The Hardball Times -- Josh Kalk

The Hardball Times -- Josh Kalk http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-22T08:05:15+00:00 Final round WBC coverage http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/final-round-wbc-coverage/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/final-round-wbc-coverage/#When:05:03:15 last few weeks I have turned my attention to the WBC and some interesting pitchers we normally don't get to see. This week we look at Korea and Japan, the two teams who dominated play in this year's WBC. Japan, the champion again after its 5-3 victory Monday night, was led by several players currently in the major leagues. Korea had only Shin-Soo Choo currently playing in the states and all but three of its pitchers came from the Korean league. While MVP Daisuke Matsuzaka dominated again in this WBC, we will focus on pitchers who haven't pitched stateside before. Remember, all these pitchers are preparing for their leagues as well, so don't be surprised if their fastball speeds are a tick below other scouting reports.

Hisashi Iwakuma, Team Japan

Hisashi Iwakuma, soon to be 28, is a right hander for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles who pitched effectively as the starter in the championship game. Iwakuma won the Sawamura Award (best starting pitcher) and the Pacific League MVP last year and is in the prime of his career. He had an eye-popping 159/36 K/BB ratio last year in 201.2 innings (remember the Japanese leagues tend to have reduced strikeouts) and an ERA under two. Iwakuma is the real deal, as his movement chart shows.

Iwakuma throws five pitches: fastball, sinker, splitter, slider and curveball. His fastball average speed is 91 mph, which is basically major league average, with some solid movement. This is about a league average, maybe a bit better, pitch. His sinker is around 90 mph with some nice horizontal movement in to a right-handed batter but not a lot of sink. Iwakuma has used this pitch exclusively to right-handed batters in the WBC, running it in under their hands and I expect it would be a useful pitch in the big leagues as well. What separates Iwakuma from other pitchers, though, is his exceptional off-speed pitches.

Iwakuma's best pitch, in my opinion, is his splitter. He hides it well, with horizontal movement in between his sinker and fastball, with more than half a foot more sink than his fastball. Combine that with a decent 5 mph speed differential and you have an awesome weapon, especially against right-handed batters. While not a lot of pitchers throw change-ups to similarly handed batters, splitters that don't move in, in comparison to the fastball, are a nice pitch against those hitters. Not only do hitters see few of these pitches during the year, but the downward movement can help keep the ball low. This pitch would play in the big leagues.

His slider is also a plus pitch, with okay horizontal movement and plus vertical drop. This too is an extremely effective pitch against right-handed batters and he threw his slider more than any other pitch against them in the WBC. His curve is rather slurvy and has a very large 20 mph speed differential, with more horizontal movement, than vertical movement. Ideally, he either would tighten his curve up or get a little more movement with it.

Iwakuma is an interesting pitcher in part because he threw his fastball and sinker only a combined 32 percent of the time during the WBC. It isn't that his fastballs are bad, but they aren't as superior as his off-speed pitches and he plays to his strength. The question: How would that do in the States? Some pitchers do pitch like that, but the average fastball percentage is closer to two-thirds rather than the one-third here. Also, Iwakuma's stuff really seems to work well against right-handed hitters. I can't find a platoon split for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was rather large. It isn't that he can't be effective against lefties, but all of his off-speed pitches do better against right-handed batters.

Kyuji Fujikawa, Team Japan

Kyuji Fujikawa is a 29-year-old right-handed closer for the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. Like Iwakuma, Fujikawa dominated last year to the tune of 38 saves, 0.67 ERA and 90/13 K/BB ratio in 67.2 innings. It was the fourth straight year Fujikawa had posted an ERA under two, so this isn't a flash in the pan. So the numbers are great, but what about his stuff?

Fujikawa's fastball averaged 92 mph during the WBC, which is lower than what he reportedly throws during the season. The interesting thing about his fastball is the huge vertical movement it possesses, more than a foot compared to a ball thrown without spin. Few major league pitchers get so much "rise" with their fastballs, though it is a bit uncertain how much benefit that actually provides. In any case, with a fastball with so much "rise" to it, it appears that Fujikawa works up in the zone with that pitch a lot and, unlike Iwakuma, relies heavily on his fastball to get hitters out. While he's been dominant in Japan, there are serious questions how that would play in the states. I'd like the pitch a lot more at 94 mph than 92.

Fujikawa also throws a splitter, his out pitch. Fujikawa's speed differential is almost 10 mph from his fastball and it doesn't hide quite as well in his fastball as does Iwakuma's, but it is a plus pitch. Like Iwakuma, he isn't afraid to throw that pitch to right-handed batters and it likely is very effective against them.

I am lukewarm on Fujikawa's curve. The five he threw were all over the map with movement. The three that are clustered near zero horizontal movement were rather 12 to 6, but without a lot of actual vertical movement. The pitch was 20 mph slower than his fastball, so I would describe it as more looping than a harder hammer you see from most 12 to 6 guys. The other two had almost no vertical drop; I would describe them as sweeping. I don't think the sweeping curve would be very effective in the States. The looping curve might be okay, but what I would like to see from Fujikawa is a nice hard hammer.

Because he is throwing up in the zone a lot with his fastball, a hard 12 to 6 curve would be hidden well. With a pitch like that, I think Fujikawa could be very effective in the States, but without it I don't think he would be a top-flight closer.

Jung Keun Bong, Team Korea

Bong is a name you may recognize. He pitched for the Braves and Reds until he injured his arm and was released by the Reds in 2005. In 2006, he signed a contract to pitch back in Korea and put together a nice season in 2008. Bong is now 29, so time isn't exactly on his side. That said, it appears that his stuff has mostly returned. He started for Korea Monday.

Bong is averaging 92 mph with his fastball, which has some nice horizontal movement away from right-handed batters. His best off-speed pitch is his change-up (he might call it a splitter; it is right on the edge), which appears to have a rather wide band in vertical movement. Whenever you see something like this, it is hard to determine if the pitcher is doing it on purpose. If you see it with someone like Greg Maddux, then he likely has good control over how much spin he is putting on the ball, but Bong's problem in the big leagues was control, so maybe not so much with him.

In any case, his change-up is about 14 mph slower than his fastball, and that would grade out rather well in the big leagues. Interestingly, Bong is very willing to throw that change-up to left handed hitters, something almost no lefty in the big leagues does with the notable exception of Tom Glavine. Bong's curve is 11 to 5, but with some solid movement. That could be an okay pitch in the big leagues.

I'd like to see some more fastballs from Bong, who does have a good one and his change-up could be a nice pitch as well. It is unlikely he will get a chance to pitch in the States again, but I think he could be an okay long reliever if he ever got that chance.

Hyun-jin Ryu, Team Korea

Ryu is a 21-year-old left-handed starter for Korea whose history reads like a 31-year-old's. In high school, he had Tommy John surgery and after basically dominating the Korean Baseball Organization, he again had some arm issues in 2008. He has been worked hard in his few years in the KBO. He has been a mainstay for Korea in international competitions, helping his team win the gold medal in the last Olympics. Ryu's stuff is also quite impressive.

Ryu's fastball is basically as close to MLB average as a pitch can get: 91.7 mph with about five inches of horizontal movement and 11 inches vertically. Ryu hasn't thrown that fastball much, however, just about 50 percent of the time in the WBC. Ryu throws a nice circle change-up, which you can see because it moves down and away from right-handed hitters compared to his fastball. Ryu gets about a league average speed differential with that pitch and he correctly uses it extensively against right-handed hitters.

Ryu's slider and curveball are also nice pitches. His slider doesn't have a lot of horizontal movement, but good downward vertical movement, helping him keep it low and away to left-handed hitters. His curve features some nice vertical drop and is about 15 mph slower than his fastball, which is much more in line with the kind of curves you see in the big leagues.

Ryu has about average big league stuff. With the right guidance, he certainly has the tools to be a solid major league pitcher. Sadly, I don't think he is likely to be given that opportunity because of his injuries and previous overwork. I would have my doubts investing in a 21-year-old who already has needed surgery. It is clear that he already has mastered the KBO, so if he is going to progress more as a pitcher, tougher competition would help. Japan seems like a reasonable option and, if he can stay healthy, maybe in a few years he might to make his way stateside.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-03-24T05:03:15+00:00 Second round WBC coverage http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/second-round-wbc-coverage/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/second-round-wbc-coverage/#When:06:53:15 Last week we looked at some pitchers from the first round of the World Baseball Classic and this week we will continue that by looking at some pitchers whose teams were eliminated from play in round two. The pitchers we looked at last week mostly we a little older and didn't exactly have high upsides but in round two we were treated to several pitchers who, given some time, could be absolute studs in the big leagues.

Aroldis Chapman, Team Cuba

Chapman is a tall, lanky 21-year-old lefty with very little international experience for Cuba. Watching him pitch for the first time made my jaw drop. He throws from an almost 3/4 angle and has a very smooth delivery—yet his average fastball against Japan in the second round was clocked at 94.5 mph. You can basically count on one hand the number of lefty starters in the big leagues who throw that fast. If that was the only thing he threw he probably still could make it as a prospect, but he also has incredible movement on his slider. Chapman is generating nearly nine inches of horizontal movement with his slider. That would put him in the top 10 in MLB for slider movement. Here is a look at his movement chart.

That is the good news for Chapman, but he certainly has some warts as well. The most obvious wart is his total lack of control with basically any of his pitches. Against Japan he couldn't locate any of his pitches and walked batter after batter. In round one, against less patient teams, he was able to get by with his great movement alone and get hitters to chase. Against more polished hitters he has to be able to throw the ball over the plate. You have to wonder if all of the movement Chapman is getting with his fastball and slider aren't hurting more than they are helping at this point in his career. Also, when he didn't get some close calls it looked like he pouted on the mound. If you are all over the place as a pitcher you simply aren't going to get the borderline pitches and he needs to understand that.

Getting back to his stuff shows the second problem. Chapman threw only two change-ups all game and you can see the wide difference of movement in those two change-ups. Japan actually had a lot of lefties in their lineup, so those two change-ups represented almost 10 percent of all the pitches he threw to right handed batters, which is actually pretty reasonable, but he is going to need to make that pitch more consistent if he is going to be able to consistently get right-handed batters out. That brings up another point. With Chapman mostly facing Cuban hitters, who seem rather impatient at the plate, you have to wonder how much progression he is going to make. The Cuban league may be just fine for him as a 21- or 22-year-old but at some point he is going to have to face tougher competition in order to reach his full potential. If he were draft eligible, as a lot of 21-year-olds are, he would be a top round pick for sure. He definitely doesn't compare favorably to David Price, who has somewhat similar stuff but possessed much better control even before he was drafted. But you just can't teach lefty with an easy delivery and a 95 mph fastball.

Vladimir Garcia, Team Cuba

Chapman's teammate Vladimir Garcia is another young pitcher on the Cuban staff. Garcia is a closer back in Cuba and, like many big league closers, features two pitches, a lightning fast fastball, and a slurvy curve.

Garcia's ten fastballs averaged out to 97.5 mph with some solid movement. Normally when you see a pitcher throw that fast, they are throwing very over the top making the pitch very straight. Garcia's fastball actually has MLB average horizontal movement to it. It is rather unclear how useful this is, as throwing at 97 mph is usually enough to get the job done, but it is possible that his extra movement would help out against some of the better fastball hitters in the majors. Garcia's curve is around 83 mph, which is a relatively small speed differential, which I like if the pitch is mostly 12 to 6. However Garcia throws a very slurvy pitch with a lot more horizontal movement than vertical movement. If he was to make it to the majors I would like to see him either tighten up his curve or maybe add a change-up and use his curve less against left handed batters.

It also should be noted that while most of the other players on other teams were getting ready for their season to start the Cuban players were in the midst of their season so their pitchers should be viewed with that in mind when comparing them to other pitchers in the WBC.

Oliver Perez, Team Mexico

When I started this I was planning on not showing any pitchers who already were in the majors, but I just can't help myself with Perez. Perez threw the maximum 85 pitches in his start against Korea and gave up three home runs in PETCO no less. Perez didn't look very good in his first start in the WBC either ,and the Mets have to already be wondering about the big contract they signed him to this off season. During those negotiations Scott Boras argued that Perez was one of the games five best left handed starters. The problem with Perez is his inconsistency and bad Oliver certainly was the one who showed up for the WBC. Why is he so inconsistent? Looking at his pitch selection it becomes very clear.

Perez has a nice fastball, which he threw around 91.5 mph in the WBC and closer to 93 last year. In addition to the velocity it features plus movement both horizontally and vertically. Few pitchers in the game can claim their fastball as above league average in all three of those categories. Perez even had a very nice slider in the WBC that looked almost the same as his slider in 2008. He throws it around 80 mph with about six inches of horizontal slide to it and can keep it down in the zone with little vertical rise. This is exactly the type of slider I like which is a pitch you can start on the outside corner only to have it move down and away getting the hitter to chase. The problem with Perez is that is all he has. He threw exactly one curveball against Korea, and his curve moves basically the same as his slider only slower, and no change-ups. Normally he only uses his change-up about three percent of the time which means he continually relies on his fastball and slider. If one of those pitches isn't working for him he has no where else to turn. He just has to keep throwing it hoping he can get the feel back. In addition, when hitters see only two pitches for three or four at bats during a game they are going to catch on. His margin for error is just so small. If everything is working he really can be one of the best pitchers in the game but if something isn't it is down the tubes and that is exactly what we saw at the WBC from him.

Leon Boyd, Team Netherlands

Boyd was the closer on the Dutch team and he parlayed that success into a minor league contract with the Blue Jays. With the help of Bert Blyleven (can we please elect him to the Hall of Fame next year!) the Dutch advanced to the second round with their arms and Boyd is a great example of the kind of stuff that Blyleven had to work with.

Boyd is a sinker/slider pitcher who throws his sinker around 87 mph and his slider around 75 mph. You can see that both of these pitches are coming out with similar vertical movement so they can stick close together until the sinker moves in and the slider moves away to a right handed batter. What makes Boyd kind of unique is just how much horizontal movement that involves with a foot of movement in on his sinker and almost ten inches of movement away with his slider. This directly comes from his arm angle, or should I say arm angles.

There are a fair number of pitchers in the big leagues who will vary their release point from over to top to 3/4s or from 3/4s to side arm but there are very few who vary their release point from side arm to submariner. Boyd is willing to throw either his sinker or his slider from either arm angle which also is a little unique as a lot of guys who do drop down from time to time will usually have a preferred pitch from the lower angle. Despite Boyd's lack of velocity he probably has enough movement and deception going for him to possibly make it as a ROOGY in the big leagues. That slider is probably not going to play against left handed batters which is why he threw only sinkers to the one he faced in round two. Against right handed batters with the funky arm angles and deception with his pitches it will likely be hard for them to quickly determine if the ball is going to hit him in his thigh or glide over the outside corner.

Next week, the finals of the WBC and a look at some really interesting Japanese and Korean pitchers. For a teaser check out Harry Pavlidis' look at Yu Darvish.

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Cody Cillo pitching for Team Italy against the Nationals (Icon/SMI)

The World Baseball Classic is in full swing, with first-round play going on as I write this. If you have been following some games with MLB Gameday, you already know that in major league stadiums PITCHf/x cameras have been tracking the data. Sadly, in the first round that is only the games in Toronto but after this round every single pitch should be tracked. So right now we just have a small taste of what is to come and we finally have some new data to sink our teeth into.

Many MLB veterans like Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt, Felix Hernandez and Jason Grilli have been plying their trade and later we will examine how they are faring in comparison to their 2008 numbers, but for now I would like to focus on a few lesser-known players who may pitch in an MLB stadium near you.

Yoel Hernandez, Team Venezuela

Yoel Hernandez was in the Phillies organization and had a cup of coffee in 2007. Despite decent numbers in the minors, Hernandez was released by the Phillies and pitched last year in Mexico. After he pitched well there, the Phillies re-signed Hernandez this offseason. Hernandez is a classic sinker/slider guy and you can see that from his movement chart.

There are plenty of sinker/slider right-handed relievers in the big leagues, but Hernandez stacks up well against league average. He throws his sinker around 91 mph, which is fast for that pitch and helps make up for his nearly five inches of vertical rise. His sinker is closer to Chien-Ming Wang than Derek Lowe.

Hernandez' money pitch, however, is his slider. He gets good horizontal slide with it and little vertical rise means he can keep it down in the zone. Baseball America had it as the best slider in the Phillies organization in 2005. Hernandez almost certainly throws a change-up to go with his sinker and slider, but he didn't face a left-handed batter, so he hasn't thrown a change-up yet.

Hernandez will be 29 when the season starts, so he is in the prime of his career and he does have a big league arm. He doesn't have the stuff to be a star, but he does a decent job of keeping the ball on the ground and his quality slider means he should strike out more batters than most sinker/slider guys. He could be the 11th or 12th pitcher on a staff and likely will see some time in the big leagues this year.

Mark DiFelice, Team Italy

Mark DiFelice has had a long career in the minors after being drafted by the Rockies in 1998. At 31 last year, DiFelice pitched very well for the Nashville Sounds in Triple-A and earned a call-up with the Brewers for the first time in his career.

DiFelice pitched extremely well in the WBC for Italy over the weekend, holding a pretty good Venezuelan team scoreless for four innings, allowing only three hits and no walks. The way DiFelice did this is the remarkable thing. Here is a look at his movement chart.

Yes, that is right: DiFelice threw only four fastballs and two curveballs in his 45 pitches. The rest were sliders. The commentators called this a cutter and DiFelice calls it a cutter, but the pitch moves like a slider so I am calling it that. It is five mph slower than his 87 mph fastball and has much less vertical rise. It he wasn't throwing it so often there would be no doubt that it would be called a slider.

Anyway, this is nothing new for DiFelice, who threw exactly the same way when called up last year. I have questioned whether DiFelice can get by throwing slider after slider, but the evidence is starting to mount. He pitched very well in the minors the last two years, he pitched well when called up by the Brewers last year, and now he has pitched well in the WBC. At some point you have to stop questioning and just go with it, and we are nearing that point with DiFelice (if we aren't already there). DiFelice is even tipping his pitches worse than than almost any other pitcher I have seen. Check out his release point.

One other thing to note: Vinny Rottino, who caught DiFelice in Triple-A the last two years, caught him again in the WBC. Being on the same page with the catcher certainly could have helped DiFelice. Whether he makes the Brewers roster out of spring training or not, expect to see him pitch in the majors this year and expect to be flooded with change-ups.

Alessandro Maestri, Team Italy

While the Italian team is mostly composed of American-born players of Italian descent, Alessandro (Alex) Maestri was born and raised in Italy and has now become the first such player to make it to Double-A. Despite being just 23 last year, Maestri has been pitching for the Italian National team since 2006. The Cubs signed Maestri that year and he has been pitching pretty well in the minors since. Here is a look at his movement chart.

Maestri's best pitch is his fastball, which he throws around 93 mph with solid movement. The confusing stuff is his off-speed pitches. My algorithm is calling the five pitches to the right curveballs and the one pitch in the middle a slider, despite the slider having more vertical movement down than the curve. The reason for this is the curves came in around 77 mph and the slider was thrown at 83 mph. We need more statistics on Maestri to straighten this out, but whatever you want to call his main off-speed pitch, it is slow and slurvy. Maestri likes to begin the at-bat with that pitch, throwing it three times in just seven batters.

Hei is still quite young and has a lot to work on, especially his off-speed pitches, but he has the talent to be a solid bullpen arm in the future.

Cody Cillo, Team Italy

After pitching several years in the minors, Cody Cillo moved to Italy in 2006 and has been pitching in the Italian leagues ever since. Cillo's claim to fame was as the winning pitcher in Team Italy's win over Team USA in the 2007 Baseball World Cup. In 2008, he won pitcher of the year in the Italian league with an ERA close to one. Cillo gave up a home run to Melvin Mora in his short outing over the weekend.

Cillo is another sinker/slider pitcher with very good vertical drop on his sinker. Unfortunately, he throws it only around 87 mph or it could be a major league pitch. It also has a lot of horizontal movement in to a right-handed hitter, so he is likely a lot more effective against them. Cillo's slider is also a decent pitch with good movement both horizontally and vertically. The pitch that is really interesting to look at, though, is his change-up, which has less horizontal movement than his sinker.

While some other sinkerballers have similarly moving change-ups, Cillo is taking this to the extreme and it likely isn't in the same plane as his sinker. This may not be a problem against Italian hitters, but something major league hitters would be able to see. Cillo doesn't have the stuff to pitch in the big leagues, but he probably could do quite well in Double-A. That gives us a barometer on how good the Italian league is, considering how dominant he has been there the past few years.

Conclusions

Over the next few weeks, I plan to look at more pitchers who aren't on too many people's radar. With Japan and Korea already qualifying, that means a potential sneak peek at the next Daisuke Matsuzaka. Also, after the next round, we should have enough data to compare pitchers from 2008 to their WBC numbers—what he's throwing in March compared to what he threw in June.

For more PITCHf/x info in the WBC, check out Brooksbaseball and minorleaguenotebook

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Aaron Laffey showing off his two-seam grip. (Icon/SMI)

With spring training games a day away (hooray), I wanted to take a break from the heavy dose of statistical articles the past few weeks and look at a few young pitchers who may play key roles on their teams this year. Because I want to use PITCHf/x data to help describe their stuff, I am going to look only at pitchers who had at least some time in the majors last year.

I also want to mention some comparable pitchers to give you a better idea of what they throw. These comparisons come from my pitcher similarity scores, which measure how close two pitchers' pitches are. If two pitchers throw the same type of pitches with the same frequency, velocity and movement, they grade out near 100 (exactly the same). If a pitcher has few close comparisons, he will be graded as unique.

Aaron Laffey

Coming into the 2008 season, the Indians certainly figured that lefty Aaron Laffey would spend most of his time at Triple-A, but due to injuries and the C.C. Sabathia trade, Laffey ended up making 16 starts as a 23-year-old in the big leagues. Despite this and his success in the minors at a young age, Laffey hasn't made much noise as a prospect. The main reason is that Laffey doesn't strike out many hitters. While he also keeps his walk totals down, you aren't going to show up on prospect lists if you don't strike out more hitters.

Laffey has a reputation as a sinkerballer, but he actually throws more four-seamers than two-seamers. However, Laffey's four-seamer has more downward movement than a league average sinker and his sinker is Brandon Webb-esque with its sink. Laffey also throws a nice slider that has exceptional horizontal and vertical movement and a change-up to right-handed batters that is somewhat a work in progress. For a 23-year-old, Laffey also seems to know how to pitch, throwing no change-ups to lefties and far fewer sliders to right-handed batters.

There are a ton of sinker/slider guys out there, but because Laffey throws a lot of four-seamers he is close to unique. His top comp is Chad Gaudin, with Carl Pavano and Carlos Zambrano both in the top 10.

Laffey throws slower than any of those guys, but has some time to maybe add a mph or two. I think Laffey will be a solid pitcher this year and I am very high on his future. The thing to watch will be his change-up. Because he is a lefty, his change-up will be more important than his slider, since he will face many more right-handed batters. He is getting only about a 5 mph differential between his sinker and his change-up, and his change-up has more rise to it than his sinker does. Laffey is very young, and few young pitchers have mastered the change-up, but all the other tools are there. If he can get his change-up to just a league average pitch, he could be a star.

Jeff Niemann

The young Tampa Bay Rays are in somewhat of a roster crunch. Both Jeff Niemann and Jason Hammel (see below) are out of options. The Rays' top four starters (Scott Kazmir, James Shields, Matt Garza, Andy Sonnanstine) are set and they don't need a fifth starter often in the early going. When they do, they have this guy by the name of David Price who you might have heard of. Neither Niemann nor Hammel is in Price's league, but then again who is? This will either mean a shift to an already-full bullpen or a trade for one, or both, of these guys.

Niemann is going to be 26 this year, so he isn't super young, but he has very limited experience in the big leagues. What he does have is a pretty good minor league record and some nasty stuff that has had him on several top 100 lists.

Niemann has a plus fastball that he throws a tick over 93 mph and is somewhat straight. What sets Niemann apart, however, is his excellent array of off-speed pitches, all of which have the potential to be plus pitches. He throws an absolute hammer of a curve, nearly 20 mph slower than his fastball with an outstanding 10 inches of vertical drop. His slider has some of the best downward movement as well, which is especially unusual in a pitcher who throws over the top. His change-up is more than 10 mph slower than his fastball, also with good vertical movement.

Niemann isn't nearly as unusual a pitcher as Laffey, but his top comps show what kind of talent he has. Joakim Soria (1), Clayton Kershaw (3), Matt Cain (4), Joba Chamberlain (8) and Tim Lincecum (9) make up one of the most talented comps of any young pitcher. Niemann's ceiling is that of a front line starter, but because of his somewhat advanced age, I think it would be safer to think of him as a very solid middle-of-the-rotation guy. There has been some talk of moving him to the bullpen, which I think would be a real waste of his four-pitch talent.

Jason Hammel

Jason Hammel's situation is almost identical to Niemann's and the similarities don't stop there. Hammel, too, will be 26 this year and is out of options, but he has more experience than Niemann. His stuff is kind of Niemann Lite, and he throws the same four pitches Niemann does. His fastball also averages 93 mph with a little more movement, but all his off-speed pitches are a little worse. His curve has about 8.5 inches of vertical drop, his slider has more than three inches of slide and good downward movement, and his change-up has an eight mph differential from his fastball. All these pitches are slightly better than league average but slightly worse than Niemann.

Hammel doesn't have the stuff Niemann does, but it's pretty good. His control also isn't great, but sometimes bouncing around from starting to relieving can do that. Given a full year in the rotation, I think Hammel could pitch well. His ceiling isn't that of Niemann or Laffey, but he could provide a team with some quality innings with a chance of being a middle-of-the-rotation guy. Hammel's comps are mostly guys just like that: Sean Gallagher (1), Kyle Lohse (3), Brett Tomko (5), Jorge De La Rosa (8). If the Rays try to sneak either of these guys through waivers, they will be claimed, so don't be surprised to see one of them changing uniforms either before the season starts or within the first month.

Dana Eveland

Dana Eveland has bounced around from the Brewers to Diamondbacks and finally to the A's, where he was given a spot in the rotation last year. He responded with a breakout year with an ERA of 4.34 and an FIP of 4.15. Even though Eveland first was called up in 2005, he still will only be 25 this year. Eveland is a somewhat hefty lefty who I saw pitch a couple of times in the minors. Even against some advanced hitters Eveland looked impressive.

Eveland throws both a two- and four-seamed fastball around 91 and 92 mph respectively. His two-seam doesn't have a lot of sink, but it does have 10 inches of horizontal movement away from a right-handed batter. Eveland's best off-speed pitch is his slider, which has more than five inches of horizontal movement away from a left-handed batter, making it an ideal strikeout pitch.

His curve is also a good pitch for him. It is rather slurvy with just about as much horizontal movement as vertical movement and is only 12 mph slower than his fastball. His change-up still has some room for improvement, with less than eight mph difference from his fastball and very similar vertical movement. Eveland is going to be effective against left-handed batters, but he is going to have to improve his change-up or tighten up his curve to be more effective against right-handed batters.

Despite pretty good stuff, Eveland's top comps aren't very impressive. It is mostly guys like Paul Maholm, Joel Pineiro and Randy Wolf. I think Eveland probably will be more successful than that group of pitchers but probably doesn't have the stuff, especially against right-handed batters, to be an elite pitcher. Still, if the A's are going to make a run at the division in 2009, they are going to need very good production from Eveland.

Wrap-up

These four pitchers are flying below the radar to start the 2009 season, but each might play a key role on a postseason team. All four have solid minor league records and all have the stuff to be in a starting rotation. It certainly looks like Laffey and Eveland will have that opportunity, and if Niemann and Hammel got it, I think they would do well. If I were a rebuilding team like the Pirates, I certainly would be monitoring the Rays closely.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-02-24T05:04:15+00:00 The injury zone http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-injury-zone/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-injury-zone/#When:05:03:15

Tom Glavine was one of the many starting pitchers felled by an arm injury last year (Icon/SMI)

By my count, sifting through MLB's transaction pages, 423 pitchers threw at least one pitch in the big leagues and then landed on the disabled list. This doesn't even count pitchers who began the year on the disabled list like Carl Pavano or pitchers who missed the entire year like Chris Capuano.

Identifying circumstances in which pitchers are in danger of injury is something Sabermetricians have been looking for for quite some time. In 2002, a giant leap forward was taken when Keith Woolner showed that pitchers with excessive pitch counts had lowered performance and an increased chance of injury. Woolner's new tool, Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), had a profound impact on the game, especially for young pitchers.

It has gone so far that a strong opposition group has emerged denouncing pitch counts. The basic argument goes that pitch counts need to be individualized and the number of pitches that you would let C.C. Sabathia throw is more than you would let a youngster like Jair Jurrjens. This makes a lot of sense, but when all you have are raw pitch totals, tailoring a plan to a specific pitcher can be hard. If an average MLB pitcher can safely throw 100 pitches in a game (just picking a number here), then how many more do you trust Sabathia with? How many fewer do you give Jurrjens before coming to pull him?

Enter the PITCHf/x data. With these data we have a huge number of variables with which to examine a pitch. With a nearly complete data base of every pitch thrown in 2008, this material is a pure gold mine and an excellent place to expand our knowledge of when a pitcher might get injured. The key to this study is that these data will allow us to compare a pitcher when we know he is healthy to the last few pitches he throws before going on the DL. This individualized comparison will help us put a pitcher like Sabathia and one like Jurrjens on equal footing.

Preparing the data

The first step is to isolate the injured pitchers we are going to use in our sample. First, this study will look only at starting pitchers—it is clear that starters and relievers should be separated and it is far easier to study starters. Most of them are on a regular five-day routine. Second, this study will examine only starters who went on the disabled list due to an arm injury. Non-pitching injuries like Yovani Gallardo messing up his knee need to be thrown out along with injuries to groins or backs. Even if pitching was the cause of such issues, those injuries may manifest themselves differently than arm injuries.

Next, we need to identify which PITCHf/x variables we are going to use to try to correlate with the arm injuries. The variables I chose were speed, horizontal movement, vertical movement, horizontal release point and vertical release point. In previous articles I combined the horizontal and vertical release points into a release slot, but here I want to keep these variables separate. The reason for this is PITCHf/x doesn't know where a pitcher is standing on the rubber. If a pitcher moves left or right, it is going to adjust the horizontal release point. If a pitcher is lowering his arm angle because his arm is hurting it will adjust both the horizontal and vertical release point so this should allow us to somewhat shield the data from this effect.

In addition, we don't want to use the raw PITCHf/x numbers. We want to compare these numbers to the known healthy numbers for a pitcher. To do this, baseline values for each of our variables will need to be calculated by averaging all the pitches for a pitcher before the start he had to leave due to injury. We then will compare the last 10 pitches that a pitcher threw before going on the DL to his mean values.

To normalize this process, we will be comparing these values in terms of standard deviation. This is a rather complicated idea so let me give you an example. If Joe Pitcher's average fastball is 90 mph with a standard deviation of 1.5 mph and he throws a fastball at 87 mph, that fastball is -2 standard deviations away from his average. Pitches are always compared to the same type pitch for the average (fastballs to fastballs, sliders to sliders, etc.). This pitch, plus nine others, will be averaged for each of the variables we are interested in. This way we can properly compare a fastball thrown by Jamie Moyer and one thrown by Ubaldo Jimenez.

You may be wondering why I picked the last 10 pitches thrown by a pitcher. I would like a small sample because it is likely that the pitcher is feeling the effects of the injury only close to the time he is pulled. But I would also like a large sample because any time during a game a pitcher might throw two or three poor pitches in a row. After playing around awhile, 10 appeared to be the sweet spot.

A similar procedure is done with healthy pitchers to develop a background sample. This sample is kind of like a double blind sample in clinical trials and is important because at the end of a regular start most starters are starting to tire. We don't want to confuse this normal tiring with injury, so this sample is created to help remove this bias. I created this sample by comparing the last 10 pitches for all starts after which the starter made another start five days later to that pitcher's baseline. This should remove cases where a starter skipped a start or was pushed back due to a minor injury that didn't require a trip to the DL.

Now we are ready to start making some correlations between our variables and the injured pitcher sample compared to the healthy pitcher sample. The problem is that none of the variables all by themselves produce even a weak correlation (greater than 0.3 correlated). This is not too surprising, because if one of these variables was even weakly correlated it is likely that this would have been discovered previously and teams would know what to be wary of. Also, when you have something as complicated as throwing a baseball where everything has to be in tune for good results, a wide breadth of variables is often needed to properly study the sample. To go further, we are going to have to pull out a bigger hammer.

The hammer of choice here is going to be a neural network. Neural networks are used extensively in situations like this where you have many variables that are weakly correlated to something you are interested in. The network sets up a hidden layer and, after training, will produce one variable that is a combination of all the starting variables. This new variable will have a much stronger correlation to the thing you are interested in. So I fed my sample of PITCHf/x variables for injured pitchers and healthy pitchers to a pre-built neural network. The results were rather amazing.

Results

Here is the output from the neural network. Both the healthy and injured pitcher samples have been normalized so the total area is one. The idea is the network will play around with different combinations of the starting variables until it creates a variable in which most of the signal (the injured pitchers sample) is around one and most of the background (the healthy pitchers sample) is around zero.

While this separation between the two samples looks like a lot, this is actually one of the poorest separations I have seen. Quite often, the background will be just a spike at zero and the signal will be just a spike at one, so the network did struggle with this data. Then the you can place a cut on this variable wherever you want and you will have a new sample that will contain a larger percentage of the signal. For instance, if I remove all the data below 0.5, the data that remain will contain about three times as many injured pitchers as healthy pitchers in the normal sample and about half as likely in the standard sample . This seems like a reasonable spot to me so I will call the region beyond 0.5 the injury zone. If a pitcher enters this zone there is about a one in three chance for him to end up on the DL instead of making his next scheduled start.

I won't report the messy combination of variables that is shown here, but I will say that the most important variable is speed followed by vertical movement, horizontal movement, vertical release point and then horizontal release point. Previously, we learned that even after throwing a lot of pitches, pitchers don't lose a lot of speed on their fastballs, so it isn't too surprising that if a pitcher has lost a good deal of speed on any pitch, something might be wrong.

Vertical movement was the second most important and, if you combine horizontal movement, total movement is actually more important than speed. Movement here is created entirely by spin and drag, so if a pitcher isn't quite right it is very hard to get the proper spin on the ball. Vertical movement is likely more important than horizontal because most of the spin applied is backspin (fastball) or front spin (curveball) which makes the move up or down. Large horizontal movement is most often found in sliders, but not all pitchers throw a slider and even those who do don't always produce a large slide with it.

Release point was the least sensitive, but there is a good chance that this is a limitation of the data. Not only will a pitcher moving left and right on the rubber change the release point, but PITCHf/x tracks the ball only while it is in flight, so it reports only a horizontal and vertical number. No information about the third dimension (closer or farther from home plate) is available, so our view of the actual release is rather incomplete. If we had information on where the pitcher was standing and information on the extra dimension, it is likely that release point would be much more sensitive.

Pros and cons to this method

This method takes recorded PITCHf/x variables and shows a distinct difference between pitchers who were injured and pitchers who were healthy. The data compare a pitcher to himself, which is preferable to one strict variable like pitch counts. With this information, we should be able to track pitchers and identify when they are approaching the injury zone, but this isn't a silver bullet just yet.

First, while I have tried my hardest to remove biases in these samples, some certainly remain. One of the biggest issues is the severity of the injury to the pitcher. In this study, a tired arm is treated exactly the same way as a pitcher blowing out his elbow. If it means a trip to the DL, it qualifies. You could image a system in which these injuries were weighted by severity, but getting that information can be extremely difficult. For instance, when the Mets put Billy Wagner on the DL, the listed reason was forearm stiffness, but later it was discovered he needed reconstructive surgery on his elbow. So simply sifting through the transaction list isn't enough. For high profile pitchers like Wagner, eventually getting (mostly) accurate information isn't difficult. For lesser-known players, getting accurate information can be daunting.

Also, tracking something like this in real time is easier said than done. The PITCHf/x data are updated on the Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) website only after an at-bat, and these updates aren't always super quick. A pitcher easily could have thrown 10 more pitches than you have access to, so even if you can grab and process the updated data instantaneously, there is going to be some lag.

In addition, the data have some quirks. Not only do correction factors need to reflct park to park differences, but sometimes a malfunction records bad data. One pitch that is tracked completely wrong could make things appear much worse than they are. Also, quickly identifying the type of pitch for proper comparison isn't easy. MLBAM's algorithm (it uses a neural network for this as well) didn't produce very appealing results in 2008. This may be improved in 2009, but it may still have too many issues. While my classification algorithm is considerably more accurate, it also takes several seconds a pitch. Right now it is way too slow to be run in real time.

Even if you could properly track this in real time, there is no guarantee that you would catch these injuries in time. First, about 25 percent of the injured pitchers never got to the injury zone. It is likely these injuries occurred very suddenly—a pitcher feeling a pop in his elbow, for example. It appears these are somewhat rare events, but they do happen and this method won't provide complete protection.

You can ratchet down your cut, but the lower you go the less actual risk there is to the pitcher. This would lead to pitchers who weren't really in any danger being removed from the game. Even the pitchers who enter, or come near, the injury zone and are properly removed might still be injured. Possibly. these data separate as well as they do because the pitcher is already suffering from the effects of the injury whether he feels it or not. A manager might properly pull the pitcher only to find out he still is going to need Tommy John surgery.

That said, I feel this is an important step in understanding pitcher injuries. It is clear, if you dig deep enough in the data, that pitchers who land on the DL are pitching differently from healthy pitchers. Future studies can look at things like how quickly a pitcher moves toward the injury zone and whether there is a sign of danger earlier than the very end. The separation between these samples also might be improved with better data or a more advanced neural network or other methods.

Lastly, the real test will be to look at 2009 data and determine how well this correlation holds. If the injury zone appears there. then we can have very good confidence in the method.

Sabathia the horse

I want to close by looking at the pitcher who was ridden as hard as any in the game last year, C.C. Sabathia.

Sabathia gobbled up innings late in the year as the Brewers desperately attempted to make the playoffs. There was much talk about the Brewers' right to use a rented player this way, and about then-manager Ned Yost in particular.

Near the end of the season, I looked at these effects and found that Sabathia didn't seem to be having any issues. With this new metric, we can ask how close Sabathia came to the injury zone. The answer: not very. His highest value was a mere 0.13, ironically on the last day of the season against the Cubs, clinching the playoffs for the Brewers. This is very good news for Yankees fans who shouldn't worry that the Brewers wore Sabathia out. And this probably means Sabathia will be able to handle a large load this season as well.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-02-17T05:03:15+00:00 Pitch sequencing http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitch-sequencing/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitch-sequencing/#When:05:02:15

Being a craft vet, Andy Pettitte can throw just about any pitch. So what should he throw after a slider? (Icon/SMI)

Pitching has been called an art and that really is true. One thing that continually amazes me looking through PITCHf/x data is how many pitchers with amazing stuff have rather mediocre results and how many pitchers with relatively ordinary stuff have very good results.

Throwing 96 mph with a devastating curveball is great, but if you can't throw strikes or if you are tipping your pitches, major league hitters will eventually notice and you will be sunk. We are starting to get a handle on what attributes correlate to success (e.g., speed differential between a fastball and change-up and a slider that moves away from the hitter) but what about more artistic quantities? How much better will a pitcher do if he sets up the hitter properly by throwing a fastball in then a slider low and away? With good pitch recognition and the sheer volume of PITCHf/x data, we can begin to look at some of these questions.

Last week, we looked at how much better a curveball does when it is preceded by a high fastball. We found that changing the hitter's eye level has a big impact. This result backed up conventional pitching wisdom, but major league pitchers don't throw a lot of curveballs and precede their curveballs with high fastballs even less. So while this result was interesting, it isn't very powerful. But now that we can look at pitch sequences, we can generalize the procedure and calculate the benefit, or harm, from a certain pitch sequence.

Method

We are going to use the general template from last week, this time asking for all sliders that follow a change-up and every such combination. Again, we will use a slightly modified measure of runs100 that normalizes data depending on the count. This is important because most off-speed pitches are thrown later in the count, many times when the pitcher has a big advantage.

What we will be calculating is the normalized runs100 for a certain pitch compared to that pitch when it is preceded by a particular pitch. So last week we found that curveballs preceded by high fastballs decreased a pitcher's runs100 by 0.62 (remember lower is better for runs100 just like ERA). We are going to look at every combination for the following pitches; fastball (fb), sinker (si), curveball (cv), slider (sl), change-up (ch), splitter (sp), and cutter (cu). We will be ignoring knuckleballs because most knuckleballers only throw a fastball and a knuckleball. Because PITCHf/x tracked almost 700,000 pitches almost all of these combinations had very large statistics but some of the combinations that included the splitter do suffer from low statistics. When that is the case, a star will be placed by the combination.

What follows is a list of the seven pitches and how each of the seven pitches fare when preceded by the pitch we are looking at.

Fastball

fb -0.24
si -0.46
cv -0.41
sl -0.22
ch -0.05
sp -1.10
cu -0.02

Everything works off the fastball. While the fastball grades out as the worst pitch by runs100 standards, any pitch that you throw after you throw a fastball will be enhanced. You can't say that for any other pitch. This shows the importance for a pitcher to establish his fastball. If he can do that, he has the hitters right where he wants them.

While the high fastball-then-curveball combination is excellent, any fastball followed by a curveball is nice. Curveballs gain a bit more oomph than sliders and that makes sense. Fastballs tend to be more over the top and curveballs tend to fall off, mimicking the fastball for the beginning part of the flight. The slider slides off, which doesn't match the fastball quite as well.

I was very surprised to see how relatively poorly change-ups did after fastballs. especially considering how much splitters were after the fastball. Splitters and change-ups have somewhat similar movement and both seem to have the same approach; get the hitter thinking fastball and throw him something the looks like the fastball but is about 10 mph slower. In both cases, pitchers are throwing most of their change-ups and splitters after a fastball, so I don't have a good explanation for what is going on here.

A fastball followed by another fastball isn't a bad combination either, but a fastball followed by a sinker is even better. Pitchers like Fausto Carmona who throw both a fastball and a sinker seem to have a real advantage here. They can come back with a pitch that is very similar to the one they just threw but slightly different. The hitter might make contact but he isn't likely to square the ball up because of the differences in the pitches.

Cutters, however, don't seem to receive much help. Cutters tend to look like fastballs but move away from a similarly handed batter. This might be causing a hitter who was jammed by the fastball to now get the barrel of the bat on the ball on the next pitch more often.

Sinker

fb -0.67
si -0.25
cv 0.14
sl -0.47
ch 0.30
sp 1.47 *
cu -0.40

Sinkers, like fastballs, generally improve pitches that follow. As with fastballs, a sinker followed by another sinker is good, but a sinker followed by a fastball is even better. The best off-speed pitch to follow a sinker with is a slider. This shouldn't be any surprise when you think about all the sinker/slider pitchers out there. These two pitches work very much the same way the fastball/curveball combination works, only now it is the horizontal axis that is being lined up.

Curveballs are much more rare than sliders for sinkerballs, and when they are thrown the results aren't great. Sinkers naturally have less rise than a fastball, so the differential between the curveball and the sinker is much less than that between a fastball and a curveball. Change-ups, too, lose some potency and this is likely for the same reason. The hitter has just seen something moving downward, so when the change-up drops it doesn't have the same effectiveness.

Lastly, cutters and sinkers have a good deal of synergy. Cutters, like sliders, tend to be on the same horizontal plane as the sinker but the cutter is also thrown at a closer speed to the sinker. Pitchers like Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter have gotten a lot of mileage from this combination.

Curveball

fb 0.10
si 0.31
cv -0.37
sl 0.43
ch -0.19
sp -0.02
cu 0.13

Curveballs, like other off-speed pitches, tend to be a mixed bag for the next pitch. Going back to the hard stuff doesn't produce great results, especially with a sinker but most of the soft stuff isn't too good either. This makes some sense to me as curveballs tend to be thrown later in the count. If the curveball doesn't get rid of the hitter the pitcher probably has used most of his pitches already. The main exception appears to be curveball/curveball, which appears surprisingly good. Hitters must not be expecting a second curveball. Maybe they got in a hole early and then when they laid off the first curveball they were expecting the pitcher to come back with something hard.

Slider

fb 0.20
si -0.21
cv 1.17
sl -0.23
ch -0.09
sp 0.82
cu -0.13

Sliders are much like curveballs with one notable exception. Both sinkers and cutters benefit from the pitcher having just thrown a slider. Cutters are mostly harder sliders that don't move quite as much and we have already looked at the good fortune that sliders get from sinkers. Sliders also tend to do well back to back though not quite as good as back to back curveballs.

Change-up

fb 0.02
si 0.90
cv 0.07
sl 0.02
ch -0.48
sp -1.72 *
cu 0.43

Not only do change-ups do worse after a fastball than I would expect, but they also don't appear to give pitchers a good choice as to where to go next. The trend does continue, however, as a change-up/change-up is rather productive. Because splitters and change-ups tend to serve the same purpose, few pitchers throw both. Manny Parra is an exception but even he doesn't use his change-up to left-handed batters, so this sample is by far the smallest of the study.

Splitter

fb -0.64
si 0.41 *
cv -.029
sl 0.21
ch 0.59 *
sp 0.45
cu 1.81 *

Splitters can be absolutely devastating pitches despite the relatively large wear they can do to an arm. Splitters tend to move just like fastballs horizontally but drop severely when they approach home plate. Many pitchers use their splitters exclusively in pitcher counts, but when that doesn't get the hitter out, the choices as what to throw next are severely limited. Splitters are the worst pitch as far as setting up the next pitch, though coming back with a fastball definitely appears to be the best bet. Splitter/splitter is the first back-to-back combination that produces negative results, though I can't say why splitters behave like this when other pitches don't.

Cutter

fb 0.25
si -0.01
cv 0.54
sl 0.07
ch -1.33
sp -1.28 *
cu -0.44

Cut fastballs like the one made famous by Mariano Rivera move away from a similarly handed batter, so many pitchers will use this pitch to bust an opposite handed batter inside. The classic followup to busting a hitter inside is soft stuff that moves away and in this case that generally means change-ups. Curves and sliders will move in to a similarly handed batter but the change-up will move away and can be started on the outside corner only to move off the plate. Of course, another alternative is back inside with the hard stuff. Throwing another cutter also is a good choice.

Conclusions

As you can see, certain pitch combinations are far superior to others and a pitcher who just throws his pitches at random is not going to be very successful. Setting things up with a fastball is the way to go for a pitcher. Pitching backwards has become somewhat in vogue recently, but very few of the off-speed-then-fastball combinations are very good. Once you have shown your best off-speed pitch, it is hard to come up with a good plan for later in the count.

Throwing the same pitch consecutively was far better than I would have thought. These combinations tend not to be used very often and probably should be called more often.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-02-10T05:02:15+00:00 Pitch sequence: High fastball then curveball http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitch-sequence-high-fastball-then-curveball/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitch-sequence-high-fastball-then-curveball/#When:05:03:15

Ted Lilly's over-the-top delivery. (Icon/SMI)

At the age of 32, Ted Lilly doesn't have the same giddy-up on his fastball as he used to. In fact, his average fastball was just about 88 mph last year, which ranked near the bottom of the league for starters. Despite this, Lilly continued to throw a lot of high fastballs and he paid the price, giving up 32 home runs, nearly a home run and a half per game. This should be no surprise throwing soft fastballs up in the zone causes many souvenirs for fans.

The question, then, is why Lilly would continue to work upstairs. The answer lies in Lilly's curveball, which is one of the best in the game. Lilly throws a lollipop curve that, at 70 mph, doesn't look like it ever is going to get to the plate. Combine that speed differential with almost 10 inches of vertical drop and you have a pitch that needs to be thrown relatively high in the air or it is going to bounce well before it reaches home plate. The problem is Lilly's fastball doesn't require nearly as much height, so the result is his curveball looks much different than his fastball to a hitter. Here is a side view of the average of all Lilly's fastballs and curveballs put on the same plot.

The back tip of home plate is at a horizontal distance of 55 feet, so 0 feet is near the rubber but not quite on it (because pitchers release the ball a few feet in front of the rubber). The two tick marks on the fastball and the curveball represent how far the ball has traveled in .075 seconds, which is when Bob Adair found is the time the batter has to decide whether to begin to swing. The line drawn between the curveball and the fastball represents the maximum distance between the two pitches.

As you can see, Lilly's average curveball looks nothing like his average fastball, and major league hitters definitely can distinguish the two. When the fastball and curveball line up closely during the first half of the flight it is called pitching on the same plane. When they differ, a "hump" is produced, like what you see here from Lilly. Because curveballs rely so much on deception, this is a big problem for Lilly.

Lilly needs good production from his bread-and-butter pitch, so he needs a way to make these two pitches look more alike. He can't lower his curveball's height because that would produce a ball that bounced well before it got to home plate. The solution is to throw his fastball higher. Lilly knows he can't work upstairs all the time, but he chooses to throw high heat some of the time to hide his more effective curve. In particular, Lilly will follow up a high fastball with a curveball so that the height is fresh in a hitter's mind.

Of course, hitters don't have the luxury of seeing the side view; they have to view the pitch mostly head-on. Here is a simple animation to give you an idea of what a hitter is looking at. Actually, this is from the catcher's perspective, so the coordinate system is identical to what we have been using and shifting to the hitter's head doesn't change the perspective much. Let's start by looking at Lilly's average fastball and curveball.

This is slowed down by a factor of 10, so you can really see what is going on. Notice how the fastball begins to lose altitude right from the start, but the curveball must first move up before it can fall. Once it starts to fall, it drops very rapidly and ends up below the fastball. This is the hump I was referring to in the side view. Look how dissimilar these two pitches appear. Now here is a random example of a high fastball followed by a curveball from Lilly.

The curveball still needs to rise before it can fall and the fastball still is falling from the beginning, but the higher launch angle means these two pitches appear similar for a much longer time. The fastball now ends up much higher than before, but now, Lilly hopes, the hitter will be confused by the curveball and swing over the top.

This logic makes perfect sense. Lilly is choosing to make his fastball a little less effective to try to make his curveball more effective. John Walsh has already studied the effects of throwing high fastballs in the link above, showing that, overall, Lilly isn't going to be punished too much by throwing a lot of high fastballs. The real question is how much Lilly is gaining with his curveball when it is preceded by a high fastball.

Method and results

The first thing we need to do is to define exactly what we mean by a high fastball. I am going to define it for this study as any fastball that crosses the front of home plate 33 inches off the ground or higher. I picked this number because at that height an average fastball and an average curveball would produce no hump. I don't care about the horizontal location of the ball; that doesn't impact the hump of a curveball that might follow.

Next, we need to determine a metric for success. We will choose a slightly modified version of runs100. Runs100 is a metric developed by John Walsh to measure how many runs a pitcher saved with a given type of pitch in 100 pitches. Negative numbers here are good for the pitcher so if I said that Barry Zito's runs100 for his curveball was -2.0 that means that Zito saved two runs over 100 curveballs.

The only modification we need to make is to normalize this quantity by the count. Curveballs are much more successful when the hitter has two strikes on him and trying to protect the plate. Since we are interested in curveballs following high fastballs, this situation tends to occur later in the count. Lastly, we count only curveballs after high fastballs to the same batter. So if a pitcher strikes out a hitter with a high fastball and then starts the next hitter with a curveball, that doesn't count.

Major league pitchers throw a curveball about eight percent of the time and about 15 percent of the time a curveball is preceded by a high fastball. When a pitcher does this, he decreases (remember lower is better) his runs100 by .62 which is a very large difference. It isn't a perfect analogy. but consider the difference between a pitcher with a 4.00 and a 4.62 ERA.

A few case studies

Getting back to Lilly, he threw a high fastball before a curveball 28 percent of the time—almost double league average. Interestingly, his gains were insignificant compared to his curveballs not preceded by a fastball. At first I thought this was because Lilly's hump was so pronounced that a marginally high fastball wasn't enough and he would require even higher fastballs to show results. So I ramped up my high fastball definition to 40 inches, which is at the very top of the strike zone for most hitters. Lilly still throws a really high fastball before a curve 10 percent of the time but again his results were flat. It is possible that this is just a blip and if I looked at other years Lilly would show improvement with curveballs following high fastballs. Or, it is possible that Lilly is throwing enough high fastballs that that height is always in hitters' minds, so all his curveballs are befitting.

Yankee prospect Phil Hughes is another interesting pitcher to track this with because of his large hump on his curveball. In fact, Hughes' hump is the largest in the league by more than two inches. You would expect that Hughes would be throwing some high fastballs to help with the deception, but he didn't once throw a high fastball followed by a curveball all year. In Hughes' defense, his year was less than 40 innings but still you would have expected at least some high fastball/curveball sequences.

Hughes mowed down minor league hitters at every level, but he is still a very young pitcher. He also is almost exclusively a two-pitch pitcher (fastball/curveball) so he needs both pitches working to be successful. His curveball last year was over two runs100 worse than a league average curveball. surprising considering how much scouts love the pitch and how much movement he gets with it.

It seems pretty clear that Hughes just doesn't have the necessary deception yet and big league hitters are recognizing his curve and either laying off the pitch or hitting it hard. It is very possible that Hughes' great movement was enough to fool minor league hitters and up until this point he never needed to properly disguise the pitch. With the Yankees' rotation looking full after their offseason spending spree, it seems likely Hughes will start the year in Triple-A. He is likely to do well there as he has already shown he can get hitters out at that level, but without some tweaks, I would be very surprised if he had a lot of success at the major league level. Obviously, he is a very young pitcher and has a lot of time to make the proper changes, but it can be hard to work on something at a level where you don't really need to use it to be successful.

A note to young pitchers

While this study was done with major league players, it is likely that the sequence of high fastball then curveball is a successful one at lower levels as well. Because hitters are less sophisticated the lower you go, the effect is probably smaller but still present. Sadly, PITCHf/x hasn't made its way to minor league or college stadiums yet, so pitchers might not be aware of exactly how big a hump their curveball creates. One way of finding out is through video, but make sure you have a decent enough sample before rushing to a judgment. You can also have a coach or teammate watch you while you pitch, preferably from the side. to look for the hump. Be a bit careful of this, too, because the eye can play tricks on people.

Fortunately, there is another way to guesstimate if your curveball's hump is noticeable. First, is your arm angle. Pitchers who throw over the top tend to have a lot of backspin on their fastballs, a lot of front spin on their curveballs and little side spin on either. This produces the classic 12 to 6 curve and can lead to a hump. Second, is the speed of your pitches. If your curveball is significantly slower than your fastball, it will be in the air for a lot longer and will likely need to be thrown at a different height. Third, is the movement of the pitches. If your fastball has a lot of "rise" to it and your curveball has a lot of downward movement, there likely is a hump between the two. If two of these three things describe you, you likely have a somewhat significant hump between your fastball and curveball.

If this is the case, consider mixing in some high fastball/curveball sequences. It's important to remember that the whole point of this is to get the hitter seeing at a different level. If the hitter you are facing hacks at anything, don't bother with the fastball; just throw him the curve and he will likely chase. Use this only against polished hitters who see the ball well.

Also, if you intended to throw a high fastball but it ended up lower than you wanted you aren't necessarily set up for the curveball. The hitter has no idea what you were actually planning, so if the ball ended up in a different location you have to use the result of the pitch, not the intention, to figure out what to throw next.

Conversely, if you meant to throw a fastball at the knees but it ended up letter high, now might be an excellent time for a curveball. This is especially the case if the hitter swung and missed or foul-tipped it. He is probably cursing to himself that he missed that last pitch and trying to make sure he doesn't miss it again. Now when you throw the curve he will see high fastball and likely swing over it.

Lastly, don't overdo it. Major league pitchers use this sequence about 15 percent of the time and 25-35 percent if their hump is larger. While this is probably an effective sequence for deceiving the hitter, if you use it too regularly you will lose all the deception you worked so hard to achieve.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-02-03T05:03:15+00:00 First pitch fastballs, and who likes ‘em http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/first-pitch-fastball/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/first-pitch-fastball/#When:05:04:15

Eric Byrnes has a reputation of being a first pitch fastball hitter, but how does he stack up with the rest of the league? (Icon/SMI)

You often hear a baseball commentator say a hitter is a first pitch fastball hitter. This usually means that he goes up to the plate looking for a fastball on the first pitch and he is likely to swing at it if he gets it. Eric Byrnes is a great example of a player with this reputation. If you have watched a Diamondbacks game in the past couple of seasons, you have likely heard some version of this about Byrnes.

The problem is that such comments aren't very quantitative. How much does Byrnes swing at first pitch fastballs? How picky is he about where the pitch is located? How successful is he when he does swing? And, in addition to the raw numbers, we would like to be able to compare them to league averages so we really can say if he is a first pitch fastball hitter compared to others. Despite all the splits information for players out on the web, statistics like this aren't available because you first need to identify the fastballs. Luckily for us, with some help from PITCHf/x identifying first pitch fastballs is rather easy. From that sample we can quantify who the first pitch fastball hitters really are.

Method

For this study I looked at every hitter who had at least 100 plate appearances in which PITCHf/x was tracking pitches. I put the cutoff at 100 because I wanted a reasonable number of first pitch fastballs for each player and I wanted a large enough sample to ensure teams would have a decent scouting report on the hitter so I could look at pitcher response. This left me with 437 players in my sample.

I then used my pitch classification algorithm to identify if the first pitch was a fastball (two- or four-seamed) and I used my strike zone tool from last week to determine if the pitch was a strike by the MLB-defined strike zone. I now have enough data to calculate league averages for variables like first pitch fastball percent and how often a player swung at a first pitch fastball out of the strike zone.

While the mean is nice, these data also fit very well to a Normal (Gaussian) Distribution, so calculating the standard deviation is also very useful. I can then not only report the raw data for each player, but also how far he is from the mean. For example, if I say that a hitter has been thrown one standard deviation more first pitch fastballs, that means 84 percent of major league hitters saw fewer first pitch fastballs than he did. If you aren't familiar with how these standard deviations work here is a good description.

Results

We can now go metric by metric and look at the league average and the 10 highest and lowest players for that metric. Starting with percentage of first pitch fastballs a batter sees, which has a mean of 67.2 percent and a standard deviation of 6.8 percent, on any count the chance of a hitter getting a fastball is about 60 percent, so the first pitch is slightly a fastball count.

First	Last	FB%	SD
Brett	Gardner	87.7	3.0
Luis	Castillo	86.3	2.8
Cliff	Pennington	84.8	2.6
Reggie	Willits	84.6	2.6
Ramon	Santiago	83.5	2.4
Alex	Cora	83.3	2.4
Brad	Ausmus	83.1	2.3
Omar	Vizquel	82.1	2.2
Adam	Everett	82.1	2.2
Alexi	Casilla	81.6	2.1

First	Last	FB%	SD
Geovany	Soto	47.6	-2.9
Alexei	Ramirez	50.6	-2.4
Miguel	Olivo	51.0	-2.4
Marlon	Anderson	51.7	-2.3
Pedro	Feliz	51.8	-2.2
Pablo	Sandoval	52.5	-2.1
Ryan	Howard	52.8	-2.1
Hunter	Pence	53.9	-1.9
Nomar	Garciaparra	54.0	-1.9
Corey	Hart	54.2	-1.9

The players on the list for the highest first pitch fastball percentage are players you might expect to be there: mostly weak hitting middle infielders and catchers (a few other catchers just missed the cut) with little power. Pitchers aren't scared of giving these guys a cookie because they aren't likely to do much with it anyway, so the pitcher might as well try to get the at-bat over with as soon as possible.

On the other hand, the players with the lowest first pitch fastball percentage are a mix of some feared hitters (Dan Uggla just missed the cut) and some players with a reputation of swinging at just about anything. Players like Hunter Pence and Corey Hart rarely walk and generally go to the plate looking for something to hit. It doesn't make sense to give in to these guys, especially early in the count.

Next is percentage of first pitch fastballs thrown inside the MLB-defined strike zone. The mean here was 49.2 with a standard deviation of 5.2. That mean was much lower than I expected, since we all know how important getting strike one is. Here are the highest and lowest strike percentages.

First	Last	Strike%	SD
Guillermo	Quiroz	66.1	3.3
Dave	Roberts	64.9	3.0
Chin-lung	Hu	64.5	3.0
Brian	Barton	61.3	2.3
Nick	Hundley	60.5	2.2
Argenis	Reyes	60.3	2.1
Sean	Rodriguez	60.0	2.1
Humberto	Quintero	59.8	2.1
German	Duran	59.8	2.1
J.R.	Towles	59.8	2.1

First	Last	Strike%	SD
Javier	Valentin	31.7	-3.4
Prince	Fielder	35.4	-2.7
Dmitri	Young	35.7	-2.6
Jacque	Jones	36.7	-2.4
Vladimir	Guerrero	37.8	-2.2
Mike	Jacobs	38.0	-2.2
Victor	Martinez	38.7	-2.0
Josh	Hamilton	38.9	-2.0
John	Baker	39.1	-2.0
Matthew	Joyce	39.1	-2.0

Again, the players with the highest strike percentage are the guys you would expect. None of these are dangerous with the bat, so the pitcher is trying to get the ball over and get the at-bat done as quickly as possible. The lowest strike percentage list is loaded with some big names and power hitters. Some are known as free swingers, so why throw them a strike if you don't have to, and that starts with the first pitch of the at-bat. It is interesting to see Josh Hamilton on the list. Despite a fabulous 2008, Hamilton swung at more than his fair share of balls out of the strike zone. It didn't seem to bother him, but if that continues, look for pitchers to throw him fewer and strikes.

When you think of first pitch fastball hitters, though, you think of guys who swing the bat when they get what they are looking for. This is best represented by the player's swing percentage at first pitch fastballs regardless of whether the pitch is a strike. The league average here is 37.6 percent and the standard deviation is a whopping 11.0. That means that there is huge variation among hitters in this case.

First	Last	Swing%	SD
Alexei	Ramirez	77.7	3.6
Pablo	Sandoval	77.0	3.6
Wily Mo	Pena	70.3	3.0
Miguel	Olivo	64.2	2.4
Wilson	Betemit	64.0	2.4
Alex	Cintron	63.7	2.4
John	McDonald	63.0	2.3
Eugenio	Velez	62.5	2.3
Joey	Gathright	61.9	2.2
John	Buck	60.2	2.0

First	Last	Swing%	SD
Bobby	Abreu	9.0	-2.6
Scott	Podsednik	9.4	-2.6
Jayson	Werth	11.3	-2.4
J.J.	Hardy	14.6	-2.1
Luis	Castillo	15.5	-2.0
Joaquin	Arias	15.6	-2.0
Curtis	Granderson	16.3	-1.9
David	Eckstein	16.4	-1.9
Brad	Wilkerson	16.9	-1.9
Johnny	Damon	17.1	-1.9

Most of the players on the hack-tastic list are guys who have no business swinging at so many first pitches. Joey Gathright, for instance, is a leadoff man who should be working the count and getting on base to use his tremendous speed. Most of the other players don't have enough power to justify such free swinging. Wily Mo Pena had just a terrible year in '08, and this might be one reason. I have no idea what his first pitch fastball swing percentage was in previous years, but last year it was way too high and resulted in many easy outs or falling behind in the count.

On the flip side, the most patient hitters are mostly players you probably know. Most of these players are older and have a good eye at the plate; not swinging at the first pitch helps get them in a good hitter's count. Luis Castillo, though, is a bit of an exception. Pitchers are throwing him a tremendous amount of first pitch fastballs and he is not swinging at them. The word is out that Castillo will be taking on the opening pitch, so pitchers are throwing the fastball to get strike one on him. While Castillo is a very good two-strike hitter, getting into a hole right away was a real problem for him last year and contributed to his poor performance.

We can then break things up even further to look at how often players will swing at pitches inside or outside the MLB-defined strike zone, starting with swing percentage on first pitch fastballs inside the strike zone. The mean is 58.6 with an astronomical 17.2 standard deviation. This means that a lot of hitters will be swinging almost every time, but a lot hardly ever will be swinging.

First	Last	SwingStrike%	SD
Wily Mo	Pena	100.0	2.4
Pablo	Sandoval	100.0	2.4
Magglio	Ordonez	98.9	2.3
Alexei	Ramirez	97.6	2.3
Russell	Branyan	97.2	2.2
Coco	Crisp	96.7	2.2
Yunel	Escobar	95.9	2.2
Elijah	Dukes	95.2	2.1
Eugenio	Velez	93.2	2.0
Milton	Bradley	92.9	2.0

First	Last	SwingStrike%	SD
Bobby	Abreu	12.9	-2.7
Jayson	Werth	17.9	-2.4
Alberto	Gonzalez	17.9	-2.4
Brett	Gardner	18.0	-2.4
Scott	Podsednik	20.3	-2.2
David	Eckstein	22.2	-2.1
J.J.	Hardy	23.6	-2.0
Joaquin	Arias	23.9	-2.0
Sean	Rodriguez	25.6	-1.9
Ruben	Gotay	26.2	-1.9

Most of the players who rarely swing at these strikes were the same ones who were hardly swinging overall. This makes a lot of sense: If a player is rather choosy at the plate overall, he is not likely to be swinging at a lot of balls. On the other hand, we have a relatively fresh list of players who are swinging almost every time at a first pitch fastball over the plate. These hitters very likely are coming up thinking first pitch fastball. When they get one in the zone, they are going to take their hacks. Several of these players are big power guys as well, so if you are a pitcher you don't want to be giving them exactly what they are looking for.

What about pitches outside the strike zone? Who is swinging anyway when it is a first pitch fastball and who is laying off? The league average here is 17.6 percent with a standard deviation of 8.5 percent.

First	Last	SwingBall%	SD
Alexei	Ramirez	56.0	4.6
Alex	Cintron	47.1	3.5
Vladimir	Guerrero	45.0	3.3
Miguel	Olivo	44.7	3.2
Victor	Martinez	43.7	3.1
Pablo	Sandoval	42.9	3.0
Marlon	Anderson	42.5	3.0
Wil	Nieves	42.4	3.0
John	McDonald	41.4	2.8
Joey	Gathright	37.5	2.4

First	Last	SwingBall%	SD
Delwyn	Young	0.0	-2.1
Scott	Podsednik	0.0	-2.1
Joaquin	Arias	3.2	-1.7
Jayson	Werth	3.3	-1.7
Luis	Castillo	4.2	-1.6
Curtis	Granderson	4.8	-1.5
Johnny	Damon	5.0	-1.5
Chris	Iannetta	5.0	-1.5
Bobby	Abreu	5.3	-1.5
J.J.	Hardy	5.5	-1.4

Do not, under any circumstances, throw any of the players on the top list a first pitch fastball in the strike zone. There simply isn't any need to because they are more than happy to go outside the zone and swing at any fastball. The fact that Vladimir Guerrero and Victor Martinez show up here is not too surprising. They have had very good careers despite swinging at some poor pitches. They are the exceptions, rather than the rule, though. If you swing at poor pitches it will catch up to you at some point and may have caught up to these two as well. Again, the players who don't swing much overall don't swing much at balls.

Okay, now we know who is swinging or not swinging at a first pitch fastball, but who is getting the best results? We can look at batting average and slugging percentage for balls in play to see who is doing the most (and least) with the first pitch fastballs they see. Warning: almost all of these players have a really small sample size. League average here was a .326 batting average with a standard deviation of 0.105 and a slugging percentage of 0.518 with a standard deviation of 0.214.

First	Last	AVE	SD
Russell	Branyan	0.667	3.2
Alberto	Gonzalez	0.667	3.2
Jarrod	Saltalamacchia	0.615	2.8
Hanley	Ramirez	0.583	2.5
Emilio	Bonifacio	0.583	2.5
Sean	Rodriguez	0.571	2.3
Bobby	Abreu	0.571	2.3
David	DeJesus	0.564	2.3
Ian	Stewart	0.563	2.3
Geovany	Soto	0.556	2.2

First	Last	AVE	SD
Mark	Sweeney	0.000	-3.1
Luke	Carlin	0.000	-3.1
Ivan	Ochoa	0.000	-3.1
Miguel	Montero	0.000	-3.1
Ryan	Raburn	0.000	-3.1
Joaquin	Arias	0.000	-3.1
Scott	Podsednik	0.000	-3.1
Chin-lung	Hu	0.071	-2.4
Rickie	Weeks	0.087	-2.3
Freddie	Bynum	0.100	-2.2

First	Last	SLG	SD
Jack	Cust	1.148	2.9
Bobby	Abreu	1.143	2.9
Albert	Pujols	1.098	2.7
Marcus	Thames	1.091	2.7
David	Newhan	1.091	2.7
Hanley	Ramirez	1.083	2.6
Mark	Reynolds	1.065	2.6
Nick	Swisher	1.063	2.5
Manny	Ramirez	1.058	2.5
Joey	Votto	1.051	2.5

First	Last	SLG	SD
Mark	Sweeney	0.000	-2.4
Luke	Carlin	0.000	-2.4
Ivan	Ochoa	0.000	-2.4
Miguel	Montero	0.000	-2.4
Ryan	Raburn	0.000	-2.4
Joaquin	Arias	0.000	-2.4
Scott	Podsednik	0.000	-2.4
Chin-lung	Hu	0.143	-1.8
Rickie	Weeks	0.217	-1.4
Freddie	Bynum	0.300	-1.0

On the plus side, rookie of the year catcher Geovany Soto saw the fewest first pitch fastballs of any player in the study, but when he did get one, he knew what to do with it. Some young players like Hanley Ramirez and Jarrod Saltalamacchia showed they were strong fastball hitters and the resurgent Russell Branyan burst out with a series of home runs after being called up from Triple-A. Here is a hint to pitchers for next season: The mussel likes fastballs over the plate and he can hit them very far.

On the down side, we have a list of players who struggled mightily last year. If you aren't hitting the fastball, there is a good chance you just aren't hitting, and that certainly was true of the players on this list. I keep waiting for Rickie Weeks to bust out and live up to all that potential, but it sure looks like he has a long way to go here. Weeks is supposed to be a fastball hitter who has to slow his bat with a wiggle to stay on the breaking pitches. Maybe Weeks would be better served to scrap the wiggle altogether and just concentrate on hitting the fastball.

There are a million different things that could be done with these data; I have just scratched the surface. I get a lot of e-mails from people telling me that they like my work and wish they could do some baseball statistical research but don't have the time or math background to do so. So I am going to make all of these data on first pitch fastballs public for anyone to use to get started.

The data are in a simple .CSV file, so any spreadsheet program should be able to open it easily and the column headings are at the top. If you want to use it to do a write-up on your favorite player (for instance, Eric Byrnes) or team on your favorite blog, just please put a link back to this page somewhere in the post.

If you have questions, my e-mail is below and I'd be more than happy to help get you started.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-01-27T05:04:15+00:00 That was a strike? http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/that-was-a-strike/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/that-was-a-strike/#When:05:04:15

Angel Hernandez getting ready to work a game behind the plate. (Icon/SMI)

The strike zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the knee cap. The strike zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.

In theory it is a simple rule. In practice it is much much harder than that. There are more arguments with umpires over the strike zone than any other call by a huge margin. The sheer volume of calls the umpire has to make behind the plate means that more than likely over the course of a game a batter or a pitcher is going to see a pitch differently than the umpire. This makes calling balls and strikes the most important job of any umpire.

Because of this, in recent years automated systems have been put in place to see how umpires are doing behind the plate. In 2001, QuesTec camera system was put in place in 11 stadiums to track umpire calls. In 2008, a PITCHf/x camera system was installed in every major league park and gathered data on almost every pitch thrown (around 700,000 pitches). These data are what Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) uses for its gameday feature and is accurate to about a half an inch near home plate. The findings are put online for anyone who wants to study them.

It didn't take long for people to start using this, and other data, to start studying umpires and how good a job they really do calling balls and strikes. Here at THT John Walsh helped pioneer this research, defining an actual strike zone for left- and right-handed batters and many others have followed suit with other excellent studies. Another study by Hamermesh, et. al., looked at the effect of race of the pitcher and umpire on the percentage of strikes called and found that the umpires were indeed slightly racially biased.

This study sparked a lot of reaction and further examination, the best of which came from Phil Birnbaum at his blog. He noted that because the number of African American and Latino umpires was small, most or all of the significance came from umpires Laz Diaz and Angel Hernandez. This sparked debate at Tom Tango's site, where everyone seemed to agree that Hernandez was a bad umpire.

In fact, there's even an anti-Hernandez anti-fan page and he certainly has seen his share of controversy in his time as an umpire, much of this revolving around his high strike percentage.

So: If everyone seems to think that Hernandez is a poor umpire and we now have data on almost every pitch he has called, then we now should be able to statistically verify or refute this.

Welcome to the world of PITCHf/x

The PITCHf/x camera system takes about 25 pictures of the ball in flight between the mound and home plate. Sportvision then runs a best fit algorithm and reports the flight of the ball as a parabola in each of the three dimensions. From this path, different variables can be calculated and studied, including two variables that report the position of the ball when it cross the front of home plate. These variables, which are reported in the data as x (horizontal) and z (vertical), can then be plotted along with the umpire's call for the pitch. Here is an example of straight out of the box data for Angel Hernandez from his perspective.

Again, this view is from behind home plate, so a right-handed batter is standing around -18 inches. Only pitches that were called balls or strikes are plotted and intentional balls have been removed. The strike zone is inflated by the radius of the ball to represent any part of the ball crossing any part of the plate as being a strike. I've superimposed the MLB-defined strike zone for a player of average height in black and the best fit strike zone for Hernandez in blue. I obtained that by drawing the rectangle that had the least amount of errors (called strikes outside the box and called balls inside the box). Straight out of the box things aren't looking good for Hernandez; he appears to have a wide zone, especially outside, to both left- and right-handed batters and hardly ever calls pitches at the knees strikes. In addition, there is a smattering of strikes high out of the zone and many balls inside the upper portion of the strike zone.

Identifying the top and bottom of Ryan Howard's strike zone is easier said than done. (Icon/SMI)

You may have noticed a couple of problems with the data out of the box, however. The most glaring is that batters come in different sizes, so what is a strike to one may be a ball to another. To help with this issue, when a batter steps to home plate a person working for Sportvision—called a stringer—will identify where the top and bottom of the strike zone is and report that in the data. This would be perfect if the stringers would report the same numbers each time a batter steps to the plate, but sadly these numbers can really jump around. To try to minimize statistical error, the best method is to average each at-bat for a hitter and use that number for all his at-bats. When you do that, you can see how big of a difference this can make.

Once we have a fixed strike zone for each hitter, we can normalize all the data to a league average height, thus fixing any problems with the top and bottom of the strike zone. As far as I know, John Walsh was the first to use this, in the articles I have linked above.

Now we are getting somewhere, but there still is another problem with the data. Home plate isn't just a simple plane like a window. It is a complicated, three-dimensional object (kind of like a house that has fallen on its side). A pitch that isn't over the plate at the front can still move over the plate near the back. Here is a great example of such a pitch by Andy Sonnanstine pitching to Jorge Posada with Angel Hernandez behind the plate from the top down.

Here the plate hasn't been enlarged and the width of the curve is the actual diameter of a baseball. The y position, which is on the x axis here, has values near 55 feet because around 55 feet from home plate is where the camera system begins to report the ball (I didn't come up with this naming/numbering scheme; I am just using it). Here the ball is not over the plate at the front but narrowly scrapes home plate near the back. Angel Henandez correctly called this pitch a strike.

You might be thinking this is a small effect that can't possible matter. Well, at the front of the plate the middle of the ball is over two inches away from the edge of the plate. If you look back at the two plots of Hernandez's calls to left and right handed batters you can see that Hernandez appears to be generous on the corners of the plate by a little more than two inches. Clearly, if you want to look at umpires in detail just looking at the front of the plate isn't going to be enough.

Method for corrections

Any part of the ball that crosses any part of the plate.*

* From a Little League umpire whose husband e-mailed me discussing the accuracy of a strike zone tracker used by a local broadcast team.

Asking even a very accurate tracking system like PITCHf/x to determine if any part of a sphere crossed any part of a crazy seven- sided, three-dimensional object that changes from batter to batter is not an easy task. The best way to attack the problem is to increase the size of the strike zone by the radius of the ball. Then, the sphere becomes a curve. Now asking where that curve crossed a plane of the strike zone is an easier task, but we would like to do better than that. Ideally, we would like to present the data in a nice graphical format like the left- and right-handed plots above. We can reduce the problem back into two dimensions by reporting the point where the ball came closest to the strike zone if it didn't actual enter the zone or the point of deepest penetration for balls that did enter the strike zone. This reduces to a three-dimensional minimization/maximization problem that still would make a Calculus III student wince, but can be done on a computer in a reasonable amount of time.

Using these minimums/maximums and normalizing for the changing height of the strike zone, we come up with these two plots for Hernandez.

Again, the MLB-defined strike zone is in black and the best fit strike zone for Hernandez is in blue.

After these adjustments, things look a lot better for Hernandez. This top of the strike zone as defined by MLB and Hernandez's top are almost in complete agreement. The inside corner (negative for RHB positive for LHB) is also almost perfect. While Hernandez is still calling strikes a few inches off the outside corner, this too has been reduced. You will notice that many of these called strikes that are slightly off the plate now appear to be low in the zone.

The reason for this is pitches almost always are falling as they reach home plate. If a pitch is slightly off home plate horizontally but moving in toward home plate when it crosses the front ,the point where the ball is closest to the plate will be at the back of the plate when the ball has dropped some. If, however, the ball already started at the knees, this will cause the ball to move further away from home plate even if it is getting closer horizontally. So a ball at the knees when it crosses the front of the plate probably is already near its closest point, while a ball at the letters probably won't reach its closest point until the back of the plate.

Because the adjustment at the knees is small, the gap between the MLB strike zone and Hernandez's strike zone still remains. This isn't too surprising, since it was exactly what John Walsh found in his original study. I do want to point out here that we are relying on the Sportvision stringers to determine the top and bottom of the zone, and while we already have corrected any statistical errors they might have made, they might be systematically reporting a lower value than the rules suggest. In any case, this is about a two-inch difference for left-handed batters and about three inches for right-handed batters.

Analyzing the results

If you do this for all umpires, then you can start studying them as a group. You can ask how often they correctly identify a pitch compared to the MLB rule definition (accuracy), how often they correctly identify a pitch compared with their personal strike zone (precision), and how large these strike zones are compared to the MLB strike zones (size) for both left- and right-handed batters. When you do this, the first thing that jumps out at you is just how accurate and precise major league umpires are as a group. While they tend to give the outside corner a bit too much and are a bit stingy near the top and bottom, for the most part a pitch over the plate is called a strike and almost always a pitch that is thrown within a specific umpire's zone is called a strike. Of the 82 umpires who were behind the plate when the PITCHf/x cameras were working last year, even the least consistent was very consistent.

When you focus in on Angel Hernandez specifically, you find that he grades out as an above-average umpire in each metric of even-handedness. No matter how you slice it, looking at the 2008 PITCHf/x data, Hernandez is a quality umpire among an already amazing group. While he doesn't get every call right, he gets the vast majority correct and his strike zone hardly varies from game to game.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-01-20T05:04:15+00:00 Anatomy of a player: Trevor Hoffman http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/anatomy-of-a-player-trevor-hoffman/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/anatomy-of-a-player-trevor-hoffman/#When:04:15:15

Trevor Hoffman's over the top delivery. (Icon/SMI)

Introduction

Trevor Hoffman has been closing game for the Padres for 15 years but with the Padres rebuilding Hoffman had to look elsewhere when he decided he wanted to come back for a 16th season as a 42-year-old. Hoffman signed with the Brewers last week for a $6 million, one-year deal with another possible $1.5 in incentives. This is the second year that the Brewers went out to the free agent market looking for a closer and I think it is safe to say they didn't get the return they were looking for from the $10 million deal they gave Eric Gagne last year. While this move has met with a better reception it still represents a big gamble for the crew. Here is a look at what Hoffman has left in the tank.

Hoffman's stuff

Everyone knows about Hoffman's change-up but that isn't all there is to Trevor Hoffman. Hoffman also throws a fastball, slider, and an occasional curveball. Here is a look at his movement chart.

Hoffman's fastball is exceptionally straight. This is because of his over the top delivery, which produces almost completely pure backspin with almost no side spin when Hoffman throws his fastball. For a fastball that averages 86.5 mph you might think Hoffman is in a world of hurt with this pitch but it actually is a little more effective than you would expect. As a closer, Hoffman is coming in at the end of the game when the hitters have seen at least one other pitcher already. The previous pitchers almost certainly have had some (and maybe a lot) of horizontal movement with their fastballs. So when Hoffman comes in with no horizontal movement this can throw a hitter off. Also, because the pitch has almost no side spin it has a very large amount of back spin giving the pitch extremely large vertical "rise" again helping keep the bat off the sweet spot. The negative to this is that when a hitter does make contact he likely is going to hit the bottom part of the ball and hit the ball in the air. This hasn't been an issue playing in spacious PETCO Park but moving to Miller Park next year expect to see some more balls leaving the yard. And it is a mid-80s fastball so when a hitter does square up he is going to do some damage.

The pitch that gets very little attention is Hoffman's slider. You almost never hear of a 81.5 mph slider called a hard slider but that is exactly what the pitch is. Hoffman gets over four inches of horizontal movement with the pitch diving away from right-handed batters whom he exclusively uses the pitch against. That is very solid movement, especially considering the relatively small difference between his slider and fastball speed. While Hoffman's slider is an above average pitch you almost never hear about it because he rarely uses the pitch to put a batter away. Hoffman is much more likely to use his slider early in the count (0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 1-1) than he is when he has two strikes on the hitter. The slider is very effective for Hoffman to get to strike two to then use the change-up to put the hitter away and was a big reason he managed almost 10 K/G last year despite throwing softly.

Hoffman very occasionally threw a curveball that moved like a good slider but was thrown around 71 mph. Because this pitch moves down as much as it moves in to a left handed batter Hoffman might consider using his curve more often next year to left handed batters where his slider is much less effective.

All that is nice but Hoffman's bread and butter pitch is his change-up. Hoffman's change-up is pretty much exactly what a pitcher is looking for with a change-up. First, he throws the pitch around 12 mph less than his fastball which is exceptional. Second, the deception of the pitch is remarkable. Here is a side view of Hoffman's fastball and change-up from the side.

You can see how similar these pitches look and how little information the hitter has that the change-up is coming. Hoffman saves the change-up for when it really matters, rarely throwing it with no strikes, sometimes throwing it with one strike, and throwing more often than all his other pitches combined with two strikes. This ensures the hitter hasn't seen the change-up so when the highest leverage pitch comes he still has his largest weapon in his back pocket. Additionally, Hoffman throws his change-up to right-handed batters much more frequently than most right-handed pitchers. I have talked about this a lot recently but the reason Hoffman can get away with this is his change-up hardly moves in to a right handed batter so it doesn't end up moving in to the wheelhouse very often.

This pitch combination makes Hoffman absolute death to a right-handed batter. Even though Hoffman's fastball isn't great it does offer something hitters don't see a lot and the excellent slider and change-up more than make up for it. Last year opponents had a .466 OPS against Hoffman, and it is barely higher over the past three years. Hoffman's recent problems has been against lefties. Last year lefties had a .869 OPS against him and it is pretty clear the reasons for that. Pitchers like to have a "hard" pitch that they bust the hitter in with and then a "soft" pitch they throw that breaks down and away to put the hitter away. Hoffman has neither of these against lefties, with only a fastball that is rather straight and a change-up that doesn't break away from a left handed batter like many change-ups from right handed pitchers.

Outlook for 2009

Even if Hoffman looses another mph off his fastball that probably isn't going to bother him much. His slider still has plenty of slide and his change-up still has plenty of deception and speed differential to be effective. Hoffman is moving from the park that probably suited him the best in the majors to a park that is somewhat home run friendly and that likely will affect him more than another pitcher because of the large number of fly balls he gives up. Still, that alone isn't going to kill Hoffman who posted a FIP under four and an ERA+ just above one last year. What might be the death blow to Hoffman's career as a closer is if his issues against left handed hitters worsens. At this point it is extremely unlikely that he will develop a new pitch so he has to be extra shape with the two pitches he does throw to lefties. If the ninth inning rolls around and there are several tough lefties due up it would probably be a better bet to have Brian Shouse (if resigned) or Mitch Stetter try for the save.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Josh Kalk 2009-01-13T04:15:15+00:00