I'm doing it!

In order to graduate from my STEM program, I must complete an internship and/or capstone/research project. The capstone/research project combines a passion of yours with skills you have learned from your STEM pathway.

By now you can probably tell I love baseball and it is definitely something I am passionate about. Being in the engineering pathway requires me to take 3 AP physics courses. Baseball has a TON of physics in it, so I figured I could do my capstone about something with baseball and physics. When I went to SSAC2020, I went to a panel with THE Bill James and Tom Tango ("Moneyball to Homerball"). In that panel, they discussed how students (or those who want to get into sports analytics) can get involved. They said that you:

1) Start with a question. If you can't think of a question, look at other people's work and expand on it.

2) Start a blog. The internet is a powerful tool, use it to your advantage! You never know who will see it.

In recent years, launch angle has become increasingly important in baseball, and players have been training their swings to induce a hit with a certain launch angle. Launch angle has actually increased by one degree each year since 2015. All of this is a result of the data they now have that was never previously available. It's kinda crazy, right? While launch angle is an important metric, I believe it is not the proper metric for the athletes to look at. Launch angle is a good metric for the fans to look at and is helpful when explaining why the ball travels as far as it does (kinematics). However, athletes would be better off focusing and training attack angle rather than launch angle.

In my research, I will use the Diamond Kinetics SwingTracker to analyze what attack angle (in each of the 9 areas of the strike zone) will result in the furthest hit ball. I will also look at and compare the swings for each situation. To make sure I am comparing only swings with the same amount of energy/force/power in the swing, I will eliminate data from swings that had abnormal impact momentum or power results. This is only to ensure the end results and conclusions will be as accurate as possible.

So, I continue to work on this project, I will make sure to keep my page up to date, and I will post my final results on this page once it is complete!

Also, I am getting ready to submit my proposal for this to be my capstone, but I still am going to do this whether or not they approve it. I just really want to do this!