Welcome back Christopher Gauthier Have you ever been at a game and a player smokes a ball right at someone? Like, had that ball been hit a little more to the left or the right of the fielder, it’s a
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Category: Analytics
Investigating Sophomore Slump
This is Chris Gauthier’s debut article for Bat Flips and Nerds. He’s a college student and a Mets fan. If you’re a dedicated sports fan, chances are at one point or another, you’ve heard the term “sophomore slump,” referring to
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St. Louis Cardinals 2020: Reasons for optimism
What happened in 2019? The St. Louis Cardinals exceeded many expectations in 2019 by winning the National League Central, beating the Atlanta Braves in the National League Divisional Series but then falling short against the eventual World Series winning Washington
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What infield OAA tells us about shortstops?
As I have stated previously the Infield Outs Above Average (OAA) metrics available on Baseball Savant contains a plethora of information. You can look at individuals and not only see their overall defensive value but you can breakdown the individuals
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What Infield OAA can tell us about Pitchers and Hitters
Firstly let’s start off with the fact that I am not a plant, stooge or shill for MLB, Statcast or Baseball Savant (I would like to be, but I am not). But secondly, I need to tell you all that
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Challenge Everything
Do you know how well your team does at challenging calls? I don’t know how well the Indians do. I was listening to a podcast last week and was surprised to hear them say that MLB’s instant replay challenge system
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Umpires are more biased than I thought
In the midst of its Postseason, and probably unbeknownst to most of its fans, MLB has taken its next steps in using an automated ball-strike system or “Robo Umps” as I like to call them. This was first tested in
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Checking the Fundamentals of WAR – Part 1 – A 1000 wins above replacement
My day job is in the world of data science and in it I build evaluation and prediction models. All of these models are built on certain assumptions that I hold to be true and although I update the models
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Don’t Bring Me Down – Using Elo Ratings to help determine fan satisfaction.
Off the back of the trade deadline I have been wondering what is best for fans, a team that wins a singular World Series championship and is bad for 20+ years or a team that is close most of the
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The Worst Called Strike of the First Half
As I mentioned in my first piece of this series, I miss the semi-season articles that Jeff Sullivan used to do for FanGraphs on the worst called balls and strikes. In the last piece we looked at called balls and
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