[HN Gopher] Ted Williams's Strike Zone
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Ted Williams's Strike Zone
Author : dedalus
Score : 106 points
Date : 2020-07-27 04:56 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedwilliams.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedwilliams.com)
| TwoBit wrote:
| Being that Ted Williams was the greatest batter of all time, for
| most other hitters the numbers would probably all be lower.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Or he was the greatest batter of all time because of his
| dedication to these principles, and willingness to do the work
| to make them habit.
| [deleted]
| callmeed wrote:
| Wild to see this on HN. I'm a huge baseball nut and Ted Williams
| was my father's hero so naturally I learned a lot about him as a
| kid.
|
| I believe this image is from his book _The Science of Hitting_.
|
| Williams has a fairly fascinating biography and I'd encourage
| people to browse his story a bit. A few interesting things about
| him:
|
| - He served in both World War II and the Korean War. During the
| latter, he crash landed his plane after it took heavy fire.
|
| - He was an amazing angler and at times held tarpon or bonefish
| records. I believe he's also in the fishing hall of fame.
|
| - He was actually a terrible baseball manager. Most people
| attribute this to giving no attention to pitchers and not being
| able to handle that his players simply weren't as gifted or as
| disciplined as him.
|
| - He was the last player to have a batting average > .400 for a
| full season [1] but amazingly did not win the Most Valuable
| Player award that year. It went to Joe DiMaggio.
|
| [1] For those who don't follow baseball, this is calculated as
| (hits / at bats) and generally the modern-day leaders vary
| between .330 and .375 (see https://www.baseball-
| reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_t...).
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| I like this kind of technical technique break down in sports.
| It's interesting how you can break down a problem into a system
| like this and then focus on that system as a way to improve. It's
| similar to improving optimal outcomes in other systems, like
| driving more engagement in your app, improving uptime of your
| service, improving the speed at which your product flies off of
| shelves at the supermarket, improving your performance in a video
| game, or how optimal your shipping pipeline is from your
| manufacturing hub.
|
| It's just a very neat thing to do, figure out what your problem
| is, whatever it may be, in a way that you explain a path to
| improving outcomes.
| legitster wrote:
| I find that it's almost impossible to appreciate and enjoy a
| sport until I start learning the technical pieces that
| determine decisions.
|
| Football is full of all of these random plays that make no
| sense. Until you learn things about how clock management works.
| Then they become very tense and exciting.
|
| The problem I have with baseball is that all of the minor
| strategic decisions are there, but you are talking about subtle
| changes that affect probability by a few percentage points. And
| that can take an entire series of games to see play out.
| darkerside wrote:
| Soccer is similar in that there is a tremendous amount of
| "luck" involved. Only a couple of goals are scored in a
| typical match, so teams can play excellent soccer for 90
| minutes and still lose because a ball broke the wrong way.
|
| I think what's fun about that is that it mimics business (and
| life) much more. You have limited control over a few key
| factors, luck plays a large role, but if you play smart, you
| can see things break your way over a long period of time.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| And of course this is how e.g. the Premier League and other
| top soccer leagues are scored - so that the best team
| emerges over the long term rather than in a noisy single-
| elimination playoff system. Which makes underdog stories
| like the 2015-16 Leicter City season all the more
| unbelievable and magical [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_Leicester
| _City...
| nend wrote:
| It takes way more than a series for it to even out, it's why
| they play 162 games. Even then it's not enough. A completely
| average team could win anywhere from 68-92 games, the
| difference between a bottom dweller and a division winner.
| There's a lot of luck involved.
| gabagool wrote:
| Yup. As Tommy Lasorda famously said, "No matter how good
| you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No
| matter how bad you are, you're going to win one-third of
| your games. It's the other third that makes the
| difference."
|
| Of course, the Mets went 40-120 in '62. I'm fairly certain
| the Orioles didn't win a third of their games for the last
| couple of seasons either. But it's not as nice to say
| you're going to win one-fourth of your games.
| gowld wrote:
| He didn't says they were equal thirds :-)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Amusingly, the Orioles won _exactly_ 1 /3 of their games
| last year (and fewer than that in 2018).
|
| https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BAL/index.shtml
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Hopefully, if a fan understands this, they'll get less angry
| when their team's clean up batter takes a close strike 3
| instead of swinging at a pitch that has a high chance of ending
| up as a double play.
|
| _It 's just a very neat thing to do, figure out what your
| problem is, whatever it may be, in a way that you explain a
| path to improving outcomes._
|
| You just want to make sure that a path to improving in one
| thing doesn't decrease your performance elsewhere, ala the
| project management triangle (which is just one example).
| every wrote:
| Somewhat in the same vein, I can heartily recommend "Weaver on
| Strategy":
|
| https://tht.fangraphs.com/on-weaver-on-strategy/
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| A shame the resolution is so low. Zooming in, the numbers are
| illegible.
|
| I found a higher-resolution version[1] on a Deadspin article[2].
|
| [1] https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-
| media/image/upload/19e2qerif7...
|
| [2] https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-infographics-of-ted-
| willi...
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we'll change to that latter article from
| http://tedwilliams.com/_data/hzone.htm. Thanks!
|
| Edit: ok, changed back from https://deadspin.com/the-beautiful-
| infographics-of-ted-willi...
| kevmo wrote:
| That's significantly different content that completely omits
| the Ted Williams quote.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Agreed that you probably want to change it back. The original
| posted the quote alongside it which was his philosophy at
| hitting, which can be applied to life in general. And Warren
| Buffett explicitly called out that philosophy as his approach
| to investing (which is why this was posted).
|
| The new link is just an article about infographics about
| baseball. Completely useless outside of baseball - mainly now
| just trivia about an athlete.
|
| Original link, and a comment with the link to higher
| resolution is best option.
| gowld wrote:
| I like the baseball dataviz better than the "metaphorr for
| life" pablum.
| melling wrote:
| Warren Buffett has a picture of this in his office. He often uses
| it to explain how he invests.
|
| https://omaha.com/money/buffett/warren-buffett-waits-for-a-f...
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157066-science-of-investin...
| slg wrote:
| This version from Buffet starts to hit on a piece of the
| original Ted Williams version that might not be apparent for
| non-baseball fans.
|
| Williams is measuring batting average which is the number of
| hits divided by the number of at bats. Hits come on a single
| pitch but at bats are a collection of pitches. Therefore a
| pitch location for an at bat isn't really something that makes
| sense. This ends up biasing the results.
|
| You see the pitches in the middle of the zone are not just red
| because it is easier to hit balls in that location, although
| that is certainly part of it. Another factor is how those
| pitches fit into an overall at bat. Pitches aren't thrown at
| random parts of the zone. There is a strategy to when they are
| thrown in what location. Pitchers will often only intentionally
| throw the ball in the middle of the zone when they are behind
| in the count and are trying not to walk the batter. The batter
| know this so he is able to anticipate pitches in the center of
| the zone when he has the advantage. By ignoring balls thrown to
| his weaker areas, he often is able to get ahead of the pitcher
| which creates a multiplier and allows him to hit the ball even
| better when it is in those locations in which he already
| excels.
|
| Knowing his weaknesses allowed Williams to minimize the
| situations in which those weaknesses would come into play. That
| allows him to focus on his strengths and actually increase the
| number of opportunities that he had to act on those strengths.
| It is the equivalent of Buffett benefiting from compound
| interest that gives him more capital to invest the more
| successful his investments are.
| dmurray wrote:
| > By ignoring balls thrown to his weaker areas, he often is
| able to get ahead of the pitcher...
|
| Shouldn't this strategy tend get him behind in the count, not
| ahead? Since he'll be giving up more strikes. To get ahead he
| needs to avoid swinging at pitches outside the zone, but
| that's a trivially good strategy - if you can tell which
| pitches those are in time to not swing.
|
| I guess what you're getting at is that pitches aimed at the
| edge of the strike zone are more likely to miss it. So
| there's a double advantage in not swinging at pitches away
| from the centre of the stroke zone - they might be called
| balls, and if you do swing you won't be very successful
| statistically anyway.
| saghm wrote:
| It's also worth noting that pitchers will sometimes
| purposely throw pitches outside the strike zone in an
| attempt to get the batter to swing and miss. This usually
| happens when the pitcher is already ahead in the count, but
| not always.
| slg wrote:
| The reasons are twofold. Like you mentioned a pitcher's aim
| isn't perfect. Also a batter isn't perfect at reading
| pitches. A pitch aimed at the bottom of the strike zone
| might miss accidentally. Or a pitch like a curveball can be
| aimed below the strike zone but it appears to the batter to
| be a strike only for it to drop and end up outside the
| zone. Not swinging at these seemingly borderline pitches
| results in a lot more pitches being called balls.
|
| Also pitches thrown in these tough to hit locations will
| often result in bad contact. Bad contact is generally worse
| than a strike. A ball that is weakly hit into play will
| almost always result in an out. A strike will only result
| in an out when there are already 2 strikes. Therefore
| swinging at fewer pitches means the batter sees more
| pitches and gets deeper into counts. The batter will
| therefore have more late counts in which they are ahead
| simply due to fewer at bats being ended prematurely.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| "low and away" is a weak spot for almost any hitter. The
| challenge for a pitcher is to actually hit that spot.
|
| Ted Williams batted as a lefty. Most everything a right-
| handed pitcher throws has a tendency to trail leftward. A
| slight mistake and you've got something he will hit very
| hard.
| vermilingua wrote:
| Seems baseball and poker have more in common than I'd realised.
| dhosek wrote:
| Baseball is probably the most intellectual of the sports.
| There's a lot of strategy in it. The fielders are reading the
| signs the catcher gives the pitcher too so they have some idea
| of what to expect. The game is ultimately about pitching more
| than anything else as opposed to softball, which is a
| superficially similar game but the game is much more about
| batting and fielding.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Fast-pitch softball is quite a bit closer to baseball than
| slow-pitch.
| dhosek wrote:
| Fast pitch softball isn't a real thing. It's like a liger.
|
| Deb: What are you drawing?
|
| Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.
|
| Deb: What's a liger?
|
| Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal.
| It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills
| in magic.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| You're not aware ligers are a real thing?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger
| dhosek wrote:
| There are people who believe in fast-pitch softball too.
| Doesn't mean they're right.
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| I'm surprised by the "The Slight Upswing is Best" graphic. I
| understand Cub-Scout-softball-playing-me isn't any example at all
| for what a professional-league baseball player should do, but I
| _always_ internalized swinging up and through the pitch, and I
| was the best batter in my league. Is (or was) there some
| explanation for why you would want to swing flat at a ball?
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| You'll notice in the bottom right of the graphic that it says
| "*exaggerated". Timing is important - the bat is not presented
| at a constant angle to the ball despite what the graphic
| implies! You could hit the ball 500 feet but on the wrong side
| of the foul pole, and you've accomplished nothing.
|
| Modern baseball analytics places a very high value on the the
| "Three true outcomes" [1]. Batters are "optimizing" for the
| exit angle of the ball leaving the bat - we're in a juiced ball
| era (perhaps even a juiced batter era) and home runs are valued
| very highly. You'll notice that strikeouts are also setting
| records. Nobody seems to care as much about ground balls or
| line drives and that seems to be what a "flatter" swing gives
| you. If we were playing with the same baseball as Ted Williams
| played with, you'd have a lot more fly ball outs. I'm pretty
| sure that his "slight upswing" was actually very slight
| compared to current players.
|
| [1] https://www.baseball-
| reference.com/bullpen/Three_True_Outcom...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I know my strike zone. When a project gets handed my way that I
| know is not suited to my strengths/job description and lines up
| particularly well with someone else's on the team, I communicate
| that to my manager. Unfortunately, my manager is batting 1.000
| when it comes to ignoring me :). I don't even get a token "this
| is something I need you to improve in".
|
| If I wasn't so busy or if every project wasn't "highest
| priority", it might not matter as much.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| "Which of the other highest priority projects should I
| deprioritize to work on this"
|
| or
|
| "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from 1-5,
| what would that list look like"?
|
| Managers like this need to have it shown to them in black in
| white that you are at capacity. Once you push back, I suspect
| you will have better luck.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > "If you had to rank these 5 highest priority projects from
| 1-5, what would that list look like"?
|
| 1, 1, 1, 1, and (a token) 2.
| sulam wrote:
| I take things one step further.
|
| "My assessment of the priority is A, B, C. I only have time
| to work on A, B. I am going to let TPTB know that I am
| focused on these, and that C isn't getting my time. Let me
| know if you disagree with my prioritization, but otherwise,
| this is how I plan to manage the situation."
| [deleted]
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| That's another great approach. In almost every case this
| has happened to me simply pointing out that you cannot have
| everything as top priority caused the manager to reassess.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| I'd been using a baseball metaphor for my own change in strategy
| recently.
|
| I don't think I'm meant to hit home runs. I don't mean just that
| the luck hasn't struck. It's more that I don't feel particularly
| connected to the mainstream and where they are headed, am sort of
| unreasonable about how I think the world should work in a way
| that makes me the opposite of a heat seeking missile, don't love
| scalable acts like creating a business that can scale on top of
| cookie-cutter jobs or on top of advertising or virality.
|
| And sure, maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get to that. But I
| decided to stop going up to the plate trying to hit a home run.
|
| When I had venture capital, I thought I was Barry Bonds. But now
| that I don't, I realized I'm Tony Gwynn.
|
| I go up to the plate trying to hit a single. If I have a runner
| on base, I try to move them over.
|
| For my intention, a single is a business that will generate $10k
| in profit, has the potential to continue for several years, and
| can be completely run by other people, leaving me with time to go
| up to the plate again.
|
| What I found last year is that I have enough time/energy to
| attempt about six singles and that I connected on three of them.
| And it feels similar this year.
|
| You can score a lot of runners just by hitting singles and I
| think there's a better chance that will happen for me than when I
| was trying to hit home runs.
|
| The driving force for me though was wanting different
| optimizations. It's depressing to strike out year after year. And
| so hitting singles has a lot more positive reinforcement. And
| then two, I wanted to make more money, which has happened because
| these singles pay off immediately.
|
| Last, there is always the possibility of an inside the park
| homerun. Maybe I'll hit a line drive to the outfield, the fielder
| will kick the ball, lose track of it, chase it down, overthrow
| third, and I'll come running home.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Ichiro made a career out of singles even though he was more
| than capable of knocking it out. You're in good company.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| Exactly. One thing I like about both Gwynn and Ichiro is that
| they were technicians. A single is analyzable in a way that
| you can nearly feel like you can understand it.
|
| A home run, especially a Venture-backed home run, is a
| mystery with a lot of luck that defies logic or analysis.
| meddlepal wrote:
| Once you realize the only important thing in baseball is
| getting on base the means by which you do it doesn't matter and
| you can't lose if you only ever get on base.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| It's a great analogy - and glad to hear of the success.
|
| And while "all or nothing" is better for an investor (since it
| still costs them their time to be invested), consistent hits is
| probably the better option for an entrepreneur. Steady income,
| not to mention getting feedback on how to refine your craft
| along the way.
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