Applying the method that worked for defence to the two factors the code flagged
as still crude.
PLATOON. The flat version is 'lefty versus righty, add a boost', and it failed
the two-part gate for the same reason team-average defence did: it is not the
unit the causal story runs through. The advantage is only worth what THIS
hitter's split is actually worth -- measured on a real hitter, .284 against
left-handed pitching versus .221 against right-handed, a 63-point split, where
the flat factor applied the same six percent to him and to a hitter with none.
Most of the work is sample discipline, and the second rule matters more than
the first. Severity shrinks toward the league split weighted by the SMALLER
side's plate appearances, because a 500-against-40 split is a 40-PA read. And
below a floor it REFUSES outright rather than shrinking, because a
heavily-shrunk severity is indistinguishable from a measured league-average one
and those are different claims -- without the refusal the atom would quietly
assert a league-typical split about every September call-up in the league.
Switch hitters turn out to be the easy case misread as the hard one. He bats
opposite by choice so the direction is never in doubt, but the per-side value of
his swing is a different question and one this sample cannot answer, so he is
unreadable rather than credited with an automatic edge.
PARK DIMENSIONS. Free from statsapi's venue endpoint, which carries fence
distances, roof, turf and elevation outright -- Wrigley returns 355 down the
left line, 400 to centre, 353 to right, at 595 feet. parkFactors holds run
COEFFICIENTS, which structurally cannot express a park that turns outs into hits
without scoring, and that is why the crude park factor failed.
The park join is by the venue the game is ACTUALLY at, carried from the schedule
feed, never inferred from the home team -- neutral-site and international games
break that assumption and they break it silently. A venue with no geometry at
all is absent rather than a park with zero dimensions.
Both tables dated in the primary key. Venue geometry changes rarely but it does
change, and by now that is the default rather than a lesson.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01W1sivYNqY2TS5ftykmHBU9
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