Chapter 4 Statcast

type of data available: pitch-by-pitch, summary statistics (in leaderboards)

Statcast is tracking technology commonly used in Major League Baseball. There are two ways to use data from Statcast in R:

Downloading the data directly from the Baseball Savant website and importing it into R
Using the baseballr package

Note Statcast data only goes back to 2015.

4.1 Baseball Savant Website

The Statcast data is very customizable. The leaderboard allows you to select which positions, teams, seasons, and thresholds. In the top right corner, there is an option of which statistic to find the leaderboard for, with hitting, pitching, fielding, running, and positioning. The data can be downloaded as a CSV file. Statcast Search allows for much more user customization. Here is a screenshot of the page:

In the top left corner of the data there are three icons: The middle blue option downloads the results of the search as a .CSV. The rightmost icon will download the data. It will contain pitch-by-pitch data, so the file is very large. Often it will only work for short lists of results, otherwise it will time out.

The file we downloaded is the default table from clicking on “Statistics”, “Player Pitching”, “2022”. No variables were added or removed.

sc_download <- read_csv("data/sc_pitching_2022.csv")

last_name	first_name	player_id	year	xba	xslg	xwoba	xobp	xiso	exit_velocity_avg	launch_angle_avg	barrel_batted_rate
Wainwright	Adam	425794	2022	0.270	0.419	0.328	0.326	0.148	87.8	11.0	6.5
Verlander	Justin	434378	2022	0.207	0.331	0.255	0.248	0.124	87.8	16.9	6.3
Kluber	Corey	446372	2022	0.261	0.416	0.310	0.294	0.155	87.1	18.5	6.9
Morton	Charlie	450203	2022	0.228	0.389	0.314	0.315	0.161	89.3	13.6	9.5
Quintana	Jose	500779	2022	0.257	0.377	0.305	0.312	0.120	86.5	9.9	5.5
Gibson	Kyle	502043	2022	0.262	0.420	0.326	0.320	0.158	88.5	10.6	7.5
Darvish	Yu	506433	2022	0.227	0.388	0.291	0.275	0.161	88.5	17.0	8.8
Kelly	Merrill	518876	2022	0.230	0.383	0.296	0.291	0.153	88.5	14.0	8.3
Perez	Martin	527048	2022	0.242	0.346	0.295	0.311	0.105	88.2	8.1	4.3
Anderson	Tyler	542881	2022	0.225	0.350	0.275	0.272	0.124	85.0	16.9	4.9
Cole	Gerrit	543037	2022	0.214	0.383	0.284	0.266	0.169	89.4	12.6	9.5
Lyles	Jordan	543475	2022	0.267	0.452	0.341	0.325	0.184	88.6	15.3	10.4
Mikolas	Miles	571945	2022	0.252	0.400	0.306	0.294	0.148	87.8	11.0	6.9
Gausman	Kevin	592332	2022	0.242	0.380	0.285	0.272	0.138	89.0	12.2	8.1
Ray	Robbie	592662	2022	0.223	0.373	0.295	0.292	0.150	89.7	14.7	7.9
Taillon	Jameson	592791	2022	0.260	0.432	0.317	0.297	0.172	88.5	14.5	8.3
Gonzales	Marco	594835	2022	0.267	0.435	0.330	0.320	0.169	86.7	14.5	7.2
Pivetta	Nick	601713	2022	0.248	0.433	0.332	0.324	0.185	90.7	15.2	9.0
Bassitt	Chris	605135	2022	0.228	0.359	0.290	0.291	0.132	85.7	10.8	6.6
Musgrove	Joe	605397	2022	0.225	0.351	0.282	0.284	0.126	86.4	11.7	6.0
Nola	Aaron	605400	2022	0.211	0.340	0.259	0.248	0.129	87.7	12.5	7.1
Rodon	Carlos	607074	2022	0.198	0.309	0.254	0.260	0.111	89.0	19.4	6.5
Freeland	Kyle	607536	2022	0.271	0.455	0.346	0.337	0.184	89.8	12.7	9.7
Fried	Max	608331	2022	0.227	0.328	0.264	0.266	0.101	86.2	7.6	4.0
Irvin	Cole	608344	2022	0.258	0.451	0.324	0.301	0.192	89.4	15.5	9.6
Marquez	German	608566	2022	0.256	0.423	0.327	0.321	0.167	90.5	9.1	7.1
Quantrill	Cal	615698	2022	0.258	0.417	0.321	0.313	0.159	87.6	13.8	7.5
Berrios	Jose	621244	2022	0.275	0.466	0.346	0.329	0.191	90.0	13.9	9.5
Urias	Julio	628711	2022	0.205	0.332	0.262	0.258	0.128	86.7	17.2	6.7
Lopez	Pablo	641154	2022	0.239	0.378	0.301	0.302	0.138	87.9	11.0	9.0
Alcantara	Sandy	645261	2022	0.215	0.331	0.267	0.268	0.116	87.8	5.5	5.3
Cease	Dylan	656302	2022	0.184	0.292	0.257	0.273	0.109	86.8	15.0	6.2
Montgomery	Jordan	656756	2022	0.258	0.400	0.310	0.303	0.143	88.5	9.8	7.1
Wright	Kyle	657140	2022	0.244	0.384	0.306	0.308	0.139	89.0	4.4	6.8
Webb	Logan	657277	2022	0.247	0.364	0.295	0.301	0.116	88.9	3.1	5.5
Ohtani	Shohei	660271	2022	0.204	0.311	0.256	0.260	0.107	87.1	14.5	6.3
McKenzie	Triston	663474	2022	0.222	0.397	0.293	0.274	0.175	90.2	19.7	9.8
McClanahan	Shane	663556	2022	0.207	0.332	0.261	0.257	0.126	87.6	8.3	6.4
Valdez	Framber	664285	2022	0.227	0.330	0.284	0.301	0.102	89.8	-3.6	5.8
Urquidy	Jose	664353	2022	0.256	0.451	0.329	0.306	0.194	89.7	17.2	9.4
Manoah	Alek	666201	2022	0.224	0.343	0.284	0.290	0.118	87.5	16.9	5.4
Gallen	Zac	668678	2022	0.213	0.341	0.278	0.279	0.127	87.8	10.8	7.8
Burnes	Corbin	669203	2022	0.212	0.337	0.273	0.275	0.124	87.2	10.0	5.7
Gilbert	Logan	669302	2022	0.253	0.408	0.314	0.308	0.155	91.0	14.6	7.1
Bieber	Shane	669456	2022	0.245	0.386	0.292	0.281	0.141	89.9	10.0	7.2

4.2 baseballr

library(baseballr)

There are four functions specifically for Statcast: statcast_search(), statcast_search_batters(), statcast_search_pitchers(), and statcast_leaderboards().

Search

The search functions require a start date, end date, and player as arguments. Similar to the process for FanGraphs, a player’s playerid is in the URL for their Baseball Savant page. It is the string of numbers after their name. For example, https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/aaron-judge-592450?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb. Aaron Judge’s Statcast playerid (his MLBAM ID) is 592450. Additionally, you could find the playerid through the MLB website. Search for a specific player. The end of the URL will say playerId= and then a number. This is the link to Aaron Judge’s https://www.mlb.com/search?q=aaron%20ju&playerId=592450, which identifies his playerid as 592450.

judge <- statcast_search(start_date = "2022-06-15", end_date= "2022-07-15", playerid = 592450)

This produces pitch-by-pitch data for every game in the designated time frame. There are 92 variables. This data frame includes 27 games, which resulted in 504 rows. We most take into consideration the amount of results created when calling this function.

Important note: the Statcast ID is not the same as the FanGraphs ID!

Leaderboards

There are two required arguments to access a leaderboard: ‘leaderboard’ and ‘year’. The options for ‘leaderboard’ are “exit_velocity_barrels”, “expected_statistics”, “pitch_arsenal”, “outs_above_average”, “directional_oaa”, “catch_probability”, “pop_time”, “sprint_speed”, and “running_splits_90_ft”. There are optional arguments that would help limit the observations produced; a full list can be found in the documentation.

sc_lead_evb <- statcast_leaderboards(leaderboard = "exit_velocity_barrels", year = 2022)
sc_lead_exp <- statcast_leaderboards(leaderboard = "expected_statistics", year = 2022)

Exit Velocity & Barrels Leaderboard:

year	last_name, first_name	player_id	attempts	avg_hit_angle	anglesweetspotpercent	max_hit_speed	avg_hit_speed	ev50	fbld	gb	max_distance	avg_distance	avg_hr_distance	ev95plus	ev95percent	barrels	brl_percent	brl_pa
2022	Semien, Marcus	543760	547	19.9	32.4	110.1	87.3	97.8	91.3	84.2	430	186	394	191	34.9	37	6.8	5.1
2022	Rosario, Amed	642708	530	5.0	31.1	110.8	88.4	99.7	92.1	86.9	450	138	407	203	38.3	24	4.5	3.6
2022	Ramírez, José	608070	528	20.7	33.7	114.2	87.7	98.9	91.2	86.9	422	179	392	195	36.9	35	6.6	5.1
2022	Turner, Trea	607208	527	10.2	35.3	112.5	88.9	100.2	92.1	86.3	439	163	402	219	41.6	40	7.6	5.6
2022	Guerrero Jr., Vladimir	665489	526	4.3	27.9	118.4	92.8	105.5	98.2	90.3	467	144	407	265	50.4	59	11.2	8.4
2022	Freeman, Freddie	518692	517	13.6	42.9	112.3	91.3	100.8	94.5	87.5	446	185	407	247	47.8	51	9.9	7.2

Expected Statistics Leaderboard:

year	last_name, first_name	player_id	pa	bip	ba	est_ba	est_ba_minus_ba_diff	slg	est_slg	est_slg_minus_slg_diff	woba	est_woba	est_woba_minus_woba_diff
2022	Semien, Marcus	543760	724	547	0.248	0.243	0.005	0.429	0.394	0.035	0.317	0.306	0.011
2022	Freeman, Freddie	518692	708	517	0.325	0.313	0.012	0.511	0.538	-0.027	0.393	0.403	-0.010
2022	Turner, Trea	607208	708	527	0.298	0.276	0.022	0.466	0.432	0.034	0.350	0.335	0.015
2022	Lindor, Francisco	596019	706	504	0.270	0.254	0.016	0.449	0.427	0.022	0.342	0.331	0.011
2022	Guerrero Jr., Vladimir	665489	706	526	0.274	0.281	-0.007	0.480	0.464	0.016	0.351	0.351	0.000
2022	Olson, Matt	621566	699	450	0.240	0.248	-0.008	0.477	0.467	0.010	0.344	0.347	-0.003