Vector Ball

So some of you may have read the book Moneyball. If you haven't there is a movie of the book coming out this fall with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. The book provides anecdotal evidence that using statistics (not the ones you see on the back of baseball card) can help in picking commonly overlooked, but valuable players. Michael Lewis, the author, shows how the Oakland A's found value in signing players with high on-base percentages and good power numbers. This book was written ten years ago, and a lot has change in the game since then. Teams don't give up prospects like they used to. More importantly, the market has shifted to value on-base percentage (maybe even overshifted).

My Beef 
Since the book has come out everyone and their brother has invented new metrics that will evaluate a player. I don't pay much attention to these, and I'm sure they work fine in evaluating major and minor league players. The problem is, evaluating professional players is relatively straight forward, especially in the major leagues. Take Adrian Gonzales for example, the Red Sox signed him because they knew he had a ton of power to left field. They went after this guy for years, and now that he is there, sure enough he is crushing a bunch of doubles. They know everything about these guys, so having a bunch of "sabermetrician", which is what baseball mathematicians/statisticians like to be called, is an easy job in my opinion.

If I were a GM I would place much more of my resources in finding talent. I admit, they do spend a lot on this already, but they should do more. Once a guy is on your roster making a decision on a single player is very manageable. You have a good idea how good all your players are in your system and a relatively good idea what they are worth to other teams. What is very hard is getting the best players on your team through the draft......But how?

I'm glad you asked. The answer:

This is something I have been thinking about for years. Granted it might be as realistic as inventing a time machine, but hear me out.

It is a pretty well known fact among both baseball people and sabermetrician that line drives are a good thing. The hardball times claims 75% of line drives end in hits. In major league games they can track the path of the ball off the bat using cameras, and keep a statistic on line drive percentage (ld%). Here are the line-drive percentages of the twins players with at least 200 at-bats last year.

Name	LD%
Joe Mauer	24.20%
Justin Morneau	22.00%
Jim Thome	21.40%
Orlando Hudson	20.60%
Jason Kubel	19.20%
Danny Valencia	18.80%
Denard Span	18.00%
Michael Cuddyer	17.30%
J.J. Hardy	16.90%
Delmon Young	15.50%
Nick Punto	15.10%

The way I think about this is, who is most likely to  give you a decent at bat. Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, and Jim Thome on the top. Delmon Young and Nick Punto at the bottom. Delmon Young actually had pretty good year in terms of traditional statistics, but seriously how many times have we seen him ground out to the pitcher or fly out to shallow center (usually on the first pitch)?

The Delmon Young example, though, brings up huge problem in drafting high school and even college players. With the exception of the top few picks, it is impossible for scouts to get many looks at the "draftable" players. They end up relying on misleading statistics (explained in Moneyball). How can they tell the difference between two players with similar numbers (and of course speed, arm strength etc). My guess is it is generally a gut feeling based on a the few games they watched. What they really need to know is how many line-drives the kid hit. They could have had a very lucky or unlucky year in terms of hits falling, but someone who hits a bunch of line-drives will end up succeeding in time.

That's why I think all baseballs should have a tracking device in them that can store the speed and direction a ball travels when it leaves the bat. I call this the vector ball. I realize this post is getting pretty long, so maybe I will revisit the value of the vector ball in later posts. Also, I must give credit to the the vector ball logo to my talented wife.....Pretty cool huh?