Project by: Freddie Fine (11th Grade), Harvey Van Blerkom (11th Grade)
Project Advisor: Jacqueline Baker
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Pat Higgiston and Catherine Zhong
Description of the Project:
As avid baseball fans, we have noticed that on the most advanced baseball statistics, there is no complete representation of one’s value defensively, and in the cases that there are, they don’t seem to match up with what we see. The values that can be seen on other sites such as “fangraphs” and “baseball savant” each have their own metrics that value things independently as supposed to create a complete picture. Baseball savant primarily functions with sets of independent stats and doesn’t combine anything, and “fangraphs defensive WAR” doesn’t show a complete picture of positional versatility among other issues. Our goal of this project is to create videos that explore the advances analytics of the baseball world, taking data from various sources to create cohesive, explanatory videos.
Final Product (e.g., documents, images, video, audio, poster, display, etc.):
Final Reflection on Learning:
Our project was based around easy to comprehend baseball analysis videos. We wanted to make something that anyone could watch, not just die hard baseball fans, and understand what we were saying. Specifically, we were looking at advanced defensive metrics from websites such as Baseball Savant and The Fielding Bible. We both learned a lot about baseball statistics. There were many data sets that we had to learn how to comprehend, efficiently and effectively use, and portray in a simple way. We also learned about larger themes throughout baseball, such as the way contracts play into a players career longevity and how this season is so different from last years. Our goal was to not only educate ourselves more, but be able to provide educational videos as well, and we are both proud of the ways in which we accomplished these feats.
Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3
We have spent the first few weeks doing extensive research on Pat Valaika, the subject of our next video. There are a lot more advanced analytics that we are using for this video, so not only do we have to find them, we also have to learn how to properly use and define them. We have completed the script and will film and edit the video soon, with hopes of doing at least one more video before the end of the trimester.
Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6
We finished and uploaded our second video, with our subject being Pat Valaika. Our goal is to create a script/research outline on a new topic by the end of the year, as we don’t think there is enough time to create another video. We are looking into researching the changes the MLB has made with their baseballs and how that has effected home run and strike out rates.
Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9
See poster and video
TRIMESTER 2 UPDATES:
Description of the Project:
As avid baseball fans, we have noticed that on the most advanced baseball statistics, there is no complete representation of one’s value defensively, and in the cases that there are, they don’t seem to match up with what we see. The values that can be seen on other sites such as “fangraphs” and “baseball savant” each have their own metrics that value things independently as supposed to create a complete picture. Baseball savant primarily functions with sets of independent stats and doesn’t combine anything, and “fangraphs defensive WAR” doesn’t show a complete picture of positional versatility among other issues. There currently isn’t a complete “defensive value,” but people have consistently relied on these incomplete or inaccurate measures. Our goal for this project would be to create our own way to quantify a baseball player’s defensive value. We would do this through analyzing existing stats, and researching and creating our own stats through databases that we have access to while allotting importance to each stat. The two of us hope to deepen our understanding of statistics, specifically within a specific domain: baseball.
Final Product (e.g., documents, images, video, audio, poster, display, etc.):
Final Reflection on Learning:
Through all our research across the course of the trimester, we have both learned a lot about defensive baseball analytics that we hadn’t known about before. We have decided to extend our project and continue making videos such as this in the following trimester, using the knowledge we have gained and expanding on that in order to create more videos. Our goal is to be able to make explanatory videos that help casual fans or people who may not know much about baseball analytics understand the concepts we are talking about.
Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3 (include any photos or video if relevant):
In the first three weeks, we began doing research on the various terms and statistics we will be working with throughout our project. We examined different sites including Fangraphs, Baseball Savant, and Baseball References, to get a sense of the existing information at our disposal and how we could analyze it for our own metric. We also looked at certain statistics that already valued the worth of a player defensively, and what the potential flaws and shortcomings were in these. We concluded by making an outline of what we believe constitutes a proper defensive metric. In future weeks, we will look into values for each part of our outline and gain a further understanding of how each should be distributed.
Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6 (include any photos or video if relevant):
After lots of research and learning about all the different statistics, we came across a previously existing metric that perfectly encapsulated what we were trying to accomplish. This metric is called Defensive Runs Saved, or DRS, and is from the Fielding Bible. Our discovery of this metric made us wonder why it wasn’t so widespread, so we have decided that instead of creating a metric, we wanted to create a unique way of sharing how a player’s value is interpreted. We are going to create a case study video that analyzes two players and explains why they are good or bad defensively. We will use all the metrics we have learned about along the way, including DRS, in an explanatory video that will help others understand the value of the metric. We will analyze Ender Inciarte, one of the current best defenders, and Pat Valaika, a utility man who is terrible no matter where he plays. This contrast of players will help make clear why these metrics are so important and what you can learn from them. In the final weeks we will make and finalize the video.
Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9 (include any photos or video if relevant):
During the final three weeks we created a script for our video, filmed, and edited it. We changed the two players we were analyzing to Ender Inciarte and Nicholas Castellanos, since they are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of defensive value.
Final Product (e.g., documents, images, video, audio, poster, display, etc.):
