Thursday, March 08, 2012
Darvish will make pitch classification fun
Posted by Harry PavlidisYour 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 home plate from the catcher's perspective.
There's an 86 mph cutter that's got less drop and more hook than the other, faster, cutters. What's up with that? Looks like two change-ups on the left side of the change-up and splitter group. And you can clearly see the slow curveball.
This was a situation where game video and post-game interviews helped out. Dan Brooks looked at my original rough classifications and suggested some improvements. You can see those on Darvish's player card. The charts include his World Baseball Classic appearances, but you can filter the tables by year. We plan on providing yearly movement graphs in our next update to the site.
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
The work you guys do is just amazing. Thank you.