Using the Fielding ATT&CK matrix for player development
Introduction
Recently I published a post breaking down the life cycle of fielding a ground ball in an attempt to make fielding a systematic process that could be broken down and rebuilt with the most efficient body movements to create the highest success rate for ground ball conversion. So, before we jump the gun and attempt to fix what’s not broken lets take a look at a Mock assessment on what can be improved on Player A.
What does defensive success look like?
As a defender, you want the Opposing team to have the lowest BABIP as possible to keep from runners from reaching base. In 2019, the Oakland A’s had the 4th lowest errors per game average and 3rd lowest BABIP thus creating an effective defense or high out conversion rate on the 5th lowest salary and in turn made the playoffs.
For out conversion percentage we are going to set for example purposes:
Great — 95% and above
Good — 90% to 94.9%
Okay — 86% to 89.9%
Poor- 85.9% and below
Player A assessment
So we’ve watched all of the video we have on Player A and categorized every play to which the batter reached safely or resulted in an out, recording which body movements were used on those plays. From here we got this output below:
From here you can see which body movements could be targeted during individual practice to help raise Player A’s out conversion rate making him a valuable asset to your defense.
Conclusion
This example I used is a high overview of what can be accomplished from this Matrix and can be applied further in more granular ways like out conversion rate at a certain batted ball location, batted ball velocity or batted ball spin rate. At the end of the day, analysis like this could only be completed in an organization with the appropriate resources and at the high school level that isn’t feasible. One can dream tho right?
