Analyzing Pitcher Performance With Density Heatmaps

With Tableau 2018.3 comes density heatmaps, a feature I've been playing with quite a bit and love it for when I have a dense concentration of points and a regular scatterplot doesn't work well. Transparency can help with dense dots, but I think the heatmaps work much better.

To give it a test, I downloaded every pitch for Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander (two of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball) from 2008-2018 from the great stats website Baseball Savant. Every time I look at baseball data, I'm amazed at the detail of the stats covered; the data far exceeds anything that is covered in other sports.

After downloading the data, I built the small multiples view below for each pitcher so that I could see their progression through the years. Click on the images for the interactive versions. I love how the data shows me how each pitcher has gotten better with their "misses" through their careers. For example, when they throw sliders for balls, they now tend to miss below the strike zone. This is a great sign that they have command of their pitches and are less likely to miss in an area where the batter can take advantage.

The density heatmap feature will most likely be used by most people on maps, which makes sense, but consider looking at it as an alternative whenever you need to plot x/y coordinates and have lots of points to display.