Calculate umpire strikezone sizes

Head on over to THT, and you should see a post by yours truly about calculating the size of umpire strikezones. Here I will open source the code for how to do that. The hard part though is that in order to make use out of the code, you need to have every single pitch from 2011 available at your disposal. If you have that, then you can use the following code to generate umpire strikezone sizes. The script makes very heavy use of the "plyr" package (packages load libraries of extra functions and/or data into R), which may be my favorite R package. It was designed by Hadley Wickham, who is a celebrity of sorts in the R community. The plyr package is great for data manipulation and group-wise summaries. You can install it with:

install.packages("plyr")

You also need the "mgcv" package for creating the model that is used in the calculations.

You can find the code below in blue, and comments in green. Hope it's readable:

#load library

library("plyr")

#initalize -- add necessary variables. Best way is with vectorized ifelse function. 

pitcher$babipn = ifelse(pitcher$type=="X" & pitcher$event %in% c("Single", "Double", "Triple"), 1, 0)

pitcher$inplay = ifelse(pitcher$type=="X" & pitcher$event != "Home Run", 1, 0)

pitcher$swing = ifelse(pitcher$type=='X' | pitcher$des %in% c('Foul', 'Foul Tip', 'Foul (Runner Going)', 

            'Swinging Strike', 'Swinging Strike (Blocked)'), 1, 0)

pitcher$walk = ifelse(pitcher$des %in% c("Ball", "Ball In Dirt", "Intent Ball") 

            & pitcher$event %in% c("Intent Walk", "Walk") & pitcher$ball==3, 1, 0)

pitcher$strikeout = ifelse(pitcher$des %in% c("Called Strike", "Foul Tip", "Strike",

            "Swinging Strike", "Swinging Strike (Blocked)")

            & pitcher$event %in% c("Strikeout","Strikeout - DP") & pitcher$strike==2, 1, 0)

pitcher$homerun = ifelse(pitcher$des == "In play, run(s)" & pitcher$event == 'Home Run', 1, 0)

pitcher$full_name = paste(pitcher$first, pitcher$last)

#find number of plate appearances for each umpire, don't know why I named it atbats

#calculate kwERA, FIP, babip, and swing rate

pitcher = ddply(pitcher, .(ump_id), transform, atbats = length(unique(ab_id)))

pitcher = ddply(pitcher, .(ump_id), transform, fip = ((13 * sum(homerun)

              + 3 * sum(walk) - 1.93 * sum(strikeout)) / (.23 * atbats)) + 3.10,

              kwERA = 5.24 - (12 * (sum(strikeout) - sum(walk)) / atbats),

              babip = sum(babipn) / sum(inplay), swing = mean(swing))

#subset data to only look at pitches where umpire makes a call

#this won't affect the stats we just calculated

pitcher = subset(pitcher, des %in% c("Automatic Ball", "Ball","Ball In Dirt", "Called Strike",

                                   "Intent Ball", "Pitchout", "Strike"))

#add in variable to describe called strike

pitcher$cs = ifelse(pitcher$des == 'Called Strike', 1, 0)

#find number of pitches seen by each umpire

pitcher = ddply(pitcher, .(ump_id), transform, n = length(px))

#only look at umpires with greater than 3000 pitches

pitcher = subset(pitcher, n > 3000)

#define function to calculate strikezone area

csarea = function(x) {require('mgcv')

  #create model with mgcv package, use smoothing                  

  model <- gam(cs ~ s(px) + s(pz), data = x, family = binomial(link='logit'))

  mygrid <- expand.grid(x=seq(-4, 4, length=50), y=seq(-2, 6, length=50))

  #find predicted called strike rates for a bunch of tiny bins                  

mygrid$z <- as.numeric(predict(model, data.frame(px=mygrid$x, pz=mygrid$y), type='response'))

thresh <- 0.5

  #find number of tiny bins where predicted rate is at least .5                  

nbins=length(mygrid$z[mygrid$z >= thresh])

  #multiply number of tiny bins by size of each bin                  

areas=nbins * 0.02665556

  #add in fields to data.frame                  

x$area <-rep(areas, length(x[,1]))

x$nbins <- rep(nbins, length(x[,1]))

return(x)

}

#call + evaluate csarea() on each subset of umpire data

pitcher=ddply(pitcher, .(ump_id), "csarea")

#create a summary dataset for each umpire, then sort by area

sum.pitch=ddply(pitcher, .(ump_id), summarize, area=mean(area), full_name=full_name[1],

                fip=mean(fip), kwERA=mean(kwERA), babip=mean(babip), swing=mean(swing))

sum.pitch=arrange(sum.pitch, area)