Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Pitch Tracking and the "Charts" Tab (Baseball Mogul)

Baseball Mogul 2013 now tracks and records every single pitch of your simulation. Pitch type, speed, location, result. etc.

In conjunction with this, we have now added a 'Charts' tab to every player's Scouting Report:


The above chart was created by simulating from the 2012 season through 2025. It shows BABIP (Batting Average On Balls In Play) for all lefties that Strasborg faced.

You can also limit the search to certain pitch types (fastballs, sliders, etc.) and situations (2 outs, RISP, "close and late"). For example, here's Jason Heyward's Slugging Percentage on just fastballs:


Finally, you can limit the search to at-bats against one team or one specific player, such as Dustin Pedroia versus the Yankees from 2012 through 2020:


Saturday, March 10, 2012

Baseball Mogul 2013: Under The Hood, Part 2

For years, people have been asking for direct access to the Baseball Mogul database. Many of them want to be able to build mods that read and parse the data.

For example, Mizerak created a very cool app called the Box Score Parser that sifted through multiple seasons of box scores in order to derive data that can be easily viewed inside Baseball Mogul. Unfortunately, he had to use box scores because they were one of the only things saved in a human-readable form.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Baseball Mogul 2013: Under The Hood, Part 1

When I first wrote Baseball Mogul, it simulated each game by simulating the result of each plate appearance. This isn't unusual. This is how Strat-O-Matic works. This is how other computer games work. This is even the method I used when writing my very first baseball simulation, using paper and dice, back in 1976.

But the thing is, baseball isn't played with paper and dice. It's played inside televisions. And the game on television isn't determined by comparing player stats and generating a random number. It's determined pitch-by-pitch. Each pitch has a velocity, a spin direction (and magnitude), and the location where it crosses the plate.


Photo by Wall Street Journal

So, for Baseball Mogul 2013, I rewrote the entire simulation engine to calculate:
  1. The velocity and path of each pitch (similar to that recorded by PITCHf/x).
  2. The timing and velocity of the bat swing.
  3. The plane of the bat swing (and the location of its sweet spot).
  4. The angle and velocity of the hit that results from the above.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

When Zombies Attack ... Morons


The Walking Dead is dumb. The premise is dumb. The writing is dumb. And the characters are especially dumb.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Worst Call In Super Bowl History

Photo by Ed Yourdon
I realize that it's hyberbolic to call today's safety call the worst in 46 Super Bowls. But somebody needs to do it. Right now, there are thousands of people out there Googling "worst super bowl call ever", and they need to be able to find something.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Super Bowl MVP Predictions

Photo by Keith Allison
As mentioned on Sunday, we used Football Mogul to predicts the results of Super Bowl XLVI by simulating the game 100,000 times. We also recorded the MVP of each game.

Odds are that it will go to a quarterback. But there's a 48.7% chance of someone else taking home the MVP trophy.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Football Mogul Predicts Super Bowl XLVI


It's that time of year again. Another Super Bowl between the Giants and Pats. To predict the result, we used Football Mogul to simulate the game 100,000 times.
Note: this year's version of Football Mogul is 100% free. No time limits. No strings attached. Please download it. :)
Bottom line: Pats have a 60.78% chance of winning. The most likely score is 31-27.

Here are the average results for each team: