February 10, 2010
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The best pitchers hardly anyone knowsby Harry PavlidisAugust 25, 2009 Last week, Sports Illustrated's Cliff Corcoran published his top ten set-up men for the season. Always looking for an excuse to use PITCHf/x to explore a pitcher, Corcoran's list gives us the chance to look some of the best—but not best known—relievers in the major leagues. Corcoran's listCovering both leagues, Corcoran lays out his case for the a top 10 of:
Corcoran's basic criteria, in his own words: This is thus a list of the eighth-inning setup men fans should least want to see enter a game against their favorite team right now. It could look very different by the end of the season, and several of these pitchers could be in different roles come 2010. Some of the pitchers listed have been closers already, but most have not. Let's look at what they throw. Pitch typesWe'll dig into these below, a full listing of the pitch types (and average speed) thrown by these guys in 2009. Fastballs refer to four-seam fastballs, sinkers to two-seam fastballs. Cutters, sliders and curves are familiar points along a continuum that includes slutters and slurves. Your label may vary.
How they throw itAs you can see above, almost every reliever on the list throws something in the 90 mph and above range. The exceptions are a submariner and one of the most extreme over-the-top pitchers in baseball. But there's something to say about the whole list, not just Ziegler and Okajima. The lefties: Sherrill, Thornton, Okajima and GonzalezSherrill works from the first base side of the rubber and presents the lowest release point of the conventional throwers. He's also releasing the ball further from the center of the mound (two feet, 11 inches) than any other pitcher in this group. Nothing too special about Thornton—he's tall and working from the first base side. He's in a high three-quarter slot, while Sherrill is in more of a low three-quarter. Okajima and Gonzalez have a more distinct approach. Okajima is straight over the top, his arm straight in the air, his eyes pointed at the ground, practically behind himself. He's so over-the-top, he releases the ball slightly on the third base side of the rubber (just a few inches from the center, though). His technique also results in the highest release point of the group. Gonzalez is a conventional three-quarters, but sets up way over to the third base side of the rubber. If you've seen him pitch, you know of his rocking wind-up that makes him seem like he's revving up before jumping into his delivery. There are no extreme ground ballers in the left-handed group. Thornton leads the group at 45 percent, Okajima trails at 33 percent. Okajima induces the most pop flies (13 percent) and outfield flies (38 percent). There's a pretty good range of whiff rates in the foursome, from Sherrill's .187 to Thornton's .267. Gonzalez (.246) and Okajima (.222) do well in that. Thornton's combination of high whiff and ground ball rates is impressive. Gonzalez is not too far behind. Oddly, they are hit the hardest (slugging on contact) of the lefties by a decent margin.
The righties: Guerrier, Betancourt, Lyon, Hughes, Ziegler and MadsonExcluding Ziegler's submarine delivery, where the ball comes out of his hand less than three feet above the ground, the right-handed members of Corcoran's list fall around the three-quarter standard, ranging from Madson's below three-quarter whip to Betancourt's overhand delivery. Working up from Madson are Hughes, Lyon and Guerrier. Madson, benefiting from his height, manages a release point that is just as high as Okajima's and well to the third base side of the rubber. By the way, these arm slot designations are, in some cases, based solely on reading the PITCHf/x It should be no surprise that Ziegler leads the full 10 in ground ball rate. With an outstanding 63 percent, Ziegler is going to rely on his defense to get most of the outs. That compensates nicely for his group-trailing whiff rate of .161. That's below average no matter how you slice it. Lyon would be considered a slightly above average ground ball pitcher, at 49 percent, and Betancourt is plainly a fly ball pitcher. Yielding just 29 percent ground balls, Betancourt also gets more outfield flies (40 percent) than the rest of the group. No one elevates Mr. Ziegler: only 3 percent pop-ups on balls in play. No freebies for the defense. Madson is a right-handed Thornton, in a certain way. With a .271 whiff rate and 43 percent grounders on balls in play, he also throws in the upper 90s. Hughes looks to be Sherrill's counterpart (body types aside). Guerrier, lest we forget, is fairly balanced and has given up the least on balls in play.
As a group, the righties may miss fewer bats, but they aren't hit quite as hard. Pitch qualityTwo versions of run values: rv100 is based on linear weights for batted ball outcomes, and rv100E is based on distributed batted ball outcomes based on batted ball type. In other words, singles and doubles vs. liners and pop-ups. Both use pitch outcomes the same way. And, negative run values are better for pitchers. I'll just throw these numbers out for you to peruse. I'll roll them up and rank the pitchers below. I've made this table sortable—just click the headers.
Same ten, different orderUsing the pitch quality metrics shown above, I arrived at one value for each set-up man on the list. Using those run values, this would be the re-ordered top 10. SI's rankings are shown in parentheses.
Matt Thornton, you're the undisputed eighth inning champion of 2009. Well, two votes to none, so far. References and Resources Sports Illustrated and Chris Corcoran published the top 10 Pitch data from MLBAM, classifications by the author. Stats updated through Aug. 21. All release points are ball position 55 feet from the back of home plate—this is five feet further back than the Gameday release point. Sortable tables by Kryogenix Harry Pavlidis admits he has a baseball problem. He also writes for Beyond the Boxscore, Out of the Ivy and his own blog, Cubs f/x. Feedback, questions and comments are appreciated - harrypav@gmail.com
Harry Pavlidis said...
No, I left those in. I’ll re-run his #‘s tonight splitting out by appearance type, see if it looks any different. Posted 08/25 at 10:26 AM
Dave Allen said...
I am going to post about Hughes stuff as a reliever at FanGraphs in the afternoon. The run values on all his pitches are way better. I will be interested to see how much better than are with your rv100E since his BABIP and HR/FB are way way better as a reliever than as a stater. In other words I wonder how much of the improvement in the pitches is not luck based. I think that this year Hughes throws a cutter not a slider. Posted 08/25 at 11:38 AM
Harry Pavlidis said...
Dave, I am interested to see how are numbers vary. Also, if you look above, I don’t have a slider for Hughes, just his cutter. Posted 08/25 at 02:34 PM
Dan Novick said...
Just to clarify, Hughes doesn’t throw a cutter anymore…. he dropped it last July in favor of the cutter. Posted 08/25 at 05:41 PM
Harry Pavlidis said...
Huh? Posted 08/25 at 05:42 PM
Harry Pavlidis said...
OK, dropping everything including his first two relief outings (one was multiple innings, starting in the 3rd, he’s been late game since then) I find that he stopped throwing the change-up. Here are the rv100 and # thrown Curve 0.43 (119) Sinker 2.26 (13) Fastball -3.11 (310) Cutter -5.46 (49) and rv100E Curve 1.46 Sinker 4.02 Fastball -1.83 Cutter -3.85 Rolling it up, it moves Hughes into second place behind Thornton in the re-ordered top ten. Based on rv100E, two of Hughes’ pitches are worse and two are better. Grain of salt included. Posted 08/25 at 07:36 PM
Dave Allen said...
Sorry Harry, Miss read it. I had expected the cutter and fastball to look good even iwth the rv100E, because he is getting big time whiffs with both pitches. Posted 08/25 at 09:53 PM
semih said...
Ryan Madson was the best man Posted 08/31 at 09:00 PM
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Did you separate Hughes’ numbers as a starter and a reliever?