Blengino: Prime ball-in-play traits of the 2016 playoff teams
From SABR member Tony Blengino at FanGraphs on October 20, 2016:
The playoffs roll on, with subplots galore, most of them involving pitching-staff usage patterns that are long overdue. Meanwhile, let’s conclude our two-part series examining macro team BIP data for the 10 playoff teams, broken down by exit speed and launch angles. (Read the Part 1 here.) We’ll examine what made these teams tick during the regular season and allowed them to play meaningful October baseball. It’s more or less a DNA analysis of the clubs that made it to the game’s second season.
First, some ground rules. For each club, all offensive and defensive batted balls were broken down (first) by type and (second) by exit speed. Not all batted balls generated exit speed and/or launch angle data; just over 14% were unread, most of them weakly hit balls at very high or low launch angles. How do we know this? Well, hitters batted .161 AVG-.213 SLG on them, a pretty strong clue.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/prime-ball-in-play-traits-of-the-10-playoff-teams-part-2/
Originally published: October 20, 2016. Last Updated: October 20, 2016.