Fangraphs Spray Charts Are Here!

Baseball fans were given a late Hanukkah / early Christmas present today, when David Appelman announced that Fangraphs now has batted ball and fielded ball spray charts for the 2012 and 2013 seasons, courtesy of Inside Edge.

As David describes the various Spray Charts:

Hang Time: A plot of the bucketed hang time of batted balls. Home runs are broken out separately, but all fly balls are categorized by hang time.

Batted Ball Type: A plot of all batted balls by the type of batted ball (fly ball, line drive, etc…)

Hit Type: A plot of all batted balls by the type of hit (single, double, etc…)

Made Plays: A plot of all the plays a fielder successfully made and the rated difficulty of each play by Inside Edge scouts.

Missed Plays: A plot of all the plays a fielder failed to successfully field and the rated difficult of each play by Inside Edge scouts.

Made / Missed Plays: A plot of made plays and missed plays combined.

For fun, a look at Shortstops and their Fielding Spray Charts:


Source: FanGraphs

Clicking on any of the items in the legend make them disappear / reappear on the chart. For instance, in these charts, click the "90-100%" and "60-90%" in the key to remove the easier plays from the charts. Seeing how many difficult plays each shortstop made the past two years is pretty interesting:



Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs

Take all the green and light green dots, it's interesting to see the number of difficult plays made. Andrelton Simmons is the best, but Elvis Andrus and Clint Barmes, among others, look good by comparison. The last three examples were unflattering.

Hitting spray charts for hit type and batted ball type are like this Curtis Granderson example:


Source: FanGraphs


Source: FanGraphs

Taking in this information is pretty great, by visiting a player's Fangraphs page and clicking on the "Spray Charts" tab.