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Stealofhome

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Blog Entries posted by Stealofhome

  1. Stealofhome
    12 years ago, I built a prospect comparison system called JAVIER on Beyond the Box Score. At this point it's so old, you have to use archive.org to get to the pages. The idea behind it is to use very basic stats (BB%, K%, ISO, and Speed Score) to build a picture of a player and find similar players through the years. The beauty of using these simple stats is that comparisons can extend back to 1978, when Minor League data is readily available. I purchased data from The Baseball Cube and ran a bunch of z-score analysis, league regression, age regression, and Euclidean distance scores to find similar players based on minor league data. 

    The website is published at https://www.prospectwavelength.com/
    The functionality is fairly simple at this point, you just search a player and it will show their likelihood of reaching the MLB, a range of their possible wRAA outcomes, and their top 20 similar players (who are 28+ years old). Then there is a season-by-season breakdown of how they arrived at their particular zBB, zK, zISO, and Speed numbers.
    Here's the top 5 comps for Jesus Made, for instance:


    It's just hitters for now but I do have pitching stats and intend to add them in the future. I can also add some more details on calculations and more features to the site as time allows. Anyway enjoy for now and let me know what you think.
  2. Stealofhome

    Team Payroll and Winning the World Series

    By Stealofhome,


    Team Analysis
    The 2024 Brewers season ended with a bite from the Big Apple, and as the playoffs roll toward the concluding World Series, one thing is apparent--while money cannot buy happiness, it does seem pretty good at buying championships.
    The one last hope of all the small-market teams is the Cleveland Guardians, who currently trail the New York Yankees in the ALCS, 3 games to 1. Depending on where you look (Baseball-Reference, USA Today, spotrac, the remaining teams rank 1st/2nd (New York Yankees), 1st/3rd (New York Mets), 3rd/4th/5th (Los Angeles Dodgers), and 23rd/28th (Cleveland Guardians) in league payroll.
    It does seem like high-salary teams win it all every year, but how do they rank and more importantly, how do the Brewers compare? I went through all the data from the Wild Card Era (1995-2023) to view the trends.
    All data from the Baseball-Reference Miscellaneous Team Info tables.
    First, the team payroll rank for each World Series team since 1995.

    And how is all of that summarized when we look at the top 5 and top 15 teams by payroll rank?

    Since 1995, 48% of the champions and 38% of the contestants in the World Series have had top 5 payrolls. 93% of the champions and 83% of the contestants have been in the top half of payroll. Only two low-payroll teams have won it all -- the 2002 Anaheim Angels and the 2003 Florida Marlins. It has been two decades since that has happened.
    The list of losing World Series teams in the bottom half of payroll for the season includes the 2007 Rockies, 2008 and 2020 Rays, 2010 Rangers, 2014 Royals, 2015 Mets, 2016 Indians, and 2023 Diamondbacks.
    Only nine times in 29 years (31%), has the team with the lower payroll in the World Series beaten the team with the higher payroll. Of those winners, three of them had top 10 payrolls themselves, and seven were in the top half of the league.

    Most World Series champions fare favorably to the top payroll team in the league, with the most notable exceptions that have already been mentioned.

    If we search for World Series winning teams with less than 50% of the team with the highest payroll in the league each year, but were still in the top 15 teams by payroll, we do get a few more interesting names (Top Payroll Team): the 2005 White Sox (Yankees), 2006 Cardinals (Yankees), 2008 Phillies (Yankees), 2010 Giants (Yankees), and 2015 Royals (Dodgers). The Yankees have had the top payroll according to Baseball-Reference for 19 of the last 29 years and have turned all of that money into 5 World Series championships.
    Finally, how does this apply to the Milwaukee Brewers?

    In the Wild Card era, the Brewers have never had a higher payroll than the team which won the World Series. When the 2003 Florida Marlins won it all with $49 million dollars, the Brewers had only $41 million.

    In their most recent run of success in the last 15 years, the closest they've come to competing with the championship team on payroll was right at the beginning. In 2008 through 2012 (with the notable exception of 2009), the Brewers had at least 80% of the payroll of the eventual World Series winning team and were firmly near the middle of the league. Since then, the team has only cracked 70% once (78%, 2022), and has otherwise been in the range of 50-70% of the top payroll. They have never been in the top 10 and have ranked at least 15th in payroll just five times, with three of those years ranking exactly 15th.
    Since 2008, the 1st and 3rd quartile values for the Brewers payroll percentage of the max team have been 34 - 49%. Their payroll rank interquartile range has been 15-20.
    9 teams have managed to make the World Series with similar or worse payrolls and payroll ranks (2003 Marlins, 2007 Rockies, 2008 Rays, 2010 Rangers, 2014 Royals, 2015 Mets, 2016 Indians, 2020 Rays, 2023 Diamondbacks), but only the 2003 Marlins won it all. Interestingly enough, all of those teams actually had much lower payrolls than the Brewers typically  do, with the highest comparative payrolls among them being the 2016 Indians (17th, 41% of max) and last year's Dbacks (21st, 44% of max).
    With the ever-shifting landscape of media streaming rights and whispers of tighter budgets next year, the Brewers seem to be caught in a royal bind. We may keep rooting for them, hoping they’ll be next year’s Cinderella. But without that fateful kiss of destiny, they might end up more like Snow White—eternally dormant after one too many poisoned bites of the apple.
  3. Stealofhome
    Introduce ISO
    Last time, I looked at how well a basic calculation like Speed Unit can compare to an in-depth statistic like Ultimate Base Running. It turns out that it does pretty well. How about bat speed and exit velocity? I have been told that Isolated Slugging is a is a crude measure of ball speed, but that was before Statcast was around. Isolated slugging is calculated as (2B + 2x3B + 3xHR)/AB, or SLG - AVG.
    Is that true? How about some other hitting statistics? How well can we estimate a hitter's bat speed or exit velocity based solely on basic hitting stats? This becomes an important exercise when we want to look at data during times and places when bat speed and exit velocity are not available.
    Baseball Savant makes it pretty easy to compare the yearly values of many of these statistics. I encourage you to follow this link to an interactive scatter plot and check out some of the correlations yourself.
    ISO and Exit Velocity
    Here's the first one I was most interested in. These are all individual player seasons and we can see a 0.36 correlation coefficient for the 1392 qualified player seasons since 2015. That means ISO accounts for just 36% of the variation in average exit velocity for a batter -- a crude measure indeed. But better than nothing, and there is a clear trend.

    But we can also look at the career values for the players during the Statcast era as well.

    That is actually a much stronger correlation. Clearly there is some seasonal variability, even in average exit velocity for batters. There are some speedsters down on the bottom left (Billy Hamilton, Dee Strange-Gordon, Billy Burns, and Victor Robles) and some of the game's top hitters in the top right (Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, David Ortiz, and Mike Trout).
    Oneil Cruz stands out as having a lower ISO than expected based on his average exit velocity, and I'm not really sure what is happening with him. It doesn't appear that he is hitting a lot of ground balls, so perhaps he is just hitting the ball hard right at the fielders. I'll leave that as an exercise for the curious Pirates fan.
    William Contreras is the Brewer the farthest away from the average line. His ISO of 0.159 would predict an exit velocity of 88.5, but his actual exit velocity is 91.7. We might expect his slugging to increase a bit based on this.
    Barrels
    But exit velocity is not the end-all, be all. Some players track their "Barrels." Those are batted balls with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle.
    This is Aaron Judge's realm, where he leads all players by nearly 5% over the last 9 years.

    This is actually an even better correlation. It makes sense--the better you strike the ball, the more likely you are to hit doubles, triples, and home runs.
    Bat Speed
    How does this compare to the newer statistic that we have in 2024 of bat speed? Exit velocity and bat speed are correlated to each other, but not perfectly.

    For instance, Christopher Morel is 6th in qualified hitters in bat speed this year at 76.3 mph, but his average exit velocity is 69th at 89.6. For the Brewers, Joey Ortiz stick out as someone whose average exit velocity would be expected to be higher based on his bat speed. His 74.4 mph, 46th-ranked bat speed doesn't align with his 204th ranked exit velocity of 87.9 mph. Despite swinging 8 mph harder than Turang, he produces almost the same exit velo.

    So far, ISO doesn't correlate very strongly to pure Bat Speed, but we do only have part of a year's worth of data. We've already seen the increase in quality from a full year to multiple year's worth of ISO and exit velocity.
    But ISO, Exit Velocity, Barrel%, and Bat Speed are not the only things we can compare. Bat Speed has even less of a correlation with wOBA than ISO, at 0.12 so far for qualified batters. Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan prove that a batter doesn't have to swing hard to be productive, and Brice Turang is looking to build his own career using a similar strategy.
    Historical Brewers
    I'll close this like the previous article, by looking at some of the top historical Brewers seasons for isolated slugging. These are players with the highest consistent exit velocities and highest barrel rates. But these values are not simply taken as the raw isolated slugging percentage. These values are calculated as a z-score, using the average and standard deviation of the league's ISO that year.
    Ryan Braun shows up twice, in 2007 and 2012, but not in his 2011 MVP year. Christian Yelich appears in 2019, but not his MVP season of 2018 (though he should have won that year anyway).
    Onto the minor league leaders:

    A rookie Rock shows up again, as he did for the abbreviated 1970's Speed Unit table.
    Finally, the top 5 per decade for both the Major and Minor Leagues:


  4. Stealofhome

    The 2024 Brewers and Speed Unit

    By Stealofhome,


    Team Analysis
    Introducing Speed Unit
    I previously looked at how aggressive or not the Brewers have been this year at taking the extra base. But that doesn't tell the whole story, as it does not account for stolen bases. And I have a few more questions about some of these baserunning statistics.
    As mentioned before, the baserunning values listed on Baseball Savant are:
    More on the stats at Tom Tango's blog.
    Fangraphs has their own version of baserunning value which is calculated using weighted stolen base runs (wSB), Ultimate Base Running (UBR), and weighted GDP (wGDP). The UBR portion of Fangraphs baserunning, created by Mitchel Lichtman, is most closely related to the Baseball Savant calculation, but it does have a different method.
    So while Baseball Savant uses Statcast metrics of runner speed, arm strength, and runner position, UBR uses play-by-play information of changes in run expectancy due to the runner advancing.
    While both of these statistics can be useful for comparing modern baserunners, what is an analyst to do when neither Statcast nor play-by-play data is available? What if you only have basic statistics like PA, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR, SB, and CS?
    Well fortunately, our ancestors had to deal with such a problem and created a solution. One of those people was Bill James, who invented Speed Score back in 1987. It takes six factors--stolen base percentage, stolen base attempts, triples, runs scored, grounded into double plays, and defensive position and range to calculate an estimate of a players speed. That value can also be found on Fangraphs as "Speed."
    In 2005, Bill James' Speed Score was revamped by 'Patriot' into Speed Unit.
    2024 Brewers
    We can take all of the various implementations of speed to get a sense of the current Brewers roster:
    Data from Fangraphs here and here and Baseball Savant.

    One thing to note is that Fangraphs Base Running Runs are counting stats, while the Bill James and Patriot Speed Scores are rate stats. So where Oliver Dunn has only been worth 0.8 runs on the bases this year, he has performed well when given the opportunity.
    There is quite a bit of disagreement between UBR and Statcast on Yelich, Frelick, and Perkins. From the previous analysis, there were differences in aggression between these players and perhaps they need to still find a happy medium. They might be good at knowing when to go, but getting caught at the wrong time and taking away win probability from the team on the bases. Three of the young speedsters--Chourio, Frelick, and Perkins--have lower stolen base value than expected. Joey Ortiz has the sprint speed to be a good baserunner (28.3 ft/s, 78th percentile), but none of his numbers are all that great.
    Comparison
    If we zoom back out to the entire Major Leagues, how do these stats compare to each other? In particular, how well does Speed Unit estimate a statistic closer to true baserunning value like Fangraphs Base Running? If we look at the statistics for the 395 players with at least 500 PA from from 2021 through 2023, we get this relationship, with a correlation coefficient of 0.84:

    The obvious discrepancy between the two statistics was already mentioned. Speed Unit is a rate stat and Base Running is a counting stat. Players with fewer plate appearances will have fewer opportunities to add or subtract runs by nature. Another big limitation for Speed Unit comes from extreme pinch runners. For most players, their normal statistics at the plate will balance pinch running appearances out, but there are some outliers. Terrance Gore and Billy Hamilton are recent examples of specialty pinch-runners. The speed unit calculations all compare their stolen base and runs scored values with their hitting numbers, but these players' ratios are off.
    Still, when setting a high enough value on plate appearances and looking over a large enough sample, the simply calculated Speed Unit can describe upwards of 85% of the variation of Fangraphs Base Running. Not bad for scratches on an ancient tablet.
    Historical Brewers
    After finding the value and limitations of an estimator like Speed Unit, we can do the fun stuff. Now that we're no longer limited to the modern Statcast era, play-by-play results, or even the Major Leagues, who are some historical players in the Brewers organization who have had notable speed seasons? Here are the top 10 in the Major Leagues since 1978, led by Scott Podsednik's 70 stolen bases and 7 triples in 2004.

    But we're not limited to the Major Leagues, how about the best Speed Unit seasons for the Brewers in the Minor Leagues?

    Finally, we can look at the same two tables but find the top 5 Speed Seasons by decade since 1978 for both the Major and Minor Leagues:


    What do you think, any interesting names? Any notable seasons missing?
  5. Stealofhome
    Full disclosure: I'm not sure I have any real conclusions on this topic, I just had some analysis I wanted to share and virtually "think out loud."
    Raw data from Baseball Savant:
    Yearly Baserunning Value
    Total Baserunning Value
    Baserunning Value
    The Brewers have built an impressive and speedy roster, led by Garrett Mitchell, Jackson Chourio, Blake Perkins, and Brice Turang -- all with a sprint speed of over 29 feet per second. That value is calculated by Baseball Savant as:
    29 feet per second would equate to an 11.3 second 100 meter time (not quite Olympic material), 19.8 mph, and a 4.14 40-yard dash (better than any recorded in NFL history). Of course, those times are not perfectly equal, since the difference between one and four seconds is an eternity in the world of sprinting, but it does put things in perspective. 
    Along with raw sprint speed, Baseball Savant also calculates the run value for each base running opportunity:
    More on the stats at Tom Tango's site.
    Christian Yelich
    Christian Yelich is the Brewers' poster boy for creating runs on the base paths, with the 4th-most runner runs in MLB since 2016, behind Trea Turner, Kevin Kiermaier, and Billy Hamilton. He has done this, despite having a slower sprint speed than many others who have provided similar amounts of damage on the bases. Clearly, he is a smart and efficient runner.

    But much of the running value that he has provided is due to the fact that he is such a good hitter. He has a lot more opportunities to add value because he is on base more often than many others with similar speed profiles. If we look at the running value added per opportunity, his standing slips a bit.

    Since 2016, Yelich's sprint speed has ranged from 28.1 to 28.9 ft/sec, with a median of 28.4. If we look at the runners with a similar sprint speed, we find players like Brett Gardner and Ozzie Albies who have about the same sprint speed but are more aggressive than Yelich. Albies is an interesting comparison -- he has 75% fewer at-bats than Yelich, but is worth just 87% fewer baserunning runs. The difference seems to be in the value under runs lost on the basepath due to holding. That is, Yelich will not risk taking the extra base often enough. When compared to all other runners near his same speed over the past 8 years, Yelich has an average attempt rate. He attempts taking the extra base 40% of the time and runners with similar speed advance 39% of the time.
    Baseball Savant will take you right to the video of the plays where Yelich should have gone for the extra base and there are a few similarities. The highest run value lost of his holds is only -0.24 and is a misplay by a deep second basemen. But Yelich wasn't running hard enough out of the box to take advantage of it. (Not sure how to or if I can embed all of these videos, so they're left as links).
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=c4b987d2-c773-4fb6-854a-bced6446f78f
    There are other plays similar to this:
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=17811a50-aa96-401a-bc75-f3fa09a095f8
    Looks like he is jogging out of the box, thinking it was a home run or an out.
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=a0aa8650-6d9d-4ee1-af05-d5c489da2cd9
    Up by 8 in the game, so might have not been as aggressive, but didn't read the line drive properly to fall in.
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=8d4f2379-f72f-453c-9a4a-35a854f76046
    Didn't read the fly ball well enough to know that it would fall.
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=5c068b59-4f5b-47a2-9a51-3753b60a7ff5
    Didn't read the fly ball to score on one over the fielder's head.
    So it appears that Yelich will sometimes misjudge where the ball is hit, either on his own or other people's fly balls.  There aren't a lot of egregious errors, but just so many of them that they add up.
    Brewers
    But I also wondered if the reduced aggression on the bases is something the team implements. It's hard to say that since they are currently 2nd in steals in all of MLB, but that is to be expected because of their team speed.
    Baseball Savant gives a statistic that shows how often the baserunner attempted to advance in comparison to the average runner. But that doesn't tell the whole story, since a faster baserunner is more likely to advance. So how do the Brewers compare to other runners with similar speed in the same situation?

    It does appear that all of the Brewers speedy runners are less aggressive than their counterparts when it comes to taking the extra base. Everyone, except for Blake Perkins. And his smart baserunning has led to an impressive amount of value on the bases for how few opportunities he has had. He would be worth nearly one run more if he hadn't run into an absolute perfect throw from Fernando Tatis Jr.
    https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=e99b100b-0f86-4232-a3cb-69a0cfcb8e8b
    Perhaps Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, Sal Frelick, and even Christian Yelich could tweak their aggressiveness up 3-5% and add even more value stealing another 90 feet?
    But how is their aggression or passivity affecting them in terms of runs on the basepaths?
    Well that's where it's interesting and I'm not entirely sure how to parse this into a conclusion. If we take their running value and divide by opportunities to advance, we see some interesting trends. Blake Perkins is clearly very aggressive, but only average in comparison to runs per opportunity, though that is skewed by one good play from Tatis. But Jackson Chourio is very passive and also average in runs per opportunity. Brice Turang and Joey Ortiz are substantially below league average for their speed in terms of runs of advancing on the bases for the chances they get.

    But if we look at their runs of advancement when they try to go, now they are a little closer to league average at their speed. Both Turang and Ortiz come a bit closer to the average.

    So perhaps Ortiz, Turang, and Chourio can gain some lessons from Yelich on how to read balls a little better and take an extra base here and there. Perhaps Hoskins, Bauers, and Contreras can be a little more aggressive. The Brewers are currently ranked 8th in MLB for baserunning runs, oddly enough much of those coming from being too aggressive. They have four plays at the plate where they were thrown out, along with five more plays that lost at least -0.74 estimated runs. It appears that they could be more aggressive based on their speed, but have lost more runs than nearly any other team because of being too aggressive.
    If nothing else, it is an interesting jumping off point to discuss how the team has approached baserunning this year.
  6. Stealofhome

    Introductions All Around

    By Stealofhome,


    Introductions
    After reading @TheIrrelevantWriter's introductory blog, I thought I would follow suit. My name is Chris and I'm currently living in New Mexico but grew up in southeastern Wisconsin. I was the only person in my family who was really interested in sports but somehow quickly became obsessed with baseball. I'd listen to the mid/late 90's games on WTMJ with Uecker and Jim Powell and collect the Brewers' cards from the local police officers. I only attended one or two Brewers games growing up and went to a handful more of Timber Rattlers games (cheaper tickets, probably).
    But somehow, I became obsessed with Roger Clemens and instead of following the local team, I was a Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros fan. As such, and along with the Timber Rattlers being a Mariners affiliate at the time, my Brewer fandom was never very firmly entrenched. Then I moved to New Mexico and eventually discovered some of the new baseball stats that were becoming more popular, thanks to The Book by Tom Tango/MLG, and websites such as Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus. I started to get more involved with the internet sabermetrics crowd on Twitter and eventually started writing some articles myself. That eventually took me to a Tampa Bay Rays blog, which opened the door to my Rays' fandom. After that, I started submitting articles to Fangraphs Community and Beyond the Box Score, the latter of which brought me on as a writer. That opened the door to a position at Baseball Prospectus, an article on ESPN, and a chapter in the 2015 Hardball Times Annual.
    Eventually that part of life was over and I hung up the keyboard for quite some time. With the advent of MLB.TV, having been more of a general baseball fan, I've been able to rekindle my Brewers fandom, which has been especially easy with their consistent competitive nature and "David beating Goliath" story line ever year. I eventually stumbled on this little corner of the internet and have appreciated both the analysis and the relationships that some have built with the actual organization. Having a beat writer with media access to the team and prospect writers who can talk to the players, along with a sense of community and willingness to discuss more than just surface metrics is just the place for me. I'm glad to be here and hope to help contribute to the discussion moving forward!
  7. Stealofhome
    The Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins last offseason to be a power bat in the middle of the lineup. It was a bit of a gamble by the team, as Hoskins missed all of last season with a torn ACL, but a measured one because of his consistent ability to hit. Coming into 2024, Hoskins had over 2,800 plate appearances with a 125 wRC+ and turned 31 toward the end of spring training. By all accounts, he is great in both the clubhouse and community, and was clearly a fan favorite during his six Major League seasons in Philadelphia. But despite his consistent seasonal output, he was also known in Philadelphia to be a streaky hitter.
    If we look at Hoskins' offensive output by month over his career, we can see some of that inconsistency, where he'll struggle for a month or two before rebounding (splits data all from Fangraphs).

    The last data point in the plot is this month, June 2024, one of the worst months in his career to date. Much of that inconsistency can be attributed to right-handed pitching.

    In particular, according to Baseball-Reference, it appears that Hoskins struggles against power pitchers. Those are defined as "in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks." His OPS is much lower against these pure strikeout pitchers.

    It is possible that in the months he is struggling, he is facing more power pitchers or getting poor match ups, playing in difficult stadiums, or it might just be randomness. But most of it occurs against right-handed pitching, which is to be expected, since Hoskins is himself right-handed. His career splits show that he has been a pretty good hitter against everyone, but that he has particularly taken advantage of his platoon splits against lefties.

    And that brings us to 2024. The right-handed, first base-playing, power bat in the middle of the Brewers lineup has a 66 wRC+ against left-handed pitching this season. Instead of hitting like Ronald Acuna Jr., he's hitting like Martin Maldonado. He has a wRC+ below 100 against southpaws every month this season, a streak in his career matched only by the second half of 2018.

    In May of that year, Hoskins fouled a ball off his face and landed on the disabled list with a fractured jaw. He returned 11 days later and demolished right-handed pitching but struggled against lefties. This year, he has dealt with an injured hamstring and his return to baseball after an entire year and has yet to prove that he can hit opposite-handed pitching.
    What is happening in his approach that is causing him to have a .172 batting average, 5 total hits, one home run, and a .261 wOBA against lefties? His Baseball Savant page can give us some clues. All of the following statistics will be against left-handed pitching. He has a .327 wOBA against the fastball but .181 and .111 against breaking stuff and offspeed, respectively. But his walk and strikeout rates this season (11.4% to 17.1%) are actually better than his career numbers (17.9% to 20%). He is seeing more fastballs (65% compared to 52% in 2022 and 59% in 2021) and is whiffing on them a little more (24% fastball whiff rate in 2024 vs. 18% in 2022).
    His barrel rate against all pitches is down this year, from 14% in 2020, 19% in 2021, and 15% in 2022 to 8% in 2024. So he isn't necessarily swinging and missing, but swinging and missing the barrel against lefties. He has a 100% ground ball rate against breaking pitches and 43% against offspeed this year, up from 33% for both in 2022. His pop-up rate on fastballs this season is 38%, up from 12% in 2022.
    Taking in all that information, it appears that Hoskins is getting under the fastball to pop it up and getting on top of the breaking and offspeed stuff to ground it weakly to shortstop or third base.

    Hopefully he can get back to mashing lefties and providing high quality plate appearances against right-handed pitching. But for now, he is one of the main reasons that the Brewers are struggling mightily against southpaws this season.
  8. Stealofhome

    Sal Frelick and the High Strike

    By Stealofhome,


    Player Analysis
    @Outlander  mentioned the possibility that umps are calling higher strikes than normal against Sal Frelick as a reaction to a particularly impactful missed call against him in Wednesday's game against the Angels. The Ump Scorecard:

    I couldn't find a quick way to visualize strike calls against Frelick that were mapped to his personal strikezone, so I decided to make one. Using Baseball Savant's search, we can pull the data from strikes called against him this year.
    The x-axis should be ideally be consistent for all players, though with Frelick being a left-handed hitter, he might be more likely to get the outside strike called against him. Then I looked through the video and found the Z values of the pitches that were right at the top and bottom of the strike zone on screen. They do seem to match up with the rule book definition:
    Here are the most borderline top and bottom pitches:
    Top at plate_z = 3
    Bottom at plate_z = 1.31
    And here are all the called strikes against him this year, viewing the pitches from the batter's perspective, so Frelick would be standing on the right side of this plot.

    There are quite a few high strikes getting called, but is that abnormal? If we set the zone of interest between +- 1.04 in the x-direction and 3-3.37 in the z-direction, Frelick has taken 23 pitches, with 14 called strikes and 9 called balls. All of the pitches called balls are either inside or outside. None of the balls over the heart of the plate are called.

    According to Baseball Savant's Delta Run Expectancy, those high strikes are responsible for -0.856 runs. The most impactful was in the Tigers game against Beau Brieske, when Frelick had two runners on an dropped from 2-1 to 2-2. I couldn't find win expectancy values, as the impact to the game on this one was minimal with a 10-0 score at the time.
    In this particular area of the zone, the MLB average is 28% ball and 72% strike. Frelick is 39% ball and 60% strike.  But that doesn't account for the height of the player. Frelick's average strike zone top is around 3 feet, but Aaron Judge's is north of 4, so we would expect him to get more called strikes in that area. If we filter down to players that have an average strike zone height below 3, we come up with six players: Garrett Stubbs, Jose Altuve, Frelick, Nicky Lopez, Nick Madrigal, and Miles Mastrobuoni.
    Their collective percentage of balls to strikes in this zone is 48% ball and 52% strike. Of the six players, only Jose Altuve gets the ball called more often than the strike (67% balls on 27 pitches).

    It's hard to say with this information how much it is affecting Frelick, but it does nevertheless show that shorter players are forced to expand the upper part of the zone, unless you're a former MVP, 8-time all-star, 2-time World Series champion, and 6-time silver slugger.
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