Major League Baseball has announced that its revered Statcast system will now generate Hit Probability and Catch Probability ratings for batted balls this season.
MLB plans to incorporate new Catch and Hit Probability metrics into its BaseballSavant.com searchable database, and to feature the content on MLB Network and MLB gameday broadcasts.
New Hit and Catch Probability Metrics are derived from data points that have been tracked by the Statcast system since its inception. Hit Probability will be determined by combining two variables — launch angle and exit velocity — while Catch Probability will examine the distance needed for a player to make a catch along with the “opportunity time” from the release of the pitch to its ultimate landing spot.
Statcast’s ultra high resolution cameras, and Doppler radar tracking system produced 53,380,301 metrics during the 2016 season alone, according to a Yahoo Sports report. The challenge for the powerful system thus far, however, has been converting cruise ship loads of data points into higher ratings.
“What we’re trying to do is we want to make it relevant and relative,” MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman told the website. “Relevant to what fans are watching right now and relative to other players and similar situations.”
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During the 2016 National League Division Series, New York Mets centerfielder Curtis Granderson made a highlight reel catch to steal a hit from San Francisco Giants first baseman Brandon Belt. The slew of Statcast measurements and data points that followed was dizzying to some, and yawn inspiring to others.
MLBAM intends to humanize the data for the average viewer. Catch and Hit probabilities will ultimately be scaled down into more digestible percentages. Viewers will instantly understand that Belt’s blast resulted in a hit 95 percent of the time.
Catch Probability ratings will take the percentages a step further, separating the results into tiered star ratings. Granderson’s grab garnered five stars — instant credibility. It’s like a layman’s introduction to sabermetrics. A walk before we run approach.
“We’re mindful that there are people out there who want to say, ‘Did he make the catch or not?’” Bowman told Yahoo Sports. “We’re trying to add one piece of data that even casual fans would say, ‘I can listen to that.’”
Statcast’s reign on the world of baseball statistics is still in its infancy, and its assimilation into the average American living room is slow going. The MLBAM team will look to do away with the “brute force” method of force feeding analytics to viewers, and hopefully boost ratings with a scaled down approach.
“If they have a question, we’ll have an answer,” sabermetric genius Tom Tango, who goes by a pseudonym, told Yahoo. “But if they don’t have a question, we’re not going to force them to look at anything.”