Today Zac Vallery is joining the BaseballCloud R&D Internship team after completing his Applied Mathematics degree from UCSB and finishing his internship with the UCSB baseball team. One of the projects he focused on during his time at UCSB was calculating optimal batted ball launch angle for UCSB hitters by using their metrics and iterative numerical algorithm. This project included a useful 3D plot of hit trajectories, which he is excited to build upon by leveraging BaseballCloud’s visualization technology. He also did a project on an analysis aimed at motivating the decision of when to pull a starting pitcher. He used inning-by-inning game state statistics to develop a random forest model which predicts whether or not an earned run will be scored in a subsequent inning and a chart incorporating the random forest predictions that can be referenced by the coaching staff to drive informed decision making.
Zac is looking forward to continuing to develop his knowledge of baseball analytics during his internship with BaseballCloud. He is excited to bring his ideas of cutting edge graphs and visualizations to fruition, and have them included on the BaseballCloud platform. These ideas include visualizations for pitch tunneling heat maps, strike zone contours, fielder positioning plots, and advanced hit trajectory visualizations. And finally, Zac is excited to take on new projects, such as making models for player evaluation using expected statistics like xwOBA and Bayesian inference. Zac believes his background in mathematics will be a huge asset for him when it comes to theoretical validation of methods, as well as a deep understanding of the statistics that drive baseball analytics.
We couldn’t be more excited to have Zac as a part of the BaseballCloud R&D Internship team this summer and can’t wait to start working with him!