Fans might furiously be checking players’ stats on Baseball Savant, but they’re not alone.
The introduction of Baseball Savant has changed the way fans enjoy the game, as well as how they judge players. No longer are advanced Statcast-era metrics mystical and incomprehensible, Savant cuts through the noise and gives fans an objective and easy-to-understand display of how good or bad a player is in various statistical categories.
There is still plenty of room to go crazy with the stats — trust me, I’ve been down that wormhole — but Baseball Savant’s overall player pages are intuitive and easy to see how players match up with others.
Turns out, it’s not just fans who furiously use Savant to check on the performance of their favorite or most hated players. The stars themselves are right there with them.
Liam Hendriks mentioned he checks his Baseball Savant page obsessively
White Sox relief pitcher Liam Hendriks recently jumped to Reddit to answer fan questions. He hit on everything from his recently-won cancer battle to the hitters that are hardest to face in the MLB.
One fan asked how often Hendriks visits his Baseball Savant page. Here’s what he had to say:
"“Every single time I pitch. I don’t like my baseball savant page because it says my curveball spin rate is one of the worst in the league … which is disappointing. I check my horizontal and vertical movements. I don’t really look at spin rate or velocity as much.”"
According to Hendriks, he’s refreshing that page every single game he pitches. While some players probably don’t care as much about the numbers, there is almost certainly a sizable sect of players who are as compulsive about the Statcast metrics on their game as he is.
He is right that his curveball, statistically, isn’t a very good pitch. Historically it has had a run value that is just about breakeven or slightly into the negatives, whereas he’s had other pitches that have hit a scorching -17 or -18 in run value in previous years.
Despite the lower spin rate, his curveball last season dropped 2.6 inches more than the average with 47.6 inches of drop, the best year of his career in terms of vertical drop. It has almost no horizontal break.
Baseball Savant is just one of the many tools that can help players understand their own game and try to find ways to get better.