Alright, so the other day I found myself wanting to dig a bit deeper into how Paul Goldschmidt was really doing. You know, beyond the usual batting average and home run totals. I’d been hearing a lot about all these advanced metrics, so I figured, why not take a look myself?
My Dive into the Numbers
So, I got on my computer and navigated over to that well-known baseball stats site, the one everyone calls Savant. It’s got a mountain of data, that’s for sure. My goal was to get a feel for Goldschmidt’s underlying performance, things the regular box score doesn’t tell you.
First thing I did was pull up his player page. It took a moment to get my bearings, there’s a lot to look at. I started by looking for his exit velocity numbers. That’s basically how hard he’s hitting the ball. I think it’s a pretty good indicator of a guy’s raw power and how well he’s squaring things up. I scrolled through those, checked out his averages, his maximums, stuff like that.
Then, I moved on to things like launch angle. It’s interesting to see if he’s hitting more ground balls, or if he’s still getting that good lift on the ball. You combine that with exit velocity, and you start to see a pattern of the quality of his contact.
What I Was Looking For
I spent a good bit of time on the “barrels” section. That’s a term they use for when a hitter makes pretty much perfect contact – ideal exit velocity and launch angle. It’s a good way to see how often he’s really punishing the baseball.
- Checked his barrel rate over time.
- Looked at how it compared to previous seasons.
- Saw where those barreled balls were actually going on the field map they provide.
Another area I poked around in was all that “expected” stuff. You’ve got xBA (expected batting average) and xwOBA (expected weighted on-base average). The idea here, as I understand it, is that these numbers try to tell you what his stats should look like based on the quality of his contact, stripping away some of the luck or good/bad defense. Sometimes a guy’s actual stats are way different from his expected ones, and that can tell a story.
I looked at his spray charts too. Seeing where he’s hitting the ball, how often he’s pulling it, going opposite field, or hitting it up the middle. And they have those heat maps showing where pitchers are throwing to him, and where he does his damage, or where he struggles. It’s pretty fascinating to see it all visualized like that.
My Takeaways from the Process
Spending time with all that data for Goldschmidt, it didn’t give me one magic answer, like “he’s great” or “he’s struggling.” Instead, it gave me a much more nuanced picture. I could see trends, compare his current batted ball profile to his past performances, and just generally get a better feel for the nuts and bolts of his hitting.
It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, for sure. You can spend hours on that site looking at different players and different metrics. But for understanding what’s happening under the hood with a player like Paul Goldschmidt, it’s a pretty powerful tool. I definitely felt like I came away with a more informed perspective than if I just looked at the back of a baseball card, so to speak. It’s something I find myself doing more often these days when I really want to understand a player’s performance.
