“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 for coaching staff, improved advanced scouting, strategic analysis of
player talent, and technology for player development.
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 your staff and coaches with regular data
updates, or specific requests from us directly. It is presented in easy to
understand reports and pictures – because the information was developed
and used by MLB people in real situations.
How do we benefit an organization?
- Managerial: What is today’s game plan to win?
Understand guides to difficult questions: How should I play and position
my defense? My batting order? Who should I bring in to relief and when?
What pitch count does my starter become ineffective? What are the
opponent’s strengths and weaknesses?
- Coaching, training, and advanced scouting: What does
today’s umpire strike zone actually look like? Can our batters
predict pitching patterns of today’s starter? What’s the
starter’s game plan – how does he mix pitches, is his delivery
deceptive, does he double-up on pitches?
- 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 300 reports that resides
in your
organization and is used directly by your coaching staff, front office,
analysts, and others. Below are some examples:
·
Derrek Lee’s hitting analysis
·
Click here for the analysis on precisely why
Bonderman had trouble in the 1st innings in 2008 (PowerPoint here)
·
Click here for AAA-level “late and
close” analysis for relief pitchers (PPT here)
·
Click here for 2A-level “late and
close” analysis for relief pitchers (PPT here)
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?
How does effectiveness and control
change with pitch count?
Which relief pitchers pitched
effectively with inherited runners? Which pitchers ERAs were skewed by relief
pitchers?
What makes us unique?
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:
1. Intuitive to use, interactive for “what about” scenarios, and lightening fast.
2. 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
3. Umpire strike zones that are intuitive for players to understand – shows visually the zones, sizes, and left/right/up/down shifts.
4. Are release points consistent for pitchers or can batters possibly pick up weaknesses?
5. Predicting consecutive pitches
6. “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?
7. “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!
8. 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.
9. Who were the most aggressive baserunners and teams - not just stealing bases but stretching out extra bases
10. Batting spreads against not just lefty/righty splits, but arm slot, pitcher type (hard-thrower, finesse, etc), etc.
11. “Late and close” – how consistent were pitchers not just in save situations.
12. “Expected RBI”: who drove in runs in the context of each plate appearance?
13. Pitch selections throughout games and situationally
14. Pitch count limitations of each pitcher (yes, including AAA)
15. Graphical visualization of how players compare to others
16. How does top and average FB change as the game progresses?
17. Advanced spray charts of thousands of batters and by pitcher (MLB and AAA) via satellite imaging
18. How big and consistent are pitchers CB and Slider break angles and break lengths?
19. Pitching statistics and rankings if you remove the worst outing of the season
20. “Reliever Effectiveness” – help decide which relievers should be brought in when?
21. How ERA is affected by the bullpen – understand how a pitcher will perform on YOUR team by eliminating unfair miscrediting of ER.
22. Difficulty ratings of save situations
23. Rankings and analysis of pitchers differently for starters, mid-relievers, closers
24. How were each pitcher used – what situations were they brought in? What was the run support for each appearance?
- 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.
We welcome the
opportunity to discuss further. Best regards,
Ari Kaplan Fred
Claire
kaplanari@hotmail.com flcaire@pacbell.net
312-399-0079 626-796-2749
“Kaplan has already has 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