Alright, so I wanted to talk about this “Kyle Higashioka Race” thing I was messing around with. It was kinda fun, actually!
It all started ’cause I was bored, you know? Just scrolling through baseball stats and Higashioka’s name popped up. I was like, “Huh, I wonder how fast he REALLY is?” Not that he’s known for his speed or anything.
First thing I did was jump onto Baseball Savant. That site’s a goldmine for this kinda stuff. I dug around, trying to find his sprint speed data. I wasn’t looking for home-to-first times, but actual how fast is he running type metrics.
Then, I started hunting for videos. YouTube, *, anywhere I could find clips of Higashioka actually legging it out. I was trying to catch him running hard, not just jogging after a foul ball.
Once I had a few clips, the fun part began. I basically used a video editing software and timed his runs. I’d find the frame where he starts moving and then the frame where he crosses a certain point, like first base or something. This part was tricky because camera angles and video quality weren’t always great.
I did some math, converting feet to miles and seconds to hours. Basically, I was trying to get an estimate of his speed in miles per hour, just like they show on TV during games. This was definitely rough, since I’m not a professional statistician or anything.
After a bunch of calculations and re-watching those video clips a million times, I came up with a number. It wasn’t blazing fast. Let’s just say it was what you’d expect from a catcher. But the point wasn’t to prove he was fast, it was just to see if I could figure it out!
I ended up comparing my guesstimate with some of the sprint speed stats I found on Baseball Savant. It was surprisingly close! Maybe I’m not so bad at this after all.
It was a fun little project to kill some time and geek out about baseball stats. Plus, I learned a bit more about using video editing software for something other than making goofy memes.
