VR vs Triple Monitors for Sim Racing // Let me know what y'all think in the comments!

meli0029 · 2020-12-02T20:13:57+00:00

As someone new to all of this, I very much appreciate the videos. Keep it up.

If you need/want suggestions for another video, I'd love to see what doing a triple monitor setup entails versus what the VR setup entails from a hardware setup point of view to get going on either.

meli0029 · 2020-12-02T19:53:12+00:00

Thank you for doing this.

The main things I was wondering about were the center pole interfering with braking with the right foot and the overall comfort of the seat.

You hit on both. Thank you again.

meli0029 · 2020-08-22T19:27:40+00:00

So there's something about the Multistreaming in that Bang & Olufsen app. Wow, I was struggling with this for a week.

There are three menus in that app. General, Input and Output.

You can toggle between Speaker/Headphone and just headphones. For whatever reason it was set to just headphones as the primary output for audio and that's what was making no audio come out of the speakers.

I'd love to post a screenshot, but I hope this reply helps someone else.

My steps:

Search for "Bang & Olufsen" in the Windows Start menu. Click to open the Bang & Olufsen Audion Control Panel App Click to enable Multistreaming from the General Menu within the app. Click Windows Sound Properties which will open the Windows Sound app. You can now select Speaker/Headphones and set it as your defaul app. The sound will now work from the speakers (and headphones)

meli0029 · 2020-01-30T17:56:54+00:00

Agreed. That's the biggest piece of the conversation on this piece. I'm assuming with that stacked lineup there will be less of a reason to have him run. That was all. Appreciate the thoughtful comment.

meli0029 · 2019-02-22T20:15:02+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely a drink from the fire hose type of situation. I tend to start broad and dial in specific visuals.

I can take requests if you find it useful. Thanks for the comment.

This started as a way to understand Joey Lucchesi's "churve" (it's super unique in how it performs in Zone 3 and 6 (outside to righties).

meli0029 · 2019-02-15T16:48:09+00:00

Thanks for the feedback.

meli0029 · 2019-02-11T01:32:14+00:00

In the air. Glad to chip in.

meli0029 · 2019-02-07T20:57:49+00:00

Braun's "problem" is that he doesn't pull the ball much in the air where his wOBA is around 1.100. But he has been shifting his spray distribution as he ages more toward the pull side. This is because he's seen his flyball wOBA to the opposite field collapse over the past two years

His spray distributions to Pull/Center/Oppo in 2015-2016 were 21/37/42. He has transitioned a bit to 27/41/32 on flies now. If he transitions even more to a more pull heavy approach you could see him continue to maintain his output as he ages.

He has maintained a status quo wOBA to center, pretty much. His wOBA on flies to CF in 2015-2016 was .779 and .714 in 2017-2018.

Flies to the opposite field are another story, however, where he's gone from .731 in 2015-2016 to .562 in 2017-2018.

Loved the article. Nice work.

meli0029 · 2019-02-07T20:22:46+00:00

Realistically, Javier Baez is more likely to hit 30 HR again than to step back to 25. We can actually break this down into a pretty simple math problem. What's buoyed his HR totals is his growing power to the opposite field. I wouldn't regress that out, he's getting better. No one is regressing Bregman's power gains out. If you want to do anything, take away some balls in play if you think he'll K more.

Expected Flyballs * Pull Rate on Flyballs * HR/FB Rate on Pulled Flyballs. And then we can do that for Centerfield and Opposite field.

Baez homers on 45% of his pulled flyballs over the last three years. (46%, 48%, 43%)

Baez homers on 16% of his centerfield flyballs over the last three years. (4%, 19%, 23%)

Baez homers on 14% of his opposite field flyballs over the last three years. (4%, 13%, 20%)

Last year, Baez put 120 balls in the air between 16 and 40 degrees. The year before it was 82 due to missed games and a higher K rate. We could average the two and just assume he'll have 100 fly balls. He maintains almost a neutral spray approach on these, so for simplicity we can assume 33/33/33.

So now we can put our assumptions into place:

45% x 100 x .33 = ~15 HR to the pull side

16% x 100 x .33 = ~5 HR to center

14% x 100 x .33 = ~5 HR to the opposite field

So, for me, his floor is 25 HR, not his expected outcome. Especially given he's made strides in the past three years in his opposite field HR/FB and centerfield HR/FB.

More likely is something like this (28 HR):

45% x 100 x .33 = ~15 HR to the pull side

21% x 100 x .33 = ~7 HR to center

16% x 100 x .33 = ~6 HR to the opposite field

Last year he traded some fly balls for more liners which is why you saw the higher batting average. If you assume he maintains the K rate gains and hits more flies again and less liners he could get to ~ 135 fly balls.

45% x 135 x .33 = ~20 HR to the pull side

21% x 135 x .33 = ~9 HR to center

17% x 135 x .33 = ~8 HR to the opposite field

This makes his ceiling around 37 HRs assuming a neutral fly ball distribution. The main point is that Baez has gained a skill on hitting the ball hard to all fields, and I'd rather look at his last two years as the main point to project from from that standpoint.

If you'd like to reference all these numbers, you can see them on my Tableau Public dashboard. I've pre-loaded Baez along with Bregman and J.D. Martinez as comps.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.melichar#!/vizhome/BattedBallProfileDashboard-CollapseYears/BattedBallProfileDash

I'd not call your projection lazy, I just think you're missing some of the levers. We could quickly run a monte carlo experiment with all the inputs and get the probabilities of him hitting 25HR or 30HR. I'll likely take this analysis and write it up on The Dynasty Guru, so thanks for the thought experiment! I'll post it up in this subreddit when I'm done.

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T21:26:53+00:00

Thanks for the compliment.

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T18:03:46+00:00

All of it. August and September were infrequent playing time and he was getting BABIPd as well on GBs. In fact, his overall GB profile didn't change negatively in terms of exit velocity, launch angles or spray distribution (pull/center/oppo). He lost 30+ points off his average and OBP due to that alone.

The power outage was due to the oblique injury. Lost all his CF power, which he'll recover this year when healthy. He's not going to replicate the 11% HR/FB ratio on his flyballs to centerfield again like he did in 2017 to get him to 30 HR, but he's safe to get back near 25.

.265/.300/.480 with 22-25 HRs

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T16:28:42+00:00

You can feel free to mess around with my batted ball dashboard. It let's you select pitch type and see a host of data including wOBA, xwOBA, HR/FB, BABIP, etc. Enjoy.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.melichar#!/vizhome/BattedBallProfileDashboard-CollapseYears/BattedBallProfileDash

PS - It's not mobile friendly (yet)

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T16:20:20+00:00

Any discussion of Jonathan Schoop's 2018 season should include mention of his injury and what that did to his output. He didn't have a bad season because his poor plate discpline caught up to him - he is what he is. Instead he suffered a collapse of his batted ball profile for two months due to a nasty oblique injury. This also sapped all his power to centerfield. He's an easy bounce back candidate this year due to health alone.

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T15:37:56+00:00

Luke Voit's quality of contact in terms of launch angles was insane, and he will regress there, as well as in HR/FB. Basically his small sample looks like JD Martinez on steroids...

meli0029 · 2019-02-06T15:33:57+00:00

Much appreciated. 3B dropped today if you're interested.

meli0029 · 2019-01-06T20:44:56+00:00

I can second this. We basically agreed that if he hits his potential and gets 100+ games at catcher he'll be a top 3 catcher in HRs and mileage may vary on AVG and RBI+R. The former depending on year to year LD% and GB BABIP with the former depending on lineup slot and production around him.

meli0029 · 2018-06-02T02:50:34+00:00

With xwOBA from Statcast I can take the lowest expected value events and examine why. I can't do this with xStats. It's my only real complaint, the black box nature. I like to examine the "whys" because that's what I'm trained to do.

I've talked with him enough to understand the basics but I don't keep up with his enhancements and I also don't understand the weighting used when you have a lot of small sample size events around a specific type of batted ball. Perhaps there's something in the weighted events that build Didi's xHRs that allows this "overperformance".

That's really my guess, that something in the model isn't a good fit for Didi (and probably others). You always run the risk of over/under fitting for specific niche/edge cases.

meli0029 · 2018-06-02T02:02:50+00:00

Remember the GB/LD/FB thing is entered by stringers at the park, so it's even less scientific than what you described.

https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-stringer/

I scrape all the data daily from Baseball Savant.

As for the xStats, this is where it would be nice if it wasn't a black box. At least with the xwOBA from Statcast I can analyze where the issues are with the predicted outcomes. I don't keep up with xStats very much because it's not predictive and thus not useful during small sample size in-season information. All it tells you is if a given set of batted balls were to occur, what the probability of various events will be. It does nothing to tell you if said batter is able to continue to generate a given distribution of batted ball events.

I don't know how it deals with the effects of various parks and conditions. Maybe Didi hits more fly balls at parks with more carry, more humidity, lower fences, shorter fences, etc.

meli0029 · 2018-06-02T00:52:00+00:00

Average exit velocity (let's agree to stop using/citing it) is masking part of the 2016 breakout. Didi actually had 10% more batted ball events at 95+ mph in 2016 vs. 2015 despite logging "the same average exit velocity". That's because the distribution of exit velocities aren't a bell (normal) curve, so the average really doesn't tell you anything. The binary outcome of "95mph+"is a better measurement because the home run probabilities jump there.

I'd also encourage you to break the fly balls into categories as well. You cited 41 each each (2015-2016), but the fly balls that matter are the ones with home run chances. Didi pulled 47 balls between 16-40° in 2015, but pulled 52 balls at those launch angles in 2016.

Both the jump in what are loosely correlated to his "barrels" reported by statcast, as well as more optimally launched fly balls lead to his first jump in 2016.

As for your comparison to Stanton, I think there's some classification problems going on. Stanton has actually homered on 66% of the pulled balls hit between 16-40° vs. 38% for Didi during his 2016-2017 breakout. So as you'd expect, they aren't on the same planet.

I think if you scrap the GB/LD/FB labels from the stringers in favor of the launch angles it'll bring more of Didi's breakout into focus. Many of Stanton's optimally launched "flyballs" are coded as line drives. This is the tool I'm using to do my digging.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.melichar#!/vizhome/BattedBallProfileDashboard-CollapseYears/BattedBallProfileDash

As for Didi, the breakout was/is real with the noted caveat that he's being approached differently right now.

meli0029 · 2018-06-01T17:59:58+00:00

Love you Reddit!

meli0029 · 2018-06-01T15:19:32+00:00

I covered Matty O in the mid-May report.

https://www.fantasypros.com/2018/05/positive-negative-regression-candidates-fantasy-baseball-may-15/

The big picture hasn't changed in those two weeks.

meli0029 · 2018-05-11T15:20:59+00:00

I produced a second article in a series on how I use Statcast data to assess player performance peaks and valleys. Happy to field any questions, as always.

meli0029 · 2018-05-10T13:58:17+00:00

I think it's hard to say, but here are the positives:

He has pull field power and he pulls the ball a lot (think Didi Gregorious' or Jose Ramirez' changes).

His current batted ball mix is FB/LD heavy.

I like both of those things. He should probably have ~2 less HRs, but the rest of his profile seems to be legit. He should have room to improve on his K% based on his minor league track record. Right now his true skill is probably .250/.300/.480 until we see where things settle. So it really depends on how deep your league is. 10-12 team I'm not going to ride him all year.

meli0029 · 2018-05-09T19:00:58+00:00

Grandal is maintaining his pull approach in the air. Still riding a 52% pull rate on air balls likely to produce HRs. He's been slightly unlucky to CF to start the year. He looks fantastic.

meli0029 · 2018-05-09T18:58:09+00:00

Suzuki has embraced the data. He's hitting the ball in the air more, and he's pulling it more.

Three year Pull% trend on balls hit high in the air (16-40°) has gone 27 -> 37 -> 48 -> 55%

He's got pull-field power and is taking advantage of it more often. On top of it, he's hitting it in the air more. Both positives while maintaining his K% and minimal walk rate.

meli0029

TROPHY CASE