Tuesday, April 10, 2012

VizWiz Umpire Ejection Fantasy League Interactive Analysis

Let your Umpire Ejection Fantasy League preparations begin! Billed as "data visualization done right," VizWiz has put together a series of interactive visualizations based on the UEFL's Historical Data feature.

Here's a quick summary:
The Ejections Summary gives a quick overview of:
The spread of ejections across innings – not surprisingly most ejections occur towards the end of the game
How umpires perform as a whole at the different segments of the game – they’re correct more often at the end of the game as well, leading directly to more ejections
The top 5 reasons for ejections – arguing balls and strikes is an automatic ejections, so there’s no surprise it’s #1
The 2nd sheet, Who to Argue With & When, helps you isolate the specific time when you are most likely to benefit (or not) from an argument.  In particular, I like the bar chart on the bottom right.  This chart tells you the best umpire and time to get ejected if you want to turn the game from a losing position into a winning outcome.
The last sheet, Which Umpires Eject the Most, is a simple list of the umpires most likely to eject someone and the managers most likely to get ejected.  Click on any manager or umpire to see who they get in the most arguments with.
UEFL'er Andy Kriebel, an Atlanta resident for a significant portion of Bobby Cox's Braves tenure and familiar with his status as the all-time leading Manager in ejections, was curious to discover which skipper could possibly fill the ejection void left in the wake of Cox's retirement.

Enter the VizWiz analysis of UEFL data. Kriebel most recently commented on Ejection 001: Mike DiMuro (1), noting that Giants skipper Bruce Bochy is the No. 1 ejected manager for reason of Safe/Out calls, while only one ejection for Safe/Out by the HP Umpire has taken a team from a losing position to a win (Bochy's Giants were losing to Arizona, 7-6 on Sunday and eventually lost by that same score).

He also added a tab to the analysis: "Umpire & Team Relationships," which once and for all confirms which umpires have been most ejectively active with certain teams: For instance, Gary Darling has had the most ejections with the Giants since 2008 (four heave-hos), while Bob Davidson has led the Red Sox race with four ejections of his own. As for the Joe West-White Sox "feud," both West and Timmons are tied for the 2008-present ejections lead with three apiece.

In short, visit VizWiz today for data visualization done right.

VizWiz Link: Let your Umpire Ejection Fantasy League preparations begin!

7 comments :

mbosschaart said...

Wow, nice work on the stats. Gives you a whole new perspective :)

Arik said...

Prediction: White Sox EJs will go down (even though I seem to remember Ventura as a bit of a hot head) now that Ozzie is out of town... Concurrently, Marlin's EJs will be up this year.

Anonymous said...

Marlin's EJs may also be aided by the addition of Big Z. As for Ozzie, he's in hot water and there's no guarantee he'll be around long enough to pile up EJs.

Anonymous said...

Here is a list of the umps with the most EJs per team:

Arizona: Hunter Wendelstedt, Mike Everitt, Rob Drake (2)
Atlanta: Wild Bill Hohn (6) Stunning, isn't it?
Baltimore: Jeff Nelson (3)
Boston: Bob Davidson (4)
Chicago Cubs: Bob Davidson, Rob Drake (3)
Chiago White Sox: Joe West, Tim Timmons (3)
Cincinnati: Hunter Wendelstedt (4)
Cleveland: Dale Scott (4)
Colorado: Cory Blaser (3)
Detroit: Jerry Layne (4)
Florida: Bob Davidson, Joe West (3)
Houston: Angel Campos (3)
Kansas City: Tim Timmons (3)
LA Angels: Joe West (4)
LA Dodgers: Adrian Johnson (4)
Milwaukee: Bob Davidson (3)
Minnesota: Hunter Wendelstedt (4)
New York Mets: Doug Eddings (3)
New York Yankees: Mark Wegner, Marty Foster (3)
Oakland: Eric Cooper, Gary Darling, Lance Barksdale (2)
Philadelphia: Greg Gibson (3)
Pittsburgh: Bob Davidson, D.J. Reyburn (3)
San Diego: Eric Cooper, Marvin Hudson, Rob Drake, Tim Timmons, Todd Tichenor (2)
Seattle: Mark Wegner (2)
San Francisco: Gary Darling (4)
St. Louis: Larry Vanover (3)
Tampa Bay, Chad Fairchild, Dana DeMuth (3)
Texas: Bill Hohn (4)
Toronto: Alfonso Marquez, Andy Fletcher, Jerry Meals, Mark Carlson, Mike DiMuro, Mark Wegner (2)
Washington: Joe West, Rob Drake (4)

It is worth noting that some of these instances concerned benches-clearing episodes or throwing at batters. Also, it could just as easily be a case of a team holding a grudge against an ump as opposed to the other way around.

VizWiz said...

Thanks for mentioning the interactive visualization I created. I'm glad you find it useful.

If there's anything you can think of that you'd like added, just let me know (kriebela at gmail.com)

As for the Marlins, I suspect their ejections will go down now too that Ozzie is suspended.

Dan said...

Very well done, Andy!

Anonymous said...

I think the Joe West-White Sox feud is shown not purely by the ejection total, but also through the distaste for West shown by every umpire's best friend: Hawk Harrelson.

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