“The will to win is
not nearly as important as the will to prepare
to win” – Coach John Wooden
How Ari Kaplan and Fred Claire’s solutions help Major
League Baseball Teams
We help you make decisions, not guesses. We provide MLB organizations
with solutions that fill in critical informational gaps not provided anywhere
else on the market. This benefits the coaching staff, advanced scouting,
strategic analysis of player talent, and player development at the Major and
Minor League levels.
Our difference is that our solutions are field-tested through
years of direction and refinement with baseball Presidents, GMs, managers, and
coaches. The solution can be installed and used by a teams staff with regular
data updates, or analysis from us directly. It is presented in easy to
understand reports and pictures – because the information was developed
and used by MLB people.
How do we uniquely benefit an organization?
- Advanced scouting, coaching,
and training: Free up 25% of scouts time and effort by
providing information they otherwise collect – enabling them to
focus more on the game. Scoutable (tm) reports of players in plain English generated by
looking at full coverage of all games and over 720,000 pitches. While scouts
and media are speculating, pinpoint exactly how a pitcher is struggling.
What does today’s umpire strike zone actually look like?
What’s changed over the last few weeks across all players –
such as which pitchers are trying new pitch types or which batters are
hitting more line-drives? What’s the starter’s game plan
– how does he mix pitches, is his delivery deceptive, does he
double-up on pitches?
- Managerial: What is today’s game plan to win? Understand
guides to difficult questions: How should managers play and position their
defense? Their batting order? Who should I bring in to relief and when?
What pitch count do starters become ineffective? What are the
opponent’s strengths and weaknesses?
- Front office: Understand
the strengths and weaknesses of your staff – and that of your
competition. Through the most advanced techniques that are not publicly
available, you can evaluate talent like never before. How would a player
perform if switched to your team? Is he performing above or below what is
expected? How is their production relative to similar players of defensive
position, age, or game time?
- Player development and Minor
League operations: All of the advanced
techniques are available for AAA and AA. Spray charts of almost 4,000
minor leaguers presented in photo-imaged, easy to understand fashion.
There are over 400
reports that reside in your organization and is used
directly by your coaching staff, front office, analysts, and others.
•
What
does today’s umpire strike zone actually look like?
•
Industry-unique
scouting reports based on every game and 720,000+ pitches
•
Which
free agents have the best CB command?
•
Whose
release point changing as the season progresses or after an injury?
•
Who
has been throwing more / fewer first-pitch strikes in the past few weeks?
•
What
is the “DNA” of a pitcher or batter that exposes hidden strengths
and weaknesses that can be acted on?
•
How
does the starter mix pitches each time through the batting order?
•
Team
reports, such as all pitchers pitch mixes and aggressiveness stretching 1st-3rd
•
What
are the late breaks, angles, lengths, trajectories, and effectiveness of pitch
types? Does the offspeed movement always the same or vary?
•
Which
pitcher’s fastball or slider is losing steam as the season progresses?
•
Which
pitchers double-up on pitches? Pressure pitches changing?
•
Which
batters are swinging at certain pitch types outside the strike zone, and how
does this compare to last year? How well do they hit pitches out of the zone?
•
What
are the locations of pitches batters are swinging and missing?
•
How
many pitches can be thrown in a game before a pitcher loses effectiveness?
•
Which
batters are getting ahead in the count more the last few weeks?
•
If
there’s a pickoff attempt, should the runner steal on the next pitch?
Scoutable (tm) reports:
Which Free Agent starters have the best command of
their CB?
Today’s strike
zone; spray charts for positioning
defense; how does a pitcher change pitches and velocity the 2nd and
3rd time through line-ups?
What are the velocities of
each pitch? What are the situational and comfort pitches? Is his release point
consistent? How are pitch trajectories, movement, and late breaks?
Which relief pitchers
pitched effectively with inherited runners? Which pitchers ERAs were skewed by
relief pitchers?
Is he getting ahead or behind in
the count as the season progresses?
YOUR STAFF has the
ability to simply and easily run on their own literally hundreds of reports for
fielding, baserunning, speed, power, umpires, offense, starters / mid-relievers
/ closers, power, situational pitching selections, velocity charting, imaged
spray charts, … we also include
advanced analytics (not just advanced scouting). Examples that make us unique
include:
·
Intuitive to
use, interactive for “what about” scenarios, and lightening fast.
·
Player
Dashboards: beyond simply displaying player statistics, how did they compare to
the average players at their positions and similar number of plate appearances
or IP? This saves teams days of research for each player
·
Umpire
strike zones that are intuitive for players to understand – shows
visually the zones, sizes, and left/right/up/down shifts.
·
Scouting
reports based on full coverage of 720,000+ pitches
·
Descriptions
of command, action, movement, late breaks
·
Are release
points consistent for pitchers or can batters possibly pick up weaknesses? How
has it changed over the season?
·
Predicting
consecutive pitches
·
“True
Power” ratings of batters and pitchers – how hard does a player actually
hit the ball, how lucky/unlucky was he? How will he project from the Minors to
the Majors?
·
“Late
Break” of pitches close to the plate. Up to 30% more accurate than
traditional methods, and includes every 1/100th of a second of over
800,000 pitches!
·
Easily
narrow information and ask questions by clicking on parameters such as 0-0
count with RISP, or first three innings and run dozens of graphical reports on
the criteria.
·
Who were the
most aggressive baserunners and teams - not just stealing bases but stretching
out extra bases
·
Batting
spreads against not just lefty/righty splits, but arm slot, pitcher type
(hard-thrower, finesse, etc), etc.
·
“Late
and close” – how consistent were pitchers not just in save
situations?
·
“Expected
RBI”: who drove in runs in the context of each plate appearance?
·
Pitch count
limitations of each pitcher (yes, including AAA)
·
How do pitch
velocities change as the season progresses?
·
How big and
consistent are pitchers CB, slider,cutter, sinker break angles and break
lengths?
·
Pitching
statistics and rankings if you remove the worst outing of the season
·
“Reliever
Effectiveness” – help decide which relievers should be brought in
when?
·
How ERA is
affected by the bullpen – understand how a pitcher will perform on YOUR
team by eliminating unfair crediting of runs
·
Our spray
charts are much easier to read and comprehend, juxtaposed on satellite images.
Interactively and easily comb through billions of possibilities for information
that is important to teams:
o Did a particular opponent adjust to pitchers
in the past few weeks, or are they still pulling the ball and need to adjust?
o Does a pitcher allow balls to the outfield
early in the game or late in the game?
o How do different stadiums affect pop-fouls?
o Can a fielder consistently get to balls hit
in the gap or is he able to track them down for outs?
-
For the
first time, AAA and AA Spray Charts are available. Over 3,400 AAA / AA players
and over 320,000 at-bats are included. Organizations typically do not record
AAA / AA Spray Charts and it would be cost prohibitive to hire staff to do so.
Sample reports:
·
Derrek Lee’s hitting analysis
·
Precisely why Bonderman had trouble in the 1st
innings in 2008 (PowerPoint here)
·
AAA-level “late and close” analysis
for relief pitchers (PPT here)
·
2A-level “late and close”
analysis for relief pitchers (PPT
here)
We welcome
the opportunity to discuss further. Best regards,
Ari Kaplan Fred
Claire
kaplanari@hotmail.com fclaire@pacbell.net
312-399-0079 626-796-2749
“Kaplan has already devised three formulas that could, if instituted, change the way managers
handle their bullpens.”
v Baseball
“Keeping track of thousands of
baseball scouting reports for minor and major league teams can be very
cumbersome. Especially remembering where you filed them. Well, there's a new
software program to help sort out all of this mess. Joining us today is
v CNN
interview (with anchor Sean Callebs)
"Our ability
to generate stats has gotten way ahead of our ability to make any sense of
it… it's going to take a lot of work by people like Mr. Kaplan before we
understand what all this means."
v Bill
James (LA Times)
For a business summary, view www.arikaplan.com and www.spraycharts.com