Petti: What kind of hitters are volatile?

From SABR member Bill Petti at the Hardball Times on February 4, 2014:

Ever since I began writing publicly about baseball, I’ve been looking into the topic of player volatility. Two main questions have motivated this research: 1) To what degree do players’ performances from game to game vary from their overall seasonal performance, and 2) What accounts for differences in this variation?

I’ve published quite a bit over the past few years addressing the first question, developing two metrics to help measure the overall volatility of a hitter (VOL), as well as how that volatility compared to league average (VOL-). Last year, at FanGraphs, I relaunched after altering the methodology for calculating hitter volatility.

Settling on a metric that, while not perfect, seems to capture the essence of the first question, I’ve turned to the second question:  What accounts for differences in VOL? Which types of hitters tend to be more volatile and which less so?

Read the full article here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/what-kind-of-hitters-are-volatile/



Originally published: February 4, 2014. Last Updated: February 4, 2014.