production ratings

[ltomkins]

I would like to request a rating (from 0 to 6) that would be assigned to every swing a batter takes. I played college baseball at Miss State and we kept up with a production rating for hitters and pitchers alike. This rating assigns a number to every swing a batter takes. So if a hitters hits a hard line drive or a home run, it would be a 6 (highest rating) and likewise if a hitter swings and misses it would be a 0. This is a very useful tool in letting a coach know how and who is making great contact and who is not. For example, if a player has a low batting average but has a high PR rating, then the player is making great contact and is not swinging and missing a lot. Therefore the higher the PR rating the more consistant the hitter is. The same could be said about pitchers. However, the lower the PR rating for pitchers the better. My question is if I could provide the key for the rating scale, could you guys preassign the rating when the user enters in the type of hit the players makes. I would also need a button for swinging strikes as opposed to called strikes. For instance if a player were to swing and miss at two strikes, he would have 2 0's and then he hits a line drive that would be a 6. If you add up the total points for that player's at bat it would be 0+0+6=6. That player's rating would be 6/3=2. This could be a cummulative stat that could be used as a trend for tracking if hitters are making contact or if pitchers are missing bats. Please let me know what I can do to make this happen. Great app!

[KevinRees]

Similarly, I have thought it would be good to know where a foul was hit to help determine if a player is consistently swinging early or late or just not making good contact. (Should this be a separate topic?)

[OhioTex]

... I would also need a button for swinging strikes as opposed to called strikes. ...

I will defer to FTM on the majority of this post.. But want to be sure ltomkins you know that if you swipe the strike button it registers as strike swinging. (likewise swipe the ball button and you get an intentional ball, similar swipe the out button and you get some quick plays to choose from)

[FTMSupport]

The requests here sounds like a custom analytics system you guys have created for tracking players. We focused on scoring the game, and may add "analytics" in the future, but for now, we really focus on scoring the game and creating objective statistics for the players, not subjective ratings.

We will add it to our list for future enhancements, but unless others jump in asking for the same feature, it will probably be a lower priority for a while.

Thank you.

[danmcc]

I vote yes for a rating system similar to ltomkins suggestion. There are several parents on the team that have asked if the software could rate player at bats almost exactly as suggested in OP.

[mblack]

So how do you rate pitches that are taken ? Sounds like if a player takes 3 strikes, it has no negative outcome on his pr ???????????

[ltomkins]

If the player takes a 3rd strike it is a 0.

[plivengood]

I am a vote for more analytics, but with the caveat that I do not expect (nor do I think it is reasonable go expect) that all of these "extras" will just be incorporated within iScore as updates that existing users should expect not to have to pay for. I would love to see, in the next offseason when FTM has some time, to see stand-alone apps that can be used in unison with or synched with iScore to upload to the same websites, etc. Pitch charting, hit charting, and more options for analytics.....

Scoring is the central and core function of this app, but as it produces stats very well, it is a small and logical jump for the stats-inclined to want to be able to do more with the stats and data the app collects. I just think that users who want these things need to remember that FTM has to balance the usability efficiency of the app for it's core functions for those who don't want these extras or don't care, and we should be willing to allow FTM to make a reasonable profit for further enhancing the app (or adding apps that can work with it to add additional functionality like analytics).

My $0.02. The Production Rating idea seems like a good one, as long as users are allowed to define the rating themselves (in my book, swinging and missing is not always a zero; bitters can take good swings and miss, or bad swings and miss). There are other analytics I would rather see first, such a hit and pitch charting that can be split out to individual hitters versus pitchers (and vice versatile), with results by count, location, situation/RISP, and other splits.

[OhioTex]

nice post plivengood

iStatBaseball perhaps?

[mblack]

By the descriptions, it looks as most of the data is already scored. Each fair ball that is hit can be given score of groundball, flyball/pop-up, or line drive correct ? and each one of those can be rated as easy, medium or hard, correct ?

Now if there is a way to record swinging strikes, and foul ball type / quality, I think all the needed data would be there that would be needed to compute what you are looking for. Now getting that data out of iscore in a format that could be used for the computations, or having iscore/istats/ianalysys app compute it might take some work.