The newest toy to play with thanks to @baseballpro

Thanks to the good people at Baseball Prospectus, a new hitter evaluation tool came out last night and even if you hate scouting, or you don’t get big fancy numbers, this is pretty user friendly. Let’s give you the link to start off so I can show you how to use it… even though you really won’t need me to show you how to use it:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/pitchfx/hitter_cards/hc_search.php

Favorite that, bookmark it, whatever, because if you’re like me, you will use this a lot.

Below is the home screen and oh hello! Search for a hitter profile. Hm. Well, we could look for someone that is just amazing or we could…

LOL! Ok, now hit submit and here’s what you get:

Fortunately, there are no other Juan Uribe’s out there to be confused about! So we will click the one that says “Juan Uribe (LAN)” as in “Juan Uribe (LANDWHALE). After that, we get to the good stuff:

Notice it’s from the Catcher’s “POV” or “Pretty Optimal Vomiting Position” because when Juan Uribe steps up to the plate most of us lose it, forreals. It can also mean “Point of View” which means OOooooo-ribe will be on the left side of the screen since he’s a right handed hitter (RHH). Now, notice the categories you can choose from. “All Years” I believe stretches back to 2007, and that’s it for right now. What’s a little cooler is some of our other options we have:

Most understandable to all crowds is probably “Batting Average” (BA) not to be confused with “True Average” (TAv), which I’m not exactly sure on how it’s different yet, but it’s on my to-learn-list. Notice that you can also take a look at ground ball rates, line drives, fly balls, or pop-ups, which is pretty nifty! So let’s take a look at the spots where Mr. Jazz Hands is doing well in terms of batting average:

Lots of SSS (small sample size) going on here, but this gives you an idea of OK, Juan Uribe does alright on pitches right down the middle this year that are put into play, but has done jack squat on stuff low and away in the strike zone. Remember, it’s not necessarily that this is predictive of what he’ll do because his stuff is especially SSS, but this is some cool stuff I encourage you to play with for all your favorite players!

Here’s that link again: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/pitchfx/hitter_cards/hc_search.php

You’re welcome. Now go look up Buster Posey’s stats because I know that’s the first player you had in mind for looking up.