch, I also know the ball is likely to be pulled and come my way.
Good defenders shuffle forward before each pitch because it puts them on the balls of their feet and as long as I’m shuffling, I might as well shuffle in the right direction. Take your eye off the pitcher sometime and see what the infielders are doing during the pitcher’s windup and you’ll figure out why some guys make plays and other guys don’t.
It’s harder for the outfielders to see the catcher’s signs, but they may have a deal set up with someone on the infield to pass those signs along to the outfield and that allows them to get moving before the ball is put in play.
So once again; a “slower” defender who starts moving before contact could beat a “faster” defender to the ball.
Bottom line
I don’t want to be a baseball Luddite who thinks everything was better in the old days, mainly because they weren’t. Take a Hall of Famer from the 1950s and he’d have a hard time keeping up with today’s players because today’s players are bigger, faster and stronger and have more information at their disposal.
The game moves on and evolves and so does the way the game is evaluated.
But every time I look into one of these metrics I find something that complicates or changes the picture and the lesson here is that we shouldn’t accept those metrics without question or assume we know something for sure just because someone attaches a number to it.
And I’m 100 percent certain of that.
Enjoy tonight’s game.