Bankovich, Schwabenbauer, Foley 1

Humm That Thing In Here

Bradyn Schwabenbauer

Drew Bankovich

Brendon Foley
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Intro/Project Description:

Our project is based on a question raised throughout the baseball world. That question,

if a pitchers pitch comes in at a faster speed, will it leave the batters bat at a faster speed? is

able to be put to a test due to the growing technological aspect of America's greatest pastime.

For our project we will gather data from three websites, which have tracked the pitch speed and

bat speed of home runs that have been hit in the 2016 MLB season. This allows us to put the

question to the test, by using a sample of the world's best players, allowing for the best results

possible. The overall goal of our project is to either prove or disprove the theory that the faster

the pitch, the faster the ball will leave the bat.

Before running this experiment, we predicted a hypothesis that agreed with the theory

that as the pitch speed increases, the exit speed will increase. Our hypothesis was: We predict

that as the the speed of a pitch thrown increases, the exit speed of the ball off of the bat will

increase with a strong positive correlation. The correlation will be in the range of greater than

0.700 to less than 1.000.

For our project we gathered our data through an observational approach. We used data

from online tracking services, which track all pitch speeds and exit speeds on hits in the MLB.

We observed the data off of this website and then ran a sample survey of that data. We then

analyzed and manipulated the data to complete the rest of our project.
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Data Set:

A population is the entire group of individuals being studied. Our population was MLB baseball

players that have hit home runs in the year 2016.

A Sample is the part of the population in which we get data. Our sample was the 25 baseball

players that we chose to get data from.

A variable is any characteristic of an individual. The explanatory variable for our project was the

speed of the pitch and the response variable was the speed of the ball off of the bat when it is

hit.

The reason we chose the explanatory and response variables the way we did was because we

wanted to see a positive correlation on a graph with an increasing slope, because our

hypothesis was that when pitch speed increases, the speed of the ball off of the bat increases.
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Data Analysis:
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r and r2:

Correlation is a value that describes the direction and strength of a straight-line

relationship between two quantitative variables. The direction is decided by the value being

positive or negative, positive is a positive direction, while negative is negative direction. The

strength is decided by the actual value, the closer that value is to one, than the stronger the

correlation is; while the closer the value is to zero, than the weaker the strength. The correlation

also is used to shower the validity of a data set. A higher correlation yields a more valid set of

data and vice versa.

Coefficient of Determination is a percentage value that is used to show the percent of

data that is explained by the correlation. A higher correlation yields a higher coefficient of

determination because more of the data is being explained by the correlation, and vice versa.

If r = 0.105, the correlation is positive meaning as the pitch speed (x) increases, they

speed off the bat (y) increases. The correlation of 0.105 means that the correlation is weak

meaning that the correlation is invalid or not valid. Since r = 0.105, then r2 = 0.011 meaning any

prediction has a 1.1% explained variation.

Prediction:

The least-squares regression line is the line that makes the sum of the squares of the vertical

distance as small as possible. The equation of a regression line is y = a + bx. Our equation was

y = 106.190 + 0.080x.

y = 106.190 + 0.080x x = 100

y = 106.190 + 0.080(100)

y = 106.190 + 8.000

y= 114.190
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For a pitch speed of 100 mph, we predict the exit speed to be 114.190 mph with 1.1% explained

variation.

Lurking Variables:

A lurking variable is a variable that has an important effect on the relationship among the

variables in a study, but is not one of the variables that should be studied. We only had two

possible lurking variables in our study. One lurking variable would be the pitch type. For

example, a knuckle ball would come in much slower than a fastball would. Another lurking

variable would be the angle that the ball is hit off of the bat. For example, if the clipped at a

higher angle, the speed of the ball off of the bat would be less than if the ball is hit at a lower

angle. Both of these lurking variables would be examples of confounding.

Conclusion:

For our hypothesis we predicted that as the the speed of a pitch thrown increases, the

exit speed of the ball off of the bat will increase with a strong positive correlation. The correlation

will be in the range of greater than 0.700 to less than 1.000. Our hypothesis was correct in the

direction being positive, but we were pretty far off in our strength prediction. The actual value for

our correlation came out to be 0.105, which was a lot weaker than we thought it would be.
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Works Cited

ESPN Home Run Tracker. (2016, May 10). Retrieved from

http://www.hittrackeronline.com/index.php?sortm=sob&sort=desc

MLB.com. (2016, Jan. 20). Retrieved from http://m.mlb.com/statcast/leaderboard#exit-

velo,r,2016

Willman, D. (n.d.). baseball savant. Retrieved from

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard