Friday, July 15, 2011
Hot Holland
Posted by Harry PavlidisSo Derek Holland just threw two consecutive complete games. He had two in his career (one in 2009, one earlier in June).
Best part: The start before those back-to-back games lasted than an inning. Go figure.
Naturally, this compelled me to look at some of his peripheral stats and plow through and finalize all of his pitch classifications.
| Season | B:CS | IWZ | GB% |
| 2009 | 2.0 | 0.558 | 0.42 |
| 2010 | 2.3 | 0.503 | 0.43 |
| 2011 | 1.8 | 0.558 | 0.47 |
Holland has gone from average to above average in ground balls. He's also become/returned to being a control pitcher.
Pitch mix when starting
| Season | # | Four-seam FB | Two-seam FB | Change | Curveball | Slider |
| 2009 | 1880 | 46% | 23% | 11% | 8% | 11% |
| 2010 | 870 | 48% | 13% | 13% | 6% | 20% |
| 2011 | 1895 | 42% | 21% | 14% | 10% | 13% |
vs RHH
| Season | # | Four-seam FB | Two-seam FB | Change | Curveball | Slider |
| 2009 | 1461 | 43% | 23% | 14% | 8% | 12% |
| 2010 | 719 | 47% | 14% | 16% | 6% | 18% |
| 2011 | 1440 | 39% | 22% | 18% | 12% | 9% |
vs LHH
| Season | # | Four-seam FB | Two-seam FB | Change | Curveball | Slider |
| 2009 | 419 | 58% | 21% | 2% | 9% | 11% |
| 2010 | 151 | 52% | 9% | 3% | 7% | 28% |
| 2011 | 455 | 51% | 21% | 3% | 4% | 22% |
In a nutshell, the sinking two-seam fastball has returned and he's tossing more curveballs to right-handed batters.
Zooming in on 2011 shows what may be the most striking thing of all.
While Holland's sinker usage has picked-up in 2011, it's actually his four-seam fastball that's picked-up usage as 2011 moves forward.
More heaters on top of a bigger base of sinkers equals a hotter Holland?
Harry Pavlidis admits he has a baseball problem. He is the founder of Pitch Info LLC, His pitch classifications power the player cards at Brooksbaseball.net. Feedback, questions and comments are appreciated - Email harrypav@gmail.com and Twitter @harrypav