Visual Baseball:  Who’s got the Tools?

by
June 18, 2010

Here’s a piping-hot serving of 5 Tool Analyzer, fresh out of the oven and ready for your consumption. I’m hoping to do installments like this throughout the season – in this installment you’ll see 6 very different players with very different skill sets.

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Kevin Dame is a writer and visual designer who brings sports information to life in new and meaningful ways. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @kevintdame.
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MikeS
12 years ago

Alfonso Soriano?  I didn’t know that being afraid of the wall, and ruining a teams payroll flexibility were tools?

And before you go all UZR on my A$$, I will state for the record that any fielding metric that says Soriano’s best defensive position is not DH is seriously flawed.

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Hooty
12 years ago

Tony Gwynn = No Bat!  Nice analysis…

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Hojo
12 years ago

@Hooty
For Tony Gwynn the HOFer no, not good analysis. But for Tony Gwynn Jr, who’s career OPS is .661, great analysis.

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José
12 years ago

Except Tony Gwynn Jr. also has a great arm, it’s weird the stats don’t pick that.

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=8751985

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Jason B
12 years ago

These are my favorite pieces Kevin – consistently excellent work.  These are fantastic for us visual learners.

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Kevin Dame
12 years ago

For those of you who were thrown by the Tony Gwynn reference, I was indeed referring to his son.  “Jr” has been added to the visual, so Tony Gwynn Senior can rest easy.  As far as his arm is concerned, I’m not sure what to tell you.  I’m the guy who visualizes this metrics, not invents them.  I have to say, though, that some of the defensive metrics seem to raise eyebrows at times.  Hopefully they’ll evolve and become more and more representative of reality…

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Jason B
12 years ago

Jason461 – It tells at the bottom of the graph how each metric is measured.  Small print, but its there.

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Jason461
12 years ago

Um, where are you getting this information? Fangraphs shows Phillips as equal to or better than Soriano in pretty much every facet except power this year. Granted, he is having a career season, but he was better than Soriano last year, too.

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southsidemike
12 years ago

Soriano who cant play defence and strikes out way too much is a poor example of a five star player

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studes
12 years ago

There does appear to be some problem with the underlying stats, cause Brandon Phillips definitely has a higher OBP than Soriano this year.  It’s my fault, since I compile the stats for Kevin.  I’ll follow up on this.

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Fake Yeezys
5 years ago

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