“The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win” – Coach John Wooden

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· Article: Perfection! What is going through the mind of an analyst and scout while watching Mark Buehrle’s perfect game? As a long-time consultant to over half of all teams over 20 seasons, I have seen a lot. But it was my first no-hitter, and first perfect game I’ve seen. The same could be said for every reporter at the game – even a no-hitter is a rare treat. A perfect game is what every kid dreams about being a part of. {click here to read the full article}

· Yahoo! Article: Measure of Relief

· Yahoo! Article: 1^st to 3^rd Baserunning

· Yahoo! Article: Infield Hits

· Yahoo! Article: July 31^st 2009 Trade Deadline Analysis

· Yahoo! Article: Magglio, Deconstructed

· Yahoo! Article: Soriano’s knee affecting his performance?

· Yahoo! Article: Chien-Ming Wang

· Yahoo! Article: Soto’s Slump

· Yahoo! Article: Ortiz Struggles

How Ari Kaplan and Fred Claire’s solutions help Major League Baseball Teams

Fred Claire Ari Kaplan

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 1^st-3^rd

• 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 ™ reports:

Today’s strike zone; spray charts for positioning defense; how does a pitcher change pitches and velocity the 2^nd and 3^rd 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 Free Agent starters have the best command of their CB?

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 1/100^th 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 balls in play.

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

"Amazing! We didn't see Anaheim in 5 weeks and this really helped us prepare for the series."

v Active MLB manager

"I would love to get another printed report from Ari- I spent a long time looking at it this offseason and it really helped my preparation."… "I thought it was amazing!"… "That was a really eye opening and very informative study on my pitches!"

v MLB closer

"Wow. Good stuff. . Good advance scouts get this kind of stuff. It would be big help to me if I was advancing for World Series------especially if I had it early and then could confirm with eyes.

Gives scout great lead in and allows to concentrate on other minute things that might win games.”

v Former world-champion GM

"Mind-blowing. You provide information that you simply can't get from BATs - what's done in the last month.”

v MLB Advance Scout

"I simply can't believe all of this work and the depth with which you have done.  I thank you very much."

v MLB world-champion Scouting Director

"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

“Kaplan has already devised three formulas that could, if instituted, change the way managers handle their bullpens.”

v Baseball America

“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 Ari Kaplan, the man behind this new program…And it’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

v CNN interview (with anchor Sean Callebs)

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