Bring on the Beantown Boys

For my longtime readers, you know that despite living in both Chicago and now Philadelphia, I am and have been since way back in 1999, a Boston Red Sox fan. And this week, the Carmine Hose make their biennial visit down I-95 to South Philadelphia.

And I will be there in person to watch.

This is the second series after the All-Star break and as much as I wish it were otherwise, the Red Sox are just not as good as the Phillies. The team my hometown supports is just better than the one for whom I root. The Sox are 54-47 with a .535 winning percentage and the Phillies are 56-43 with a .566 winning percentage. The Phillies have the better rotation, by far. And the Red Sox’ two best pitchers just threw out in Chicago whereas the Phillies’ best toe the rubber over the next three nights.

But…the Boston baseball bats are a bit better and the Bank is a bandbox. Consequently I do not want to say the Phillies sweep the Sox, but my prediction is it will be tough for the Sox.

How does this connect to information design and data visualisation? Last week as the “second half” began, my local rag, the Philadelphia Inquirer, published an article examining the Phillies’ season to date and their road up ahead. It included a couple of graphics I wanted to share, because I found them a nice addition to the type of article usually devoid of such visual pieces.

The first piece looked at the Phillies’ performance relative to recent teams.

You can see the 2025 club is out performing the 2022 and 2023 editions of the team. I have a few critiques, but overall I enjoyed the graphic. I think the heavier stroke and the colour change for 2025 works…but are both necessary? Or at least to the extent the designer chose? And which line is which year?

The chart is too visually busy with too many bits and bobs clamouring for attention. The heaviness of the blue stroke works because the chart needs the loudness. But move the year labels to a consistent location—which, once established helps the user find similar information—and remove the data label annotations—the precise number of games over .500 should be clear through the axis labelling. If I make a couple quick edits in Photoshop to the image, you end up with something like this.

Again, an overall good graphic, but one with just a few tweaks to quiet the overall piece allows the user to more clearly identify the visual pattern—that the Phillies are good and better than two of their three most recent iterations.

The second piece was even better. It looked at the Phillies’ forthcoming opponents, which at the time of publication first included the Los Angeles Angels before the Sox. (For what it may be worth, the Angels won two of three.)

A different graphic, the same critique: overall good, but visually cluttered. Here I revisit the chart, but move some elements around to clear the chart’s visual space of clutter to emphasise the visual pattern in the chart.

I left the annotated point about the Phillies’ winning percentage, because I do think annotations work. But when a chart is full of annotations, the annotations become the story, not the graphic. And if that is the story, then a table or factettes become a better visual solution to the problem.

I will add I do not love how low the line for the opponents falls below the chart’s minimum axis. I probably would have extended the chart to something like .750 and .250, but it is far from the worst sin I see these days. (I keep thinking of writing something about the decline of the quality of data visualisation and information design in recent years, but that feels more akin to a polemical essay than a short blog post.)

Big takeaway, I like seeing my baseball articles with nice data visualisation. It heralds back to a couple of years ago when outlets routinely published such pieces. Baseball especially benefits from data visualisation because the game generates massive amounts of data both within each game and the collective 162-game season.

Good on the Inquirer for this article. I do not usually read the Sports section, because I am not a Philadelphia sports fan, but maybe I will read a bit more of the Phillies coverage if they include visual content like this.

Credit for the original pieces goes to Chris A. Williams. The edits are mine.

Bridging the Difference

When I was a wee lad, I entered the school science fair and made models of different types of bridges. Suspension, cantilever, &c. I saw this a little while back and bookmarked it. As I am trying to get back into the swing of publishing here on Coffee Spoons, it’s time to bring back the less than serious Friday posts. So it’s xkcd with a small multiple of bridge types.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

2025 Red Sox Draft Breakdown

Monday and Tuesday, Major League Baseball conducted its amateur player draft, wherein teams select American university and high school players. They have two weeks to sign them and assign them. (Though many will not actually play this year.)

Two years ago the Red Sox installed Craig Breslow as their new chief baseball organisation. He has cut a number of front office personnel and reorganised the Red Sox front office, leading to a number of departures. Crucially for this context, a number of the scouts who identified key Red Sox players like Roman Anthony were either let go or left. The team then focused on analysts and models.

My questions have thus been focused on how this might change the Red Sox’ approach to the draft. A running joke in Sox circles has been how every year the Red Sox draft a high school shortstop from California. But this year, the Red Sox’ first pick was Kyson Witherspoon, a starting pitcher from Oklahoma.

The graphic above shows how Witherspoon was ranked by the media who covers this niche area of baseball: a consensus top-10 pick. And yet the Sox selected Witherspoon at no. 15 overall. This has been another trend of the Sox over the last several years, where other teams select lower-ranked players and leave higher-ranked players available to the Sox and other mid-round selectors. Similarly, fourth-round pick Anthony Eyanson, ranked roughly 40–65, remained on the board and so the Sox took him at no. 87.

As someone who follows the Sox system, they need quality pitching prospects as they have very few of proven track records in the minors. Witherspoon and Eyanson provide them that, at least the quality, the track records have yet to develop. Marcus Phillips, seemingly, presents more of a lottery ticket. His ranking spread so far, from 13 to 98, it is clear there is no consensus on the type of talent the Sox took in him.

Godbout is a middle-infielder with a good hit tool, but light on the power. Clearly the Sox believe they can work with him to develop the power in the next few years. But all in all, three pitchers in the first four rounds.

Now, the additional context for the non-baseball fans amongst you who are still reading is this. Baseball’s draft does not work in the same way as those of, say the NFL or the NBA. One, the draft is much deeper at 20 rounds. (In my lifetime it used to be as deep as 50.) Two, teams (usually) do not draft for need. I.e., unlike the NFL where a team , say the Patriots, who needs a wide receiver might draft a wide receiver with their first pick, a team like the Red Sox who need, say, a catcher will not draft a catcher. A key reason why, it takes years for an MLB draftee to reach the majors if he does so at all. Whereas an NFL draftee likely plays for the Patriots the following year. In short, there is often a lag between the draft and the debut—unless you are the Los Angeles Angels. Thus you address your current positional needs via free agency or trades, not the draft. (Unless you are the Angels.) For the purposes of the draft, you therefore draft the “best player available” (BPA).

Some systems, however, are just better at doing different things. Some teams do a better job of developing pitchers, others of developing hitters. Some of developing certain traits of pitching or hitting. Some teams are just bad at it overall. The Sox have, of late, been very good at developing position players/hitters. They have been pretty not-so-great at developing pitching. Hence, when Breslow said he could improve their pitching pipeline, the Sox jumped at the chance to hire him. (It also helps everyone else they interviewed said no, and a number of candidates declined to even be interviewed.)

In part, the failure to develop pitching could be a failure to identify the correct player traits or characteristics. It could be the wrong methods and strategies, improper techniques and technologies. But, if we look at the recent history of Red Sox drafts, it could be, in part, also a consistent lack of drafting pitching. After all, the 26-man MLB team roster comprises 14 pitchers and 12 position players. (Technically it is a limit of 14 pitchers, but teams seem to generally max out their pitcher limit.)

You can see in my graphic above, since the late 2000s, the Red Sox, with few exceptions, ever drafted more than 50% pitchers. This period of time coincides with the ascendance of the vaunted Sox position player development factory and the decline of the homegrown starter. (Again, the obligatory reminder correlation is not causation.)

Nevertheless, in the last few years, we have seen the drafting of pitchers spike. In the first two years of the new Breslow regime, pitchers represent more than 70% of the amateur draft. (There is also the international signing period where players from around the world can be signed within limits. This is how the Sox have drafted very talented players like Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts. I omitted this talent acquisition channel from the graphics.)

Consequently, when a team states its strategy is to draft the BPA, but over 70% of all players selected are pitchers, I wonder how one defines “best”. Are the Red Sox weighing pitching more heavily than hitting? Is this an attempt to address a long-standing asymmetry in talent? In the models teams like the Red Sox use, are pitchers worth, say, 1.5× more than hitters? I doubt we will ever know the answer, though the team maintains they draft the best player available.

Ultimately, it may matter very little for the Red Sox in the near-term. The sport’s best prospect, Roman Anthony, is just starting to man the outfield for the Sox. A consensus top-10 prospect, Marcelo Mayer, has also just debuted. A top-25 prospect, Kristian Campbell, debuted on Opening Day. Two second-year players round out the outfield in Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu. A rookie catcher is behind the plate. The Sox may not need serious high-end positional player talent in the next 3–5 years. (Though it certainly helps when trying to trade for other pieces.)

But a two-year lull in drafting high-end positional player talent, on top of the previous two years’ first-round draft picks, catcher Kyle Teal and outfielder Braden Montgomery, being traded for ace Garrett Crochet, means the Sox may well have a several-year gap in positional player matriculation to the majors. That might matter.

Baseball, unlike the NFL and the NBA, is a marathon, however. So perhaps this is all a tempest in a teapot. Let us check back in five years’ time and we can see whether this new draft strategy, if it is indeed a strategy, has cost the Red Sox anything.

Credit for the pieces is mine.

It’s Raining Drones

Last Friday the BBC published an article about the US’ resumption of supplying military assistance to Ukraine in its defence of Russia’s invasion. But in that article, the author referenced the increased intensity of Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine over that week.

To show the intensity, the BBC included this graphic, which incorporates a heat map into a traditional calendar design. A thin white line separates each day and a thicker stroke separates the months.

A calendar heat map showing the intensity of Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine.

The legend incorporates its own visualisation component, wherein the scale of the difference in the bin buckets shows. After all, there is a significant difference between a bucket of 25 strikes, say between 25 and 50, versus 250 strikes, say between 250 and 500.

I really liked this graphic a lot. It very clearly shows that increasing intensity and annotations point out the worst days for Ukraine were indeed in that last week. And in attention to detail, note how the arrows have a thin white stroke outlining them, helping create visual separation between the arrows and the calendar heatmap below.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

A Warming Climate Floods All Rivers

Last weekend, the United States’ 4th of July holiday weekend, the remnants of a tropical system inundated a central Texas river valley with months’ worth of rain in just a few short hours. The result? The tragic loss of over 100 lives (and authorities are still searching for missing people).

Debate rages about why the casualties ranked so high—the gutting of the National Weather Service by the administration shines brightly—but the natural causes of the disaster are easier to identify. And the BBC did a great job covering those in a lengthy article with a number of helpful graphics.

I will start with this precipitation map, created with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data.

A map of precipitation over central Texas.

I remain less than fully enthusiastic about continual gradients for map colouration schemes, however the extreme volume of rainfall during the weather event makes the location of the flooding obvious to all. Nonetheless the designers annotated the map, pointing out river, the camp at the centre of the tragedy and the county wherein most of the deaths occurred.

In short, more than 12 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours. The article also uses a time lapse video to show the river’s flash flooding when it rose a number of feet in less than half an hour.

The article uses the captivating footage of the flash flooding as the lead graphic component. And I get it. The footage is shocking. And you want to get those sweet, sweet engagement clicks and views. But from the standpoint of the overall narrative structure of the piece, I wonder if starting with the result works best.

Rather, the extreme rainfall and geographic features of the river valley contributed at the most fundamental level and showcasing that information and data, such as in the above map, would be a better place to start. The endpoint or culmination of the contributing factors is the flash flooding and the annotated photo of flood water heights inside the cabins of the camp.

Overall I enjoyed the piece tremendously and walked away better informed. I had visited an area 80 miles east of the floods several years ago for a wedding. Coincidentally on the 4th I remarked to a different friend from the area now living in Philadelphia about the flatness and barrenness of the landscape between Austin and San Antonio. I had no idea that just to the west rivers cut through the elevated terrain that would together cause over a hundred deaths a few hours later.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC, but the article listed a healthy number of contributors whom I shall paste here: Writing by Gary O’Donoghue in Kerr County, Texas, Matt Taylor of BBC Weather and Malu Cursino. Edited by Tom Geoghegan. Images: Reuters/Evan Garcia, Brandon Bell, Dustin Safranek/EPA/Shutterstock, Camp Mystic, Jim Vondruska, Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP and Getty.

Living Longer by the Generations

Last weekend was Easter—for both the Catholics and the Orthodox—and I visited the Appalachian ancestral home of the Carpatho–Rusyn side of my family. Before leaving town I drove up to the old cemetery on a hill overlooking the old church and the Juniata River to pay my respects to those who came before me and without whom I would not be here.

At the end of the four-hour drive back to Philadelphia, stuck in traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway because of course, I realised I had never really looked holistically at the causes of death of my direct ancestors. Earlier this week I spent some time putting that together and then, of course, I realised I wanted to see if I could find any patterns in the data. So of course I made a chart.

If we go back a couple of generations, you can see my ancestors lived to a median age of their mid-60s. But by the time of my grandparents that has increased to almost 80. Of course, the sample size is far smaller for grandparents than great-great-great-&c.-grandparents. Nonetheless, the general trend of the median line is upward.

A few exceptions pull those lines in both directions, however. Catherine Sexton died at the age of 35 from heart disease and James Scollon in the same generation died at 36 from typhoid fever. Additionally, that generation includes a few ancestors who remained in present-day Slovakia in what was one of the most impoverished areas of Europe. Not surprisingly they died in their 40s and 50s. If I exclude those people, the average shoots back up to about 70.

I also decided to colour the minimums and maximums by gender, because as you can see there is a broad pattern of longer-lived women and men who died young. I want to dig more into that aspect of the demographics at a later date to see if that trend holds. I suspect it would because that is the historical trend, but you never know.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Illustrating the Sinking of RMS Titanic

After all the years of writing and publishing here on Coffeespoons, content centred on the sinking of RMS Titanic remains the most popular. And it was in the early hours of 15 April 1912 when she slipped beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. 700 people survived. 1500 people did not. Titanic’s sinking was the worst peacetime maritime disaster at the time and today, 113 years later, it remains likely in the top-five.

Each year I attempt to read something about the sinking. This year I’ve opted to re-read the first-hand account of Jack Thayer, a Philadelphian who survived the sinking. His father was an executive for the Pennsylvania Railroad and could afford first-class accommodations aboard Titanic.

I highly encourage you to read Thayer’s account of the sinking. First, it’s a short read in this era of short attention spans. But secondly, it provides the rare vantage point of a survivor who entered the water. With the temperature of the North Atlantic below freezing, almost without exception, everyone who entered the water died and so almost every passenger account is from someone who evacuated in a lifeboat.

In the aftermath of the sinking, Thayer managed to cling to a lifeboat and was eventually saved. When Thayer arrived in New York, a young art teacher named Lewis Skidmore worked with Thayer to illustrate what Thayer saw of Titanic on her final night.

Controversially, Thayer’s description included Titanic splitting in two. At the time, survivors intensely debated this point. Some claimed she went down intact and others, like Thayer, insisted she split in two. It was not until 1985 when she was discovered by Robert Ballard that the world learned Titanic did indeed split in two that fateful night, proving Thayer correct.

Unfortunately that was 40 years after Thayer’s death. He struggled with depression in the years that followed the sinking as other tragedies befell the man, including losing two of his own sons—one during World War II. He committed suicide at the age of 50 in 1945.

Skidmore’s graphics—black and white illustrations—arguably do as fine a job today as any complex 3D modelling could. They offer further proof that complex graphics need not necessarily communicate more clearly than sizzle and flash.

Credit for the graphics goes to Lewis Skidmore.

When Is a Torpedo Is Not a Torpedo?

When it’s a torpedo bat.

Last week I looked at baseball’s new torpedo bats in a humourous light. But I did want to take a more serious look, because bat evolution has been part of the tale of baseball since its beginning. Back in the day bats featured long lengths and heavier weights. These days, bats are in the mid-30 inch length and mid-30 ounce weight. Current regulations limit bats to 42 inches in length and a maximum diameter of 2.61 inches. 1 (There is some other stuff in there that is not terribly relevant to the torpedo bat.) And that’s it. Nothing about where the widest part of the bat need be nor the overall shape—merely a round, solid piece of wood.

The solid piece of wood is connected to corked bats. At my age I remember seeing the ESPN clips of Sammy Sosa’s corked bat in 2003 and the story of Albert Belle’s bat, stolen from the umpire’s room.

The torpedo bat, however, is not corked, instead it uses increased mass at the bat’s sweet spot, where it generates the greatest exit velocities when the batter hits the pitch. This graphic from ESPN shows how this works.

How a torpedo bat differs from the normal bat

Overall I like the graphic. The use of contrasting red and blue does a good job highlighting, particularly at the end where the normal bat continues with its edges running parallel as a regular cylinder. The torpedo bat changes into a cone with its top sliced off then rounded. I might have exaggerated the vertical dimensions of the bat illustration, but it still works.

Additionally, as I understand the design, it maximises the diameter of the bat to the aforementioned 2.61 inches. I have heard—but not confirmed—most bats do not reach the full diameter. If that is true, perhaps an illustration where the red lines fell below the maximum diameter of the torpedo bat could do a better job differentiating between the two shapes.

I prefer the above illustration to that produced by the Athletic/New York Times, which attempts a similar distinction.

New York Times version of the graphic.

I think ESPN’s overlay better shows the difference and that the Athletic’s wood pattern distracts from the graphic overall. Whereas ESPN uses the solid red vs. blue hatching to distinguish between the two shapes.

Of course that begets the question, why doesn’t every batter use the torpedo bat?

Suffice it to say, some players are better at hitting the ball consistently at the same spot on the bat. If a hitter can repeatedly make contact at a specific spot along the length of the bat, it makes sense to concentrate the mass of the bat at that spot for better hard contact. If, however, a hitter spreads his contact out along the length of the barrel, he probably wants a more evenly distributed mass to help create a better spread of good contact.

Regardless, as I wrote on Friday, the torpedo does not look like a torpedo. If anything, the normal baseball bat looks more like a torpedo than a torpedo bat.

Credit for the ESPN piece goes to ESPN’s graphics department.

Credit for the Athletic’s piece goes to Drew Jordan.

  1. https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-official-baseball-rules.pdf ↩︎

Damn the Torpedoes!

Baseball is back and so bring forth the controversies. One of the ones from last week? The torpedo bat. To be clear, the torpedo bat has been around for a few years—it’s not new. However, on Opening Weekend, the Yankees beat up on Milwaukee Brewers’ pitching. But a Yankees announcer specifically pointed out the design and the hype and the controversy was on.

But since this is a Friday, we’re going to look at a semi-humourous take from Davy Andrews of Fangraphs, a statistically-inclined baseball site. He uses illustrations to focus on the shape of the torpedo bat, which to my mind instantly did not look anything like a torpedo. (Read the full article for a funny aside about the shape’s resemblance—or lack thereof—to a torpedo.)

To be fair, I did not immediately think either old timey bomb or pregnant whale, but rather a bowling pin.

Credit for the piece goes to Davy Andrews.

Happy Liberation Day

Yesterday I created a map detailing the new tariff rates released by President Trump on Wednesday. I was inspired by the curious inclusion of several small territories with almost no trade with the United States, and a few of whom are uninhabited. What follows is the graphic and the accompanying text I wrote as I wrote it.

I say that only because some people have not entirely caught the…let’s say tone with which I wrote.

All hail the new tariffs. Very obviously, foreign governments will be paying us lots of cash money. Places like Lesotho, with its so-called high rates of poverty, AIDS, and under-development, are clearly just fronts for the rich. Because their tariffs on us are turning them into the richest, most luxurious places on Earth.

Now I don’t know for sure, but some people say the shithole places like Nambia are really cash cows. Nerds tell me places like Nambia don’t exist, but their just idiots looking in the wrong wardrobe. Genius-level intellects like me can easily find Nambia on a map.

There are some very bad ombres out there, and I’m looking at you, Señor Diego Garcia. Some say you’re a thug with bad tattoos whom we should disappear to a secret black site. But the nerds keep telling me you’re not a person, just an island. That you’re not an illegal alien, but a British island where no civilians live, just US soldiers on a secret military base. But we need that money to pay for all the tax cuts for the rich. So we’ll just make our troops there pay Señor Garcia’s tariffs until he stops being lazy and pays us.

Then I’m looking at places like Christmas Island. That Santa Claus is really a bad guy. I know some of you like him—I like him too; he was good to me when I was a child. But all he does is export toys and joys. And that needs to be taxed. So I need Christmas Island to give us all their very real Christmas money.

Finally, I’m looking at Heard Island and McDonald Islands who’re trying to hide near the Antarctic Circle with all the other bad guys and their fortresses of solitude and vaults of swimmable coins. Sure, those nerds keep telling me these islands are uninhabited. But Amber Heard and Ronald McDonald are real people, in league with the Hamburgler, stealing all our rightful American money. The nerds say the islands are only inhabited by penguins. So if you want to say that Amber and Ronald are really just penguins, then we’re going to get all our sweet tariff money from the so-called penguins. Some of whom are emperors. Can you believe that? Emperor penguins? Emperors are rich. So we need to liberate those penguin dollars from the penguin monarchy.

Credit for the piece is mine.