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I’m so excited to announce that I will be joining the Minnesota Twins as a Rehab Pitching Coach at their Fort Myers facilities!
A huge thank you to everyone who has helped and supported me on this journey. I can’t wait to get started!
Carter Kessinger
623 posts
Carter Kessinger
@ckessinger44
Joined January 2017
- I'm so excited to present my very first Shiny app! This app is a 3D pitch trajectory visualizer built using plotly and contains data from 2021-2024. I'd love any comments on ways you think it might be improved. Have fun exploring! carterkessinger.shinyapps.io/Trajectories_v… (demo attached ⬇️⬇️⬇️)
- Why are release angles so important? The more an offspeed pitch looks like a pitcher's fastball out of the hand, the more likely it will fool hitters. Just look at the jump in xSwStr% as the VRA gap between FBs and offspeed pitches shrinks to 0.
- Pitchers: You don't need to throw each pitch in your arsenal from the same release point to succeed! 2022 MLB data shows no relationship between release point "tunneling" and pitch effectiveness. Instead, chase better pitch shapes and tunnel using release angles (VRA & HRA)
- When pitch designing, location matters as much as shape...because location affects shape! Before giving up on a pitch or grip, ensure the pitch is landing where it will play best. For MLB changeups, pitchers gain 3" of HB and depth just by throwing it down & in (vs. up & away).
- So happy to make it official today with my amazing parents! Can’t wait to be a Bulldog! @YaleBaseball
- Since 2021, no pitch is thrown less to same-hand hitters than changeups, at just 21.5% of all CH thrown. Yet, the same-hand CH garners more swinging strikes than any other pitch-hand combination but the SHH splitter. Why aren't teams throwing this pitch more often? 🧵 ⬇️⬇️⬇️
- First MAJOR update! Here are the new features: Full 2024 season now included Updated batter viewpoints Location-neutral trajectories: now you can see how trajectories compare if all pitches were thrown down the middle Check it out! carterkessinger.shinyapps.io/Trajectories_v…
I'm so excited to present my very first Shiny app! This app is a 3D pitch trajectory visualizer built using plotly and contains data from 2021-2024. I'd love any comments on ways you think it might be improved. Have fun exploring! carterkessinger.shinyapps.io/Trajectories_v… (demo attached ⬇️⬇️⬇️) - Currently building a Stuff+ model for @YaleBaseball using CCBL data from last summer. Made a corrplot in R to look at various potential predictors of fastball “stuff.” Really interesting that extension doesn’t seem to affect VAA 🤔
- After reading this great article by @bymichaelrosen, I decided to visualize swing decisions by release angle similarity to fastballs. Here, we see how tunneling breaking balls with FBs raises a batter's odds of swinging while RA dissimilarity increases the likelihood of a take.
Replying to @ckessinger44reverse true as well -- release angle dissimilarity on sliders = more called strikes blogs.fangraphs.com/the-kirby-coro… - Had a great morning handing out reading glasses to the homeless with @HunterGreene17, @JeffPierantoni, and family. We met some incredible people and brought joy to so many. None of this would be possible without all of your generous donations. Thanks again for an amazing drive!
- One way to punchout opposite-handed hitters with the sweeper is to pepper the outer third of the zone. This density plot shows how MLB pitchers can thrive with this strategy. One reason why pitchers can throw it here so successfully is because... (cont.)
- I recently started looking into Location-Neutral VAA and it's revealed some interesting things. Teams with actual VAAs flatter than their location-neutral VAAs show improved swinging strike rates over teams with steeper than expected VAAs. Put simply: high 4S = more whiffs!
