Bloomberg Sports: Professional Tool
For those of you wondering what the twitter topic #BBGSports is all about, Bloomberg is hosting an event at their headquarters in NYC where they’re demoing their latest fantasy and professional baseball data products. Their professional product more or less slices Pitch f/x data in every which way possible. Here are some pictures of the demo:
Data sliced and diced in the strike zone and on the field:
Strike zone data and spray charts for specific players:
Their pitch predictor tool:
Regular stats section, including a section where you can create your own stats:
David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
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Starting to regret not traveling out to see it unveiled.
Thanks. I was just wondering what it was. Looks cool.
David, or anyone else, do you have any idea how this will effect the availability of the free Pitch f/x XML files?
The Bloomberg website said that they are giving it a test run to MLB clubs. And they need people to interpret it right? (Hint, hint)
I haven’t heard anything about them doing away with the free XML files.
Thanks for the preview, Bloomberg! Now, I can’t wait until FanGraphs offers all of the same things for free in a few months…
*stares*
*blinks*
*drools*
*shakes head* Um, so the product that is available to the masses is the Fantasy version and the Professional version is for the big boys?
Uh, WOW.
And AKB… Um.. I love FanGraphs. Dave is an absolute stud. But it’s going to be more than a few months.
Not that we couldn’t (and it would probably take 3-6 months of dev time) but the ability to slice and dice pitchfx data in such a granular way is not coming to FanGraphs anytime soon. In some sense, it’s overkill, even to the most advanced fan, but I wouldn’t mind having some of these types of graphics up on the site on a full season, or left/right splits full season level.
5×5 grids of the strike zone with gradient colors aren’t exactly a “new” thing, but it’s a slick interface.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/daily-graphing-curt-schilling
Dave,
You’re simply amazing. That’s all I have to say. =)
And yes, it DOES seem like overkill – I’m curious what the extra information some of the slicing and dicing supposedly includes is..
Some of the sites allude to some fairly advanced sounding stuff being involved.
Well, that pie chart thingy with the pitch types is a breakdown of pitch sequencing, which can then be drilled down again and again.
To me it seems like they basically turned the pitchf/x data base into a highly customized OLAP type tool where you can drill down very far into one particular element.
It’s not apparent in the screen shots, but it appeared from the demo you could basically click on anything and it would take you to a new layer of data.
Have to give Bloomberg props for creating a super slick interface.
All this really is is a conversion of the current dashboards for business utilities applied to a different data warehouse.
It is not the fact that application of the data in this format is a major change from what is out there in the business world. The important part is that the fact the companies are willing to create this for the MLB and that there is a major market for it. The next area will be subscription only versions available for non-MLB end users off of a cloud computing platform. The real question is going to be how much $$ would it cost for implementation of this on a consumer scale and would it be profitable.
This is just a bet GUI than what is used by those with access to DiamondView with offsite support running the data collection and data cleansing.
Welcome to the ever changing world of Business Intelligence solutions.
I don’t think it would be that hard for Dave to implement those for all players (it’s really no different than creating the wOBA graphs and whatnot, just more lines of coding), but I think he’s right that it’s overkill.
I actually have the code to generate those types of charts, but it’s for BIS data, which we’re prohibited from doing on a full site scale. Copying what Bloomberg did in just the demo would probably take 3-6 months. Doing a super lite version of it is more or less done, but can’t be released.
Porting the code over to the pitchf/x data should be pretty easy but I’d need to brush up on the strike zone coordinates in the pitchf/x data. I’m just not really sure what the coordinates are for the 4 corners of the strike zone.
For RHH I use -1 and +1 feet horizontally and for LHH I use -1.121 and .875 feet. I use the average value of the sz_bot and sz_top given for each hitter for the vertical. Use the average (or median) value, because the operators aren’t really accurate on a at bat by at bat basis, and there are some glitches as well.
has anyone used their fantasy draft kit? if so any quick reviews?
Speaking of apps, any word if the fangraphs iphone application will be available on Andriod? I’m thinking of switching from iPhone to Nexus One, but your app is a must have.
I’m in love.
Also, same question as John, only for the Palm Pre?
I guess something had to take over as the professional tool now that Curt Schilling’s retired!
Pretty amazing.
Why do these guys want to put Dave Allen out of a job? I seriously hope people aren’t paying for something that doesn’t take much time if you have any Excel skills.
Well, people will pay so they don’t have to take the time to process the information themselves.
ESPN offers some similar data on a free basis.
As a financial industry professional with a Bloomberg terminal on my desk, I wonder if there is any way possible I can sneak this expense by our data services team. Hmmm… I trade FX, this uses PitchFX, do you think anyone will notice?
Hey Dave interesting to read people’s thoughts on your blog versus what was being said within the Twitter feed. I thought there was a lot of ideas that were already well-established, but then again Bloomberg did have a couple outside the box ideas. I don’t want to rush to judgment in terms of the fantasy product until I’ve had an opportunity to give it a test drive, but I think it will be a useful tool. Whether it’s worth $31.95 is the question.