Cooler heads prevail on a close pitch

[Thunderheads]

Rodriguez almost gets too demonstrative with Hirschbeck ...but Corporan keeps it cool ..........

[Maineac]

Good F2. Pitcher owes him one.

[JaxRolo]

Good Job Catcher!

[maven]

Same technique we saw Fletcher use a couple weeks ago. Very advanced: I can't recommend it for amateur baseball.

Pitcher should piss up a rope. He was crying about pitch #5 (umpire's perspective):

[Thunderheads]

Same technique we saw Fletcher use a couple weeks ago. Very advanced: I can't recommend it for amateur baseball.

Pitcher should piss up a rope. He was crying about pitch #5 (umpire's perspective):

​not directed at maven, but pitch number 5 doesn't correlate to the video, ....that pitch wasn't that low

[MikeSafari]

​not directed at maven, but pitch number 5 doesn't correlate to the video, ....that pitch wasn't that low

​Yes it does, @Thunderheads. Keep in mind the centre-field camera is always elevated, so what we see on TV will almost always look higher than it does at field level.

I've used BrooksBaseball's strike zone plots regularly and they're a great resource.

[Thunderheads]

​Yes it does, @Thunderheads. Keep in mind the centre-field camera is always elevated, so what we see on TV will almost always look higher than it does at field level.

I've used BrooksBaseball's strike zone plots regularly and they're a great resource.

​I've seen many many Brooks charts, and yes, they are a great resource, but I've never seen a difference in pitches via video and charts like this one

[scrounge]

Same technique we saw Fletcher use a couple weeks ago. Very advanced: I can't recommend it for amateur baseball.

Pitcher should piss up a rope. He was crying about pitch #5 (umpire's perspective):

 

​Well, Fletcher also added in the "push thru the catcher" and "be demonstrative like a redass" steps as well. Advanced? Perhaps. Wrong the way Fletcher did it IMO.

[JaxRolo]

Don't trust that stupid rectangle on the screen.

[noumpere]

Same technique we saw Fletcher use a couple weeks ago. Very advanced: I can't recommend it for amateur baseball.

Pitcher should piss up a rope. He was crying about pitch #5 (umpire's perspective):

​I didn't watch the video, but maybe the pitcher's mad because #3 was called a strike, and #5 was in the "same spot" (in F1's opinion).

[indianaumpire15]

My issue with the on TV strike zone box is that it just does not seem to adjust for fluctuations in individual batter height.  A strike at the knees on a 6-3 batter is not the same as a batter that is 5-10.

[ElkOil]

That does a man's heart good to see that.  We almost had a gin-yoo-wine huggable moment right there on the field between catcher and umpire.

[BillKen]

Lucky day for the pitcher and a great job by F2 and both coaches.  Hirschbeck seems to be on his farewell tour this year...not taking much guff.  

[GerryB]

My issue with the on TV strike zone box is that it just does not seem to adjust for fluctuations in individual batter height.  A strike at the knees on a 6-3 batter is not the same as a batter that is 5-10.

​Yes, and this is one of the automated strike issues. I forget where I read it, but the choice is to leave it one zone, and some pitches will be off, or have a computer operator set top and bottom for each batter...which reintroduces human error, albeit at a smaller percentage error than "just" having an umpire (!?!).

[Umpire in Chief]

First, incredible job by Corporan not only in defense of his pitcher, but in helping Hirschbeck. I'd say that Hirschbeck must have done something to earn that level of respect from Corporan. 

The other thing to remember is that the brooks baseball chart shows a normalized zone. @Gil: Owner - UEFL has done a great job of explaining how this works in the past.

 

[Lindsay]

We're essentially looking at an accurate depiction of relative location, but an inaccurate absolute. In other words, the strike zone "box" is consistent for all pitches, which are in turn converted (or "stretched") to match. 

For this AB, the bottom of the strike zone is captured at 1.66 (sz_bot) and the top at 3.65 (sz_top). These are "non-normalized" and, therefore, accurate in the physical realm. The bottom of the zone is 1.66 feet off the ground; the top is 3.65 feet. Brooks adds a variable called norm_ht, which is essentially the attempt to normalize the strike zone, relative to its center (for an idea, pitch 1's norm_ht is -.632, pitch 2 is .993, the called strike is -1.07, pitch 4 is -1.50, pitch 5 -1.13).

The bread & butter are how Brooks then converts PFX-captured px & pz (basically x and y coordinates, in feet) to a normalized version.

In the format of (px, pz / Brooks' px, Brooks' pz):
Pitch 1 (1.219, 2.026 / 1.152, 1.940)
Pitch 2 (-.302, 3.643 / -.360, 3.547)
Pitch 3 (-.068, 1.593 / -.132, 1.509)
Pitch 4 (.449, 1.162 / .390, 1.086)
Pitch 5 (-.687, 1.53 / -.746, 1.447)

Notice that the pitches on the chart reflect the Brooks coordinates, not MLBAM/Gameday data. In a similar vein, the drawn strike zone box on that plot does not reflect the 'raw' MLB-captured data of 1.66 feet and 3.65 feet (so, to put it very bluntly, the drawn box is meaningless).

Pitch #2 best illustrates this discrepancy. With a sz_top of 3.65 and pz of 3.643, pitch #2 is a PFX strike. Brooks has it as a ball. FoxTrax has it as a strike. As an aside, ESPN K-Zone (or any other real-time "overlay" system) would essentially have a completely meaningless drawn box.