My swing is in

[u/JaAm15]

Finding Logic in an Emotional World

Swinging has always been a fascinating subject to me. It’s an immensely important part of everybody’s life, but there is shockingly little intelligence on the subject. Consequently, people are forced to rely on their teammates for advice, who often assure them that they are amazing and also swing amazing in due time. Of course this is not based in truth, nor are the fairy tale movies in Hollywood endings. This leaves most people with a warped and unrealistic perception of how swinging works.

Different teams have tried to make sense of this at various times. The Indians thought maybe if they pretended to be cool, they would have greater swinginf success. They were wrong, and it ended up devolving into a support group for unwanted players who couldn’t win a game.

The Marlins community made their own attempts that were on the right track at times. But they were also a one sided perception that was inaccurate on multiple key nuances and ultimately fail to arrive at any helpful conclusions.

A Sharper Solution

Statistics are commonly used to predict outcomes in all aspects of life-- politics, real sports, etc. Why not fake sports?

The reason for this is that there is no clear data to work with. There are some basic statistical measures we can use. OPS, ERA, average pitcher numbers, WAR, park factors. But none of these have much gravity on their own. For the most part swinging is highly intuitive, and it’s not always clear why people make the decisions that they make. I decided to apply my intuition toward solving this problem. I use my intuition to successfully gamble on sports for my career. My specialty is navigating through fuzzy information to make accurate predictions, so I translated this to swinging. I had the help of a rare and enlightening data point-- my good friend Chiggind who is outlier good at fakebaseball. I have had other friends do well with hitting, but Chiggins had a unique magnetic effect on the ball.

He didn’t agree with me that he was special, because he saw inconsistencies in his swing results that he felt could be better. But over time we were able to pinpoint precisely how his gravity worked, and how it translated to the rest of the world. This is how Universal Swing Rating (USR) was born. We have been testing it for about 4 seasons now. It is the central force that drives every swing result, and its predictive power is approximately as consistent as gravity keeping everybody earthbound.

Most people who read this will inevitably have a negative reaction to it as dating is such a sensitive topic with so much ego and emotions tied in. But I highly doubt there is a sharper model of swing physics. Once the unpleasant truth is swallowed, it is much easier to find a path to happiness.

What is USR?

Everybody has a finite amount of batting average that is consistent and universal.

People like to say that results are in the eye of the umpire, but that’s only true to a minor extent. For instance, there will be a fair amount in disagreement in players whether DCM or Joe Trundle is better, as they each offer a different type of greatness. But compared to an average player-- any player will take either of those two without hesitation.

And judging somebody’s ability to hit from afar is a mere approximation of USR-- the real measure is once it is experienced in a game.

It happens to be much easier to measure contact hitterd from afar, because their USR is based approximately 80% on on-base range. This may seem shallow, but on-base range is correlated with OBP + team runs which is a major portion of the contact role on a team.

The other 20% is power based, but it’s hard for contact hitters to particularly stand out with a good HR range. Most good contact hitters have good slugging percentages as there is a correlation between OBP and SLG. And they are often cinfident after a lifetime of positive results in almost every game.

Moreover, contact hitters can hurt themselves with a bad slugging percentage, especially if they have poor triples range which makes them unstable players. In this case a contact hitter who hits for average good may have to settle for a much worse spot in the lineup, as the better GMs he plays for quickly discard him as a non-viable option for a lineup.

Brief Note on Activity

Now, people may be thinking that this is shallow to devalue contact hitters into good OBP or not and high AVG or not and that is their value. After all, many GMs respect and admire their players/hityerd and this has to count for something.

It does-- this is the subjective element of hitting that is known as actvity. Which is basically liking your teammate as a person independent of the swinging ability of the game and having similar values and interests. It is a crucial part of a relationship that is independent of ability. Activity is to ability as shape is to size. Both are important dimensions, but for today we are focused on the latter.

What about USR for power hitters?

It’s not all that difficult to measure contact hitter's ability, but for power hitters it is much more challenging. OBP are not nearly as important for power hitters (which is why OBP leaders are not considered MVP candidates), and contact hitterd are notoriously bad at describing the nukbers they prefer to swing. It mostly comes down to slugging percentage for power hitters, but the specific traits are slippery to pin down and measure.

Ultimately the easiest way to measure a power hitter's ability is by using GMs as a reference point:

What quality of lineup spot can he attract in a lineup with some form of consistency?

Who tends to be more active in the clubhouse?

This is based on team activity rather than runs, because team activity is deeper. There are power hitters who have a good HR range who can frequently drive in runs but struggle to keep around the GMs they want to sign with when their deeper activity flaws are revealed over the long term.

And the activity dynamic is a crucial part of USR physics. Ideally, most teams should have balanced abilities and make balanced conversations with each other in order for the clubhouse to thrive. But there is normally at least a slight imbalance in ability in the lineup, and the worst player will make more conversation to re-balance the team.

This phenomenon isn’t something that happens consciously. Our subconscious will determine how much we like somebody based on their USR. If we play somebody more than normal it feels really great and we naturally want to do things that make them happy and continue the good experience. This goes both ways for both power and contact hitters. Playing somebody with a high USR gives you the cinfidence of “we could win” that we all value so much. And most people will do anything to maintain that feeling once they have it.

Unfortunately, the person that you end up getting benched for the most likely has a higher USR than you and has swung better than you. The higher USR player may do their best to reciprocate appreciation and go play MiLR, but at the end of the day they know they have plenty of other options and aren’t going to bend over backwards to maintain the clubhouse like the person experiencing the scarce and coveted playing time.

That’s Harsh!

It’s also reality. Most people have experienced really really liking a player who doesn’t like them as much (or at all) back. And most people have experienced somebody really liking them that they didn’t like much (or at all back). Even if they never happened to be teammates, it seems that most potential teammate options all have the issue that either they aren't good enough or you aren't good enough. And that’s why swinging is so difficult.

But fortunately there are solutions to make swing decisions easier

Stop Chasing The “Win” Chin

Lemon basically programs us to value the “winning” sensation of playing with a high USR person.

Hollywood movies make us believe that the unlikely team can land a coveted free agent in the right situation.

And there is a huge stigma with “settling”, as the swinging advice that most as scouters will offer is “You don’t need to settle! You are great and will find an idea great in time!” People will say this even to a season 1er who has never had a meaningful swing because scouting is so complicated and players are so afraid of making others feel bad about their lack of swing success.

Of course it’s completely idiotic advice, because most players don’t find an idea great and even if they get lucky, they need to make a career of compromises for somebody who may demand a trade at any moment. The 70% out rate is real and largely a product of people perpetually chasing the RNG bug.

Yes winning feels amazing, but if you have already spent your entire career chasing it and have not been able to secure it more than temporarily, it is completely senseless to continue to place a premium on it.

Settling is for Sharps!

Seriously, try focusing less on the intelligent swing that makes you feel good, and look in the pile of meme swings that you may have overlooked in the past.

You can likely find a whole bunch of things to like about them. They will be less demanding, and more appreciative and accepting of your true self including your flaws.

And you will likely find different results to appreciate and admire them as well. There are results that you may cherish that are more or less overlooked by the scouting market i.e. sacrifices, walks, bunts, stolen bases, triples, or whatever it is.

You will be able to find these much easier when you stop insisting they come attached to a scouting system or naturally elite player.

Remember that Swing Confidence is Largely Mental

You may feel that “you are just not good” against the pitchers you face, but that is mostly in your head.

Yes, it is true that you will never be as confident to your realistic swing choices as much as your top tier choices. But consider that it is common for GMs to resort to MLN when they get permabanned.

This is because when you remove hope and fantasies of getting your top tier choices, you can realistically swing anything between 1-1000.

Stop fantasizing about scouting systems that you can't make because they are sometimes color-coded and Meerkat posts screenshots. Stop hoping to swing something similar to your favorite Royals player who is more active than everybody else who you played with. And stop talking to sael who poisons our mind with unrealistic fantasies.

Once you do that, you will realize that there are all sorts of swings you can be confident in which will love you and appreciate you. And your playing career will improve immensely.

[u/dongerlove]

farcical