November 22, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. 
Rich Barbieri
John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell David Gassko Jonathan Hale Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Harry Pavlidis Jeff Sackmann Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Dan Turkenkopf Colin Wyers Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
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The extinction of Zito’s hard curve: a brief follow-upby Max MarchiSeptember 12, 2009 On September 11, I published this article on Barry Zito, where I stated that he dropped a hard curve, while adding a slider to his arsenal. Many readers commented that what I noticed might just be a change in the MLBAM classification algorithm, rather than in Zito's repertoire. I'm not surprised, since I had the same concern myself. What follows won't end the matter and maybe I'll get on this again in a few weeks. Here are the speed/movement charts of Zito's 2008 hard curve and his (alleged?) 2009 slider.    I see quite a good separation in all of the graphs, that makes me feel like they are two different pitches, whether they are a slider and a hard curve or something with different names. Speaking of names, here's what his catcher Bengie Molina said after a gem pitched on July 7 (I happened to be at the park that night): "He did a great job. The curve ball was working, the slider, the changeup—everything was working". It seems that a slider is indeed in Barry's quiver, and if Bengie says it was working, he might have called for it a few times. MLBAM algorithm sees a slider among Zito's pitches; BIS video scouts see a slider too (they were also seeing one before 2008, but they are seeing it twice as much this year); Bengie Molina talks about a slider; for the time being I'm going to stick with the new pitch hypothesis. I'm currently watching some videos of this year and 2008; I hope to give you an update. Max has been writing about baseball for six years to an Italian audience. He can be reached via e-mail. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. |
