Oakland Athletics vs Miami Marlins

Oakland Athletics vs Miami Marlins

Oakland Athletics against Jesus Luzardo

Oakland’s lineup does not have enough at bats against Jesus Luzardo to find patterns in the data. To try and solve this issue, we can use a high dimensional clustering algorithm that finds the most similar pitchers to Jesus Luzardo, and use the data of his most similar pitchers as a proxy. Our algorithm has returned the three most similar pitchers to Jesus Luzardo as Marco Gonzales, Roenis Elias and Devin Smeltzer. Let’s call them the Jesus Luzardo similarity cluster to keep notation simple. Just like Jesus Luzardo, everyone in his similarity cluster averages 90 mph on their fastball, and throws their curveball about 17% of the time. These are just two of the thirty statistics we use to quantify pitcher similarity. If we examine the Oakland Athletics lineup’s experience against Jesus Luzardo’s similarity cluster, we have some hitters that do indeed have a considerable number of at bats! The two hitters with the most number of at bats against the cluster are Chad Pinder and Chad Pinder. Chad Pinder is only batting 0.077 with a 0.077 OBP and 0.077 SLG. Chad Pinder is batting 0.077 with a 0.077 OBP and 0.077 SLG. But let’s pause for a second, Oakland are a team of 9 hitters – we’re only examining 2. It’s important to remember that while we can make some inferences about certain situations that may arise in tonight’s game, this is NOT a definitive conclusion on how Oakland will do against Jesus Luzardo tonight. However, it’s safe to say that something about pitchers who average 90 on their fastball make Chad Pinder and Chad Pinder uncomfortable. We presume they’ll feel uncomfortable against Jesus Luzardo too.

Miami Marlins against Cole Irvin

Nobody in Miami’s lineup has a big enough sample size of at bats against Cole Irvin to extrapolate any meaningful information. To try and solve this issue, we can use a high dimensional clustering algorithm that finds the most similar pitchers to Cole Irvin, and use the data of his most similar pitchers as a proxy. Our algorithm has returned the three most similar pitchers to Cole Irvin as Marco Gonzales, Roenis Elias and Devin Smeltzer. Let’s call them the Cole Irvin similarity cluster to keep notation simple. As expected, everyone in the Cole Irvin similarity cluster also averages 90 mph their fastball, and throw their curveball roughly 17% of the time. And don’t worry, we have 28 other statistics we use in our clustering algorithm. The hope is that after forming this similarity cluster, we’ll have much bigger sample sizes of at bats between Miami’s lineup and the 3 pitchers in his cluster. The good news is that we do. While the distribution of at bats varies, the two hitters with the most at bats are Jesus Aguilar and Jesus Aguilar. Jesus Aguilar is batting 0.308 with a 0.308 OBP and 0.538 SLG. Jesus Aguilar is batting 0.308 with a 0.308 OBP and 0.538 SLG. But let’s pause for a second, Miami are a team of 9 hitters – we’re only examining 2. It’s important to remember that while we can make some inferences about certain situations that may arise in tonight’s game, this is NOT a definitive conclusion on how Miami will do against Cole Irvin tonight. However, it’s safe to say that something about pitchers who average 90 on their fastball make Jesus Aguilar and Jesus Aguilar comfortable. We presume they’ll will feel comfortable against Cole Irvin too.