Ari Kaplan keynote presentation at the Big Analytics Roadshow, 2012 in New York City on December 12, 2012 Presentation title: "Cross Industry Lessons from Moneyball Analytics", by Ari Kaplan, "Moneyball" advisor to Major League Baseball teams and President of AriBall Ari Kaplan is a leading figure in sports analytics. Known throughout the Major Leagues for revolutionizing and modernizing player assessment, Ari's use of analytics and technology helps coaches prepare for games, players understand their strengths and weaknesses, General Managers forecast future performance and risk of player contracts and draft picks, and more. In this presentation, Kaplan discusses how professional sports teams and players use analytics and data visualization in the Major Leagues. Through his 23 years of experience in over half of all MLB organizations, he will discuss the changes that took place and where analytics will continue to innovate in the future.

1. DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF ARI KAPLAN
Ari Kaplan
312-513-0091
12/10/2012 Property of Ari Kaplan. Copyright 2012 Ari@AriBall.com

2. “What’s more important than the will to win is
the will to PREPARE to win” – Coach Wooden
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3. Prepare to win!
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4. Seek open-ended questions…
 Why is a batter struggling?
 Why aren’t we selling as much as we
thought?
 Is an injury affecting a pitcher’s mechanics?
 What would happen if we acquired this
company?
 What should our next steps be?
…then give actionable answers
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5. Apply analytical models again
and again to get answers
 Above the Field
 Player forecasting
 Economics of contracts
 Roster modeling
 Trade-deadline analysis
 Drafts
 On the Field
 Game Preparation: Advance Scouting
 Pro-Scouting
 Amateur Scouting
 International Scouting
 Player Development
 Injury prediction and management
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6. Multistructural Data Sources
(externally collected)
Statistics (MLB, STATS,
AriBall, Inside Edge)
Play-by-play (MLB
Defense (BIS)
Advanced Media)
Contracts & Financials Pitch & hit mechanics
(eBIS, Stadium (SportVision, Trackman)
operations)
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7. Multistructural data sources
(internally collected)
MiLB Coach Reports
Organizational Video Pro-Scouting Reports
Amateur Scouting
Injury & Medical
Reports
International Scouting Advance Scouting
Reports Reports
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8. Understand and manage risks
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9. Analytics for past, present, future
 Learn these three points: What has
happened? What is happening? What
will happen?
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10. Find actionable patterns in the data
Barry Zito’s Fastball
release points come down
and over a foot
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11. Find events preceding a
business issue
Track consistency and deception of release points and velocity as the season
progresses. See how injuries, trades, or assignments from the Minors affect mechanics.
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12. Predict what might happen from
time-series information
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13. Refocus workers from the mundane
to the strategic
What happened? What is happening? What will
happen?
 Scoutable™ reports: based on full coverage of every
pitch, every game. The reports are presented in the same
formats that many scouts and organizations use today.
 Habits: threw FB whenever there was a 3-ball count. Never threw
consecutive pickoff moves.
 Strengths: changeup had a big fading action. Kept first-pitches
down 48% of the time (25% was avg). Plus control of his FB.
 Summary: Threw FB 91-94 (34% of all pitches), cutter 88-91 (12%),
sinker 91-94 (28%), curveball 75-78 (13%), changeup 85-87 (13%)
 Last game compared to before: threw sinkers 16% less often and
cutters 14% more often
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14. Find the “signal from the noise”
Example: is a player’s hurt knee affecting their swing?
Before injury: white After injury
circles are hits, green are
misses
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15. Use intelligence to find
opportunities
• Where did a pitcher generate outs? What pitch types and locations? Below shows
FB up and slider low/away.
• Where did he allow hits? FB inner half, BB up in zone outer half.
• These reports can be for pitcher/batter matchups, across years, and much more
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16. The “Human Element”: Quantifying
the subjective
Which umpires made the most What was Hunter Wendelstedt’s strike zone?
frequent bad calls?
Umpire Strike Zones
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17. Use intelligence to better “defend”
yourself
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18. Competition: put yourself in their shoes
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20. The future of batter analysis
 Contact point  Elevation angle
 Speed off bat  Field direction
Image source: Sportvision
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21. The future of batter analysis
Image source: Sportvision
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22. The future of fielding analysis
Image source: Sportvision
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23. The future of fielding analysis
The pivot
 6-4-3 Double plays
Play # Time from SS to 2B* Pivot time**
1 .60 .60
2 .40 .40
3 .27 .60
4 .53 .40
5 .53 .40
6 .53 .53
7 .67 .33
Image source: Sportvision
* From SS releasing the ball to 2B getting the ball
** From 2B getting the ball to 2B releasing the ball
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24. Create the ULTIMATE game-plan
Image source: Sportvision
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