Ballpark Figures attempts to make baseball statistics and sabermetrics more accessible to fans through thoughtful and interactive data visualization and instruction.
As a lifelong baseball and Mets fan, I have been indebted to Fangraphs for helping me understand the construction of teams, players' performance, and the day's games. My goal with this project is to extend the functionality of their immense work, along with that of Baseball Reference and Statcast, and provide an alternative platform for visual and interactive statistical interpretation.
Baseball statistics have long been delivered in contextless statements and communicated through what are extremely dull frameworks, such as tables, rankings & leaderboards. Broadcasters will discuss batting averages and traditional counting statistics for fear of losing their audience. More advanced outlets will tell us about a player ranking 20th in WAR or discussing his 123 wRC+, but these statements rarely show the fuller context of these statistics. Let's start talking about distributions, let's look at the shapes of data. We know from cognitive science that humans are incredibly good at interpreting them—our brains are made for it—and we are terrible at approximating numbers off a spreadsheet. Let's look at some damn plots! And make 'em pretty!
Just like baseball, data has a famed stereotype of being uniquely boring, but I will not let you believe that either is true! This work brings together my favorite things: nice, colorful plots, baseball, data science, and interactive journalism. I believe there's currently a void in platforms that aim to tie them together, and I think that can be a shame.
I'd like to shout out to the developers, statisticians, and analysts at the following organizations, whose work this would not be possible without:
- Baseball Savant / Statcast
- Trackman
- Baseball Reference
- Fangraphs
- Pybaseball / baseballR
- Retrosheet
- Brooks Baseball
- Society for American Baseball Research
I hope you enjoy the work and website.