fuzzy-potato

Project #1 Proposal

Project Title

“Umpires: Consistent or Not?”

• Team Members
  • Brian Pate
  • Dan Boulden
  • Forrest McDougal
  • Brandon Alexander
  • Ethan John

Project Description/Outline

We would like to examine the consistency of a Major League Baseball Umpire. Primarily we would like to see if an umpire’s strike zone adjusts over the course of a post-season and whether their strike zone varies depending on whether the batter is left or right-handed. We will accomplish this using an an API from sportsradar which provides the majority of the data. The data we will use will come from 33 post-season game in 2018.

Research Questions to Answer

1. Do umpires have a consistent strike zone over the course of a post-season?
2. Does an umpire’s strike zone vary depending if the batter is right of left handed?
3. Does an umpire’s strike zone vary depending if the pitcher is right or left handed?
4. Does an umpire’s strike zone vary based on the pitch type?
5. Are umpires influenced by team (home vs away) at bat?

Data Sets to be Used

• SportsRadar API
• Standardized strikezone dimensions to overlay on charts

Rough Breakdown of Tasks

1. Retrieving data using API- 2 person
2. Cleaning data, putting into dataframe
3. Plotting using matplotlib
4. Summarizing and presentation – consult plotting