The Hardball Times -- Mike Fast

Book review: ‘Positional Hitting’

Mike Fast — 2010-10-01T07:10:15+00:00

Jaime Cevallos is probably best known as the swing coach who helped Ben Zobrist hit 27 home runs in 2009. Cevallos has a new book, Positional Hitting: the Modern Approach to Analyzing and Training Your Baseball Swing, published in 2010 by Mill City Press. It is a clear and concise 100-page description of his approach to hitting a baseball, in both mental and mechanical aspects.

In some ways Positional Hitting reminds me of hitting books that have gone before, such as The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams and The Art of Hitting .300 by Charlie Lau. It discusses the philosophical approach to hitting and is full of diagrams of what good swings and good hitters should and shouldn't look like.

The book by Cevallos falls somewhere between the two in general approach, while having a more modern feel than either. His book is similar in length to that of Williams, who discussed physics and the strike zone while supplementing with some diagrams of good swings and a few quick examples of good hitters. Lau's book was twice as long and was filled with photo after photo of hitters in various parts of their swings.

Like Lau, Cevallos carefully documents each part of the swing with a photo or diagram of a hitter. Unlike Lau, who used George Brett and other contemporary players to illustrate his points, Cevallos uses photos of himself swinging a bat supplemented with a few drawings of a generic batter. Like Williams, Cevallos tries to apply physics to getting the most out of a swing and talks in detail about how the large muscles of the body, particularly the legs, hips and body core, supply the power to the smaller muscles of the arms, wrists and hands to hit the ball.

Cevallos talks about how he learned about hitting from watching good hitters on video and observing commonalities in their approaches to hitting, which might remind one quite a lot of Lau's approach. However, Cevallos has taken a fittingly modern avenue with his observation. Rather than simply observing and distilling principles, or "laws," of good hitting as Lau did, he used the tools of freeze-frame video to measure precisely what good hitters do. He has developed a list of key hitting positions and ways to measure the angles of the body and bat in those positions to determine whether a hitter is putting himself in the best situation to produce good results at the plate.

He begins his book by talking about how he moved from failure to success as a college hitter by developing this approach. He discusses the mental aspects of achieving goals. He posits that hitting practice with video feedback is the most effective way to become a good hitter and argues that game-time failure can be turned to success by disclosing the flaws in your hitting positions, which can then be corrected in practice.

He quickly dispels 11 current myths of hitting, talks about the basic physics of the swing, and then moves on to discussing each of the hitting positions (or parts of the swing) in detail.

The Fall position is the rise and fall at the beginning of the stride, the Cushion and Secondary Cushion positions are the landing of the stride, and the Slot position is the beginning of the hip rotation. The Impact position is the position at ball-bat contact, the Delivery position is at full arm extension after contact, and the Finish position occurs at the end of the swing momentum. Finally, in describing the Guard position, he talks about the best way to be prepared in case one is hit by the pitch. All positions are described in thorough detail and documented with a specific body or bat angle that can be measured.

Each chapter has a practical application or exercise to practice. In addition, he details some specific hitting drills at the end of the book. Everything is very clearly explained, and it would be very easy to put this system into practice as long as one has a way to get video feedback of one's hitting positions.

I can recommend the book as being clear, logical, well-thought and well-documented, and easy to understand and apply. His approach certainly seems to make a lot of sense. Unfortunately I can't speak to the accuracy or efficacy of the hitting positions that he advocates.

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Pitchers nowadays are on speed

Mike Fast — 2010-09-03T22:26:15+00:00

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A digital salute to pitch grips

Mike Fast — 2010-08-30T08:56:15+00:00

I have taken to supplementing my recent writing about pitchers with pictures of their grips for different pitch types.

One thing I have come to realize is that while a picture is worth a thousand words, a catalog of pitch grip images quickly becomes unwieldy for search and comparison among pitchers. For this task, a table of quantitative descriptions of each pitchers' pitch grips would be desirable. For a single given pitcher, four or five selected images still provide the most accurate and easily understood way to communicate how he grips the baseball. But if I want to know how his four-seam fastball grip compares to the fastball grips of other pitchers in the league, a digital record is needed.

To that end, I have developed a quantitative method for describing how a pitcher grips the baseball. It has three basic parts:
1) How the ball is held in the hand
2) What part of each finger is touching the ball
3) Where on the ball each finger is touching

How the ball is held in the hand

This is the simplest portion of the description, and has two facets. The first is straightfoward: Does the pitcher hold the ball in his right or left hand? For this method I made the astounding innovation of using the uppercase letters R and L to record this information.

The second is more subtle and something I have not yet fully explored: Is the ball held mainly by the fingers and away from the palm, as is typical for a fastball, or is it held against the palm and possibly buried deeply into it, as is typical for a change-up? I use "0" to indicate the ball held against the palm and "1" for the ball held mainly by the fingers.

On its face, this distinction is fine and helpful, but it turns out that there is a continuum of positions in which the ball may be held relative to the palm. I have not explored whether a more fine-grained record of the baseball position relative to the palm is helpful.

In practice, it is often difficult to ascertain from game photos how closely the ball is being held to the palm. The pitcher's finger position is usually obvious for more than one finger even from one medium-resolution photo showing the hand from any angle. One can usually guess the position of the unseen fingers fairly accurately, and with a photo from a second angle, their location can be definitely established. However, to determine the position of the ball relative to the palm requires either a photo that shows both the thumb and index finger from a side view or a photo where the thumb, pinky, and palmar side of the wrist are all visible.

What part of each finger is touching the ball

The meat of the pitch grip description is in which fingers touch the ball, how they contact the ball, and where on the ball they touch. In this section, we'll address two of those three pieces—naming the fingers and describing their contact with the baseball.

I considered using letters to identify the fingers but settled on using numbers: 1 = thumb, 2 = index finger, 3 = middle finger, 4 = ring finger, 5 = pinky. For a polydactyl like Antonio Alfonseca, use the number 6 if you want, and our description of Mordecai Brown will have to make do with one fewer digit.

The fingers can touch the baseball in variety of ways, or not at all. I have chosen to denote these positions with lowercase letters: p = finger pad, t = finger tip, k = outside of the first knuckle, s = side of the finger's distal joint, n = side of the finger's intermediate or proximate joints, o = off the ball.

As we discussed with the palm, there can be variations or hybrids of these positions, but I found these categories to be fairly useful nonetheless.

If the distal portion of the finger was off the ball and none of the knuckles or sides of the knuckles of that finger were pressed against the ball, I recorded the finger as being "off the ball" even if the inside (palmar) portion of the finger's proximate joint was touching the ball. I considered that this finger applied little force to the ball, and in addition, it would have been difficult to assign a specific location to the contact for that finger.

Where on the ball each finger is touching

Identifying where on the ball the fingers touch requires some way to describe points on the surface of the ball.

The ball is approximately a sphere, with as its main feature one continuous stitched seam that joins the two bispatular halves of the leather cover. The baseball typically also carries some inked markings denoting the manufacturer and league, but I chose to ignore these since they are invisible in the vast majority of available pictures, they may vary for leagues at different levels, and they are irrelevant to the forces the pitcher applies to the baseball.

Typical descriptions of pitching grips, which are rare online outside of this fantastic site by Steven Ellis, talk about the horseshoe portion of the seam or the narrow parallel seams. That's workable as a description accompanied by pictures, but it is inadequate for a more detailed digital record.

Because the seam is the singular feature on the baseball, and one with interesting topological properties and symmetries, I considered some sort of notation that recorded the finger position relative to the seam. However, I discarded this approach when I found that the terminology I began to build around it was confusing and difficult to digitize.

Instead, I chose the spherical coordinate system. I located the origin at the center of the baseball's core. I chose a z-axis extending outward though the point halfway between where the narrow parallel seams come closest together. The x-axis extends outward approximately through the center of the horseshoe seam on the same piece of leather as the z-axis. The y-axis extends outward approximately through the center of the horseshoe seam on the other piece of leather from the x-axis and z-axis. In this coordinate system, the elevation angle (i.e., latitude) is the angle above the x-y plane (the equator), and the azimuth (i.e., longitude) is the angle within the x-y plane relative to the x-axis (at the prime meridian).

Application to a pitcher's repertoire

Jose Valverde throws a fastball against the Brewers, May 4, 2008. (Icon/SMI)

This description would be incomplete and harder to comprehend without some concrete examples of pitching grips and their corresponding notation. Let's take a look at pitcher with a pretty simple repertoire, Detroit Tigers closer Jose Valverde, and see how we would denote his pitch grips using this system.

As is true for most pitchers, Valverde's primary pitch is his fastball. However, he doesn't use a typical four-seam or two-seam grip. His grip is a rotated variation of the four-seam fastball grip. On to the description...

R1
1p,-170,15
2p,60,-30
3p,60,-70
4n,-80,15
5o

There are going to be a lot of these lists in this article. I apologize in advance; I know they don't make for riveting reading. If I could figure out a better way to explain this topic without all these examples, I'd do it. I'm also interested in suggestions for making the notation more compact.

The angles listed are accurate within 10 degrees at best, more likely 20 degrees in most cases. Ten degrees around the nine-inch circumference of the baseball corresponds to a quarter inch.

The preceding description of his fastball grip tells us that he holds the ball in the fingers of his right hand, not buried in his palm. His thumb has its pad contacting the ball close to the center of a circle proscribed by one of the horseshoe seams. The pads of his index finger and middle finger are also touching the ball along the seam on the opposite side of the ball. The side of his ring finger is along the ball about a quarter circle away from his thumb, and his pinky is off the ball. Here are a few other views of this grip.

Jose Valverde throws a fastball against the Rangers, June 24, 2008. (Icon/SMI)

It turns out that Valverde actually has several minor variations of this fastball. The most common one is when he lifts his middle finger off the ball. Here are two more views of this fastball grip. And once again, our quantification of it.

R1
1p,-170,15
2p,60,-30
3o
4n,-80,15
5o

He also has been observed to lift either his index finger or both the index finger and middle finger off the ball.

R1
1p,-170,15
2o
3p,60,-70
4n,-80,15
5o

R1
1p,-170,15
2o
3o
4n,-80,15
5o

Presumably Valverde is making these small adjustments to alter the angle of the spin he imparts to his fastball. I have not been able to identify these fastball variations separately from one another in his PITCHf/x data.

Valverde is noted as a smart pitcher, so perhaps all these minor grip adjustments are him looking for an edge against a batter by changing the movement on his fastball.

Jose Valverde throws a splitter against the Rangers, May 18, 2008. (Icon/SMI)

Valverde's second pitch type is a split-finger fastball. He uses a fairly standard splitter grip, though he typically turns it a little bit in his hand so that his middle finger lies along a seam and his index finger does not. Here are some other views of this grip.

R1
1p,120,-80
2p,45,0
3p,-40,30
4n,-135,0
5o

As with his fastball, he occasionally makes some minor adjustments to his splitter grip. It's difficult to get as good a feel from photographs for what he is doing with fingers on the ball for his splitter since it's rare to see both fingers and the adjacent seams in a single photo. However, I have observed a least two distinct variations from his normal splitter grip. The first variation is when he puts one seam halfway between his index and middle fingers.

R1
1p,120,-80
2p,45,15
3p,-45,15
4n,-135,0
5o

The second variation on his splitter is when he puts his index and middle fingers both along or just outside of the parallel seams.

R1
1p,170,-60
2p,60,15
3p,-10,15
4n,-105,0
5o

A few other classic pitches

Now that we've examined the full repertoire of one pitcher in detail, let's take a quick look at some of the other basic pitch types.

Let's begin with the classic four-seam fastball grip, as demonstrated by Felix Hernandez.

R1
1p,180,20
2p,60,30
3p,60,-30
4n,80,-80
5o


Felix Hernandez throws a four-seam fastball against the Rangers, Aug. 1, 2009. (Icon/SMI)	Justin Verlander throws a four-seam fastball against the Orioles, April 11, 2007. (Icon/SMI)

The grip that Felix Hernandez uses is the typical one for the four-seamer, but Justin Verlander shows us a variation that lets me demonstrate the symmetries of the recording system. Verlander's grip is a quarter turn from Hernandez's grip; thus, the angles move by 90 degrees.

R1
1p,-90,20
2p,150,30
3p,150,-30
4n,-10,-80
5o

Next, Derek Lowe demonstrates his two-seam sinking fastball grip.

R1
1p,-90,-70
2p,120,60
3p,-120,60
4n,60,-30
5o


Derek Lowe throws a sinker against the Phillies, July 5, 2010. (Icon/SMI)	Mariano Rivera throws a cut fastball against the White Sox, July 16, 2006. (Icon/SMI)

And, of course, we have the legendary Mariano Rivera cut fastball. (There's a better picture here.)

R1
1n,180,-30
2p,45,20
3p,45,-20
4n,-70,-50
5o

Johan Santana demonstrates his change-up grip for us. Speaking of which, the New York Times has a great article about Santana's pitching approach and the development of his change-up. Santana's grip is a variation on the traditional circle change grip.

L0
1p,-30,50
2n,170,70
3p,130,20
4n,90,-20
5n,0,-30


Johan Santana throws a change-up in spring training, March 9, 2009. (Icon/SMI)	Ervin Santana throws a slider against the Rangers, July 8, 2009. (Icon/SMI)

The traditional slider grip is shown by Ervin Santana.

R1
1p-90,45
2p,10,0
3p,40,20
4n,120,-10
5o

Adam Wainwright displays his curveball grip. It's not quite a standard curveball grip in that his index finger is completely off the ball. Most pitchers lay it down alongside the middle finger on the ball. The middle finger position is what's important for the curveball grip, as the middle finger grabs the seam to torque the ball and apply topspin. Steven Ellis calls Wainwright's grip the "beginner's curveball." Beginners take note, and some day your curve may be as good as Wainwright's.

R1
1n,-40,70
2o
3p,20,-20
4n,-60,10
5o


Adam Wainwright throws a curveball against the Nationals, March 14, 2010. (Icon/SMI)	Tim Wakefield throws a knuckleball against the Orioles, May 17, 2006. (Icon/SMI)

Finally, no discussion of pitch grips would be complete without Tim Wakefield's knuckleball.

R0
1p,-45,0
2t,70,20
3t,110,20
4n,170,-30
5o

Conclusions

Understanding pitch grips is a key part of understanding the physics of how pitchers make the baseball move and of accurately classifying pitch types. Until now there has been no systematic method for recording pitch grips. I have proposed such a method and am open to suggestions for improvements. We've also discussed some basic pitch grips and looked in detail at the various grips of one pitcher, Jose Valverde.

Whether this leads to an extensive catalog of pitch grips is still an open question for me. There would be a lot of effort involved, obviously. In any case, I hope the discussion of my method is a helpful introduction and serves as an impetus for further conversation.

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A Minor report

Mike Fast — 2010-08-10T18:16:15+00:00

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Leaders in kwERA

Mike Fast — 2010-08-04T15:57:15+00:00

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What does Hellickson throw? I don’t know.

Mike Fast — 2010-08-03T15:16:15+00:00

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Selective Haren

Mike Fast — 2010-07-30T10:00:15+00:00

Dan Haren readies a spike curveball against the Dodgers on June 2, 2009. (Icon/SMI)

Dan Haren was selected in the second round of the 2001 amateur draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. He pitched partial seasons for the Cardinals in 2003 and 2004, starting 19 games and compiling an undistinguished 6-10 record with a 4.85 ERA, and appearing out the bullpen in five postseason games for the Cardinals on their way to a World Series loss in 2004. Nonetheless, his minor league performance and potential was considered strong enough that he was a key piece, along with Daric Barton and Kiko Calero, in a trade to the Oakland Athletics for Mark Mulder in December 2004.

Haren quickly established himself as a quality major league starting pitcher with the A's, throwing 623 innings over three seasons, 2005-2007, posting a 3.64 ERA while striking out 531 batters and walking only 153.

After the 2007 season, Haren found himself on the other end of the Oakland pitching salary churn, traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks, along with relief prospect Connor Robertson, in exchange for a litany of young prospects: Brett Anderson, Carlos Gonzalez, Dana Eveland, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham and Greg Smith.

He put up a 3.56 ERA in 591 innings with Arizona, striking out 578 and walking 107, but two and a half seasons later, Haren is on the move to a new team in a deal again motivated by salary concerns. As of Sunday, he found himself back in the American League, pitching for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

He's put up strong numbers in both Oakland and Arizona. How has he done it? Let's look at what kind of pitches Haren throws.

Pitch repertoire

Dan Haren throws five types of pitches: a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball, a cut fastball, a split-finger fastball and a curveball.

In his days in Oakland, he threw a circle change-up, but indications are that he has abandoned that pitch more recently, and I don't see any evidence, either in the PITCHf/x data or from game photos, that he still throws the circle change with any regularity.

Let's look at what the PITCHf/x data show us about the pitch speed and spin axis of the pitches he has thrown during the 2010 season.

Another interesting way to look at his pitches is to see how they move. This chart shows the movement from the spin force and from gravity from 40 feet out to the front of home plate. The horizontal dimension is shown from the catcher's perspective.

If you really want to test your RORSCHACHf/x skills, you can look only at the spin-related pitch deflection.

Haren brings a four-seam fastball against the Padres on July 16, 2010. (Icon/SMI)

Haren's pitches can be very hard to tell apart in that graph. It's fairly typical for a pitcher to have two or three pitch clusters with overlapping spin deflections, but Haren manages that feat with all five of his pitch types. (Tim Lincecum is another pitcher whose spin deflection chart looks much like Haren's.) Introducing speed, or similarly, gravity, as a third dimension helps differentiate his pitch types, but ultimately, getting accurate pitch classifications for Haren required me to look at his data game by game.

Even still, I'm not 100 percent confident in my separation between his four-seam and two-seam fastballs. I did the best I could from the data, and I probably got close, but not perfect.

His four-seam fastball averages just over 90 mph. He gets four inches of tail and 10 inches of hop from the spin on this pitch, which is pretty typical for a fastball thrown from his high three-quarters arm slot. In 2010 he hasn't relied on this pitch very much, using it only 12 percent of the time to right-handed batters and 18 percent of the time to left-handed batters.

Haren throws a two-seam fastball against the Rockies on April 26, 2010. (Icon/SMI)

Haren hurls a cutter against the Astros on May 6, 2010. (Icon/SMI)

Haren throws his two-seam fastball just as hard as his four-seamer, averaging just above 90 mph. He gets six inches of tail and seven inches of hop due to spin deflection on the two-seamer, which results in, on average, about four inches of difference in the movement between his four-seamer and two-seamer. He has thrown the two-seamer about 25 percent of the time to right-handed batters and 29 percent of the time to left-handed batters.

Haren's bread and butter during the 2010 season has been his cut fastball. It averages 86 mph, or about four mph slower than his four-seam fastball. The average spin deflection on this pitch is two inches of cut and three inches of hop. The cutter is his mainstay against right-handed foes, to whom he throws it fully 40 percent of the time. Against lefties it serves as an equal partner with his other pitches; he chooses it 20 percent of the time to left-handed batters.

Haren grips a splitter against the Rockies on April 26, 2010. (Icon/SMI)

The pitch for which Haren is best known is probably the split-finger fastball. He throws it 85 mph with an average spin deflection of four inches of tail and three inches of hop. When you include the effect of gravity on the slower pitch, his splitter drops nine inches more than his four-seam fastball over its last 40 feet of travel. He uses the pitch about equally to righthanders (14 percent of the time) and to lefthanders (12 percent of the time).

The final weapon in his arsenal is a spike curveball. His curve averages 79 mph, with five inches of cut and four inches of drop due to spin. He favors this pitch to left-handed opponents, using it 20 percent of the time, and avoids offering it as often to right-handed batters, using it only nine percent of the time against righties.

Pitch mix

Next, let’s look at how he mixes his pitches in different ball-strike counts, which I’ve split out by batter handedness.

Haren has frequently started right-handed batters with either a cutter (41 percent of the time) or a two-seam fastball (32 percent). He has used the cutter in any count, but particularly often at 2-0, 3-2 and 2-1. On the other hand, he has used the two-seamer early in the count, but not as often when the counts go deep, particularly with two strikes (only 14 percent of the time). His curveball has come out early in the count. With two strikes, however, he has abandoned the curve (4 percent) and turned to other pitches, notably the splitter (29 percent) along with the cutter (44 percent), for the strikeout.

Haren has started left-handed batters with a two-seam fastball (44 percent of the time) or a curveball (29 percent). He has continued to rely on these two pitches when he has fallen behind in the count: 38 percent two-seamers and 24 percent curveballs. However, once he gets at least one strike on the batter, he has shifted away from the curve (14 percent) and the two-seamer (19 percent) and brought out the cutter (27 percent) and the four-seam fastball (23 percent). With two strikes, he has brought the splitter into play (23 percent of the time).

Pitch results

What kind of results has Haren gotten with each of his pitch types in 2010?

Pitch  Number  Ball   CStr   Foul   SwStr InPlay  BACON   BABIP   SLGCON   HR    Strk%  Con%
FB4      364   0.34   0.23   0.18   0.06   0.19   0.353   0.313   0.662   0.059   66%    85%
FB2      650   0.36   0.23   0.16   0.02   0.23   0.364   0.329   0.603   0.053   64%    94%
Cut      758   0.27   0.11   0.23   0.19   0.19   0.379   0.348   0.614   0.048   73%    69%
Spl      314   0.36   0.04   0.23   0.20   0.17   0.352   0.314   0.593   0.056   64%    67%
Crv      345   0.32   0.37   0.12   0.08   0.12   0.415   0.351   0.732   0.098   68%    75%

The first thing to notice is that he throws all five pitches for strikes. He's especially impressive in that regard with the curveball (68 percent strikes compared to league average of 57 percent) and the cutter (73 percent strikes vs. major league average 63 percent).

The second thing to notice is that his cutter and splitter are great at generating whiffs. He gets swings and misses on 19 percent of the cutters he throws and 20 percent of the splitters. League average is 10 percent whiffs for the cutter and 17 percent whiffs for the splitter. His two-seam fastball is on the other end of the spectrum, generating a swing and a miss only two percent of the time, compared to six percent for the league.

The third thing that sticks out is that all five of his pitch types show worse than average BABIP and vulnerability to the home run this year. Due to time constraints, I chose not to investigate further for this article, but it would clearly be interesting to know how his 2010 rates in these categories compare to previous years for the various pitch types.

Let's look now at where he locates his pitches to right-handed and left-handed batters. Strike-zone location charts are shown from the perspective of the catcher. The location of a pitch is indicated where it crossed the front plane of home plate.

Compared to most pitchers, Haren has used his four-seam fastball sparingly in 2010. A typical pitcher throws a four-seamer a third of the time or more. According to my classifications, Haren has thrown the four-seamer only 15 percent of the time in 2010. I mentioned before that I'm not fully confident in my separation between the two-seamer and four-seamer, so it's possible he's thrown the four-seam fastball as much as 20 percent of the time. In any case, it's not his main pitch. That title belongs to the cutter.

His four-seam fastball seems fairly pedestrian. I don't mean that as an insult. It's a league-average fastball that he can throw for strikes and get decent results. He has tended to spot it outside against right-handed hitters and on both sides of the plate to left-handers. The whiffs he gets with this pitch are on pitches up and away. This is his go-to pitch with two strikes on a left-handed batter, and 21 of the 63 strikeouts he's recorded against lefties have been on the four-seamer.

Haren has thrown his two-seam fastball mostly away to both right-handed and left-handed batters, though he has been more in the heart of the strike zone to right handers. He has thrown the two-seamer for 68 percent strikes to right-handed batters and only 60 percent strikes to left-handed batters. Batters have put this pitch in play 23 percent of the time and have batted .364 with eight home runs in 151 at-bats when they do so.

Haren has relied heavily on the cut fastball this year, particularly to right-handed batters. He puts the pitch low and away to righties and gets lots of swings and misses when he does so, even well out of the strike zone. When he misses a little bit and leaves the ball over the plate, right handers have had decent success at putting the cutter in play. To left-handed batters, he has kept the cutter low and inside, generating a lot of foul balls and swings and misses, even in off the plate. When he has left the cutter over the plate to a lefty, it's been tattooed, to the tune of a .472 batting average and four home runs in 36 at-bats.

Haren keeps his split-finger fastball down. Down and in to right-handed batters, down and away to left-handed batters. Both righties and lefties have chased his splitter down out of the strike zone unless he buried it in the dirt.

He has used his curveball often to left-handed batters, and he has gotten a lot of called strikes to both righties and lefties. Batters will occasionally chase his curveball down out of the zone, but mostly they have laid off of it (32 percent swing rate versus 37 percent for the league).

Conclusions

Dan Haren has a plus pitch in his cut fastball, and his splitter also seems to be a solid pitch. His fastballs and his curveball appear to be fairly average. Where Haren excels is in his ability to throw five different pitches for strikes. That surely keeps batters off balance and from sitting on any one pitch. The results have been good over his six-plus seasons, and it will be interesting to see how he performs in an Angels uniform.

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A very important article on fielding

Mike Fast — 2010-07-28T16:10:15+00:00

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Can we objectively evaluate advanced fielding data?

Mike Fast — 2010-07-16T15:26:15+00:00

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Were the All Stars really throwing that hard?

Mike Fast — 2010-07-15T17:03:15+00:00

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