hbfreed/Picklebot-2M

Dataset Card for Dataset Name

2.6 million clips of balls and called strikes from MLB games from the 2016 season through the 2023 season.

Dataset Details

Dataset Description

The dataset consists of all listed balls and called strikes from Baseball Savant's Statcast Search from 2016, when their video archives began, through the 2023 season. This dataset includes the date, type (eg. FF, fourseam fastball), mph, spin rate, pitcher, batter, zone (1-14, corresponding to strike zone locations), count, inning, pitch result, and link to the video of the pitch.

• Curated by: Henry Freed
• License: MIT

Uses

The original dataset, Picklebot-50K, was collected to call balls and strikes using a neural network, and is only labeled with ball or strike. With the additional metadata, one can imagine much more interesting classification and granular tasks like classifying pitch types.

Dataset Structure

The dataset is three JSON files, split into train (80%), val (10%), and test (10%) files. They are structured as follows:

{
    "date": "2017-05-06",  
    "pitch": "CU",
    "mph": "73.6",
    "spin_rate": "1997",
    "pitcher": "Garza, Matt(R)",
    "batter": "Jaso, John(L)",
    "zone": "8",
    "count": "0-1",
    "inning": "Bot 5",
    "pitch_result": "Called Strike",
    "video_link": "https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=e790b6cf-7ac4-45b8-8cd3-9cef03d759cb"
}. 

Dataset Creation

Source Data

The data were scraped from Baseball Savant's Statcast Search.

Who are the source data producers?

Baseball Savant and MLB/the broadcasters (whoever it is) originally created the videos.

Bias, Risks, and Limitations

First, as with Picklebot-50K, only balls and called strikes were connected. Additionally, this dataset is quite unbalanced: about two-thirds of the pitches are balls, and almost half of them are fourseam fastballs (see the plots below). One should take care dealing with these imbalances.

Plots

Pitch Results Distribution	Pitch Types Distribution	Pitch Zones Distribution