Archive for the 'THT Dispatch' Category

Last night during the heart-stopping Syracuse-Wisconsin game, Harry and I were talking (okay, Harry was mostly watching his team win by the skin of its teeth) about ways to improve the Brooks Baseball player card system. We exchanged some data and are presenting the first of our “data-driven” search tools—pitcher similarity. This feature is incredibly […]

Here’s something new. Jeffrey Gross from THT Fantasy and I are exchanging “watch this guy” ideas—fantasy picks from one side and PITCHf/x based picks on the other. First up is Jeff’s first breakout candidate for a cheap but valuable pitcher—Kansas City’s Danny Duffy. The PITCHf/x data we’re discussing can be seen on Duffy’s player card […]

Your definition of fun may vary. But Yu Darvish and his eight-pitch mix are going to make life interesting for catchers, hitters and even PITCHf/x analysts. Here’s a picture from his Cactus League debut. The pitch in red was a strike three splitter to end an inning. The axes show movement during the flight to […]

I thought it important to describe a new feature we’ve added to the PitchFX Player Cards over the last month or so. I’ve previously tweeted (@Brooksbaseball) about these features but haven’t described them in detail. When the cards first debuted, we were asked by a number of people to provide average data for comparison, especially […]

The radar gun in Peoria may be running a little warm, but Andrew Cashner was throwing gas. The ex-Cub came in for the Padres in the sixth inning. He threw nothing under 101 mph and broke 103 a few times. Even if you deduct a couple mph for what are probably calibration issues with the […]

How Brett Myers will do as a closer and how valuable he is to the Astros in that role is not the question for this space. Just the fastballs. Let’s take a look at some quick-and-dirty numbers (four- and two-seam fastballs all together; age determined by season year minus birth year—neither precise nor seasonal). If […]

Pitch classification is not an exact science. It requires a lot of review and rechecks over time to ensure no funny IDs have snuck in and that a pitcher’s arsenel is accurately reflected. That last point can be the most difficult, especially if a pitcher changes things over time. And then there are changes in […]

After much anticipation, the trade that sent A.J. Burnett from the Yankees to the Pirates was finally completed on Sunday. Burnett had a tumultuous three seasons in the Bronx, with a 4.79 ERA and 4.5 walks/hit batters per nine over 584 regular-season innings. His signature pitch is an 83 mph spike-curveball with exceptional movement. (Harry […]

Craig Kimbrel throws a nasty breaking ball. He grips it like a spike slider (maybe) and the ball moves like a curveball (sort of). It’s a relatively short curveball, but one moving upwards of 87 mph when it leaves Kimbrel’s hand. The combination of speed and drop are unparalleled in the major leagues today. Checkout […]

Long term PITCHf/x data has always been difficult to find online. There are several existing sources available: Fangraphs has some of it, but not everything you might want (I’m sure they will tomorrow, just for that). Texas Leaguer has had a fantastic tool up for quite some time now, but still, there are places it […]