2012 Opening Day Heat Maps

[gp956]

Career heatmaps for 11 of the 13 Giants position players.

 

[gp956]

Angel Pagan

 

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Melky Cabrera

 

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Buster Posey

 

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Pablo Sandoval

 

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Aubrey Huff

 

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Ryan Theriot

 

[gp956]

Brandon Belt

 

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Emmanual Burris

 

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Brandon Crawford

 

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Gregor Blanco

 

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Nate Schierholtz

 

[gp956]

These are all presented on the same scale, with a .500 wOBA being the top of the scale. Note: league average wOBA is around .330, and, of course, for each player that's an aggregation of all the zones displayed here.

I did not break out each side of the plate for switch hitters, so there is some "noise" for those players, with the data being dominated by left handed swings.

 

[Heathbar012]

Thanks, gp. You even answered the only question that I had before I posted it.

 

[gp956]

Melkey's heatmap confirms the nagging suspicion I had that his swing is similar to Marvin Benard's. I hope he lays off the high fastball better than Marvin did.

 

[gp956]

Burriss's hotzone is tiny. Poor guy.

 

[gp956]

Thanks, gp. You even answered the only question that I had before I posted it.

 

[MarcoPolo]

This is GREAT! Thanks !!

A couple of questions about interpretation of these heat graphs (I'm not familiar with them) ...

- Does "Career heatmaps" mean "Career-since-PITCHf/x-has-been-around heatmaps" ?? (for the young players it doesn't matter, but for Huff it would)

- If a batter NEVER swings at a pitch in a certain place, his wOBA would be 0 (very deep, dark blue), correct?

- If a batter swings at a pitch in a certain place 10 times over his career and never gets a hit, it would be the same color as the above (never swinging at a pitch), correct?

- If a batter swings at a pitch in a certain place 100 times over his career and never gets a hit, it would be the same deep blue color as above (never swinging at a pitch), correct?

- The color can't tell us *how often* a batter swings at a location, just his success when he does swing, correct? (Say, he swung 5 times and had a wOBA of 0.300 vs. he swung 500 times with the same wOBA.)

- So (grouping all of the above) the heat maps don't show us a batter's *absolute tendencies* (how often he swings at a high pitch) just the success that he has had swinging at pitches in that location in the past? (And, by extension, the locations where said batter *should* be swinging, and which he should be avoiding.)

- And lastly, the heat maps don't indicate the type of pitch (low and outside was a fast-ball, slider, curve, etc), correct?

Again, thanks for the heat maps, and thanks in advance for helping me to understand them better.

 

[MarcoPolo]

PS: Manny Burriss' heat map scares the shit out of me.

 

[tzill]

Emmanual Burris

Yikes!!!