Pitch by Pitch

In my column today on Baseball Prospectus I take a pitch by pitch look at the almost no-hitter of Yankees rookie Phillip Hughes on May 1st using the enhanced GameDay data provided by MLBAM. Joe P. Sheehan over at Baseball Analysts has pioneered alot of the analysis and so you'll want to check out his work as well.

To me, the interesting aspect of this is in how it will certainly be combined with bio mechanical analysis in order to provide quantitative support for what is today primarily observational. A synthesis of the two worlds will offer insights that neither could provide independently and that's exciting stuff.

Update: My article actually was published after this one by John Beamer at THT where he looks at the consistency of the data between parks. Obviously, if I had seen this I would have mentioned it but interestingly, his research on Kevin Millwood, who has pitched at five of the eight parks in which the Enhanced GameDay system is installed, suggests that there may be some park bias in play. Particularly he sees this in speed and location (for example location of release point). Both of course become much more useful when you can compare them from game to game. If indeed the system has built-in biases, either adjustments will have to be made internal to the system (if possible since a variable like mound height may be a contributing factor as may atmospheric conditions although Beamer finds that unlikely) or those using the data will have to make the adjustments themselves. The second option is certainly not appealing.