The Hurley Show 06-12-08

Most here agree that Hurley's first start was decent.  He had good command overall, but also showed why he is so homerun prone.  Let's look at this performance in more detail (which obviously mean pitch f/x).  Perhaps we can all learn something from the data and..... oh hell, I just needed to do this to get it out of my system.... I've waited a whole year!

As I was saying, first a pitch profile - of the 91 pitches tracked, pitch f/x calls 59 fastballs, 23 sliders, and 9 change-ups.  Of the 91 pitches, only 27 were balls and 7 were swung on and missed for swinging strike % of 7.7%.

The average fastball velocity was 91.1 mph, ranging from 87 to 93, and only 2 swinging strikes on the fastball.  The change-up averages 80.5 mph, with no swinging strikes, and slider averages 84.6 mph, with 5 swinging strike (22%). 

The following chart shows movement of the three pitches:

It's interesting to note that the fastball seem to be split into 2 groups, one of them with both larger vertical and horizontal break.  I believe this might be correlated with the velocity difference, or perhaps this is just a SSSS (small sample size syndrome).

Overall, the fastball has decent movement.  It's not a straight pitch and has some "rising" action.  The change mimic the fastball closely (more close than you think!), which may or may not be preferred depends on what you think a changeup should accomplish, and the slider breaks only slightly.  While there is nothing flashy, this is a good combination of pitches as I will explain a bit further down.  First I focus on the fastball locations:

I feel that I must make a clarification.  I screwed up worse than the Royal's bullpen in some previous posts.  The location shown in this graph is from the perspective of the umpire (not the pitcher).  Please mentally overwrite all "right" with "left" and vice versa in regard to my previous posts regarding location.

So anyway, nothing too groundbreaking here.  Hurley pitches on the edges most of the time, and he also gets the usual wide strike zone.

The mistake pitches are obviously the ones right down the middle.  Hurley threw the changeups exclusively to left handed batters today,  so he threw them outside to them.  Nobody got a hit off the changeup, and nobody swung and missed at it either.  For the most part, they did not get very good swings against the change.  Now for the slider:

Not surprisingly, the major dose of sliders went to the right handed hitters.  Very good location of the pitch caused a lot of swing and misses.  This pitch will be extremely tough on the righties.  Nevetheless, he did manage to hang a couple which got hit.  

Hurley's pitching strategy is not too complicated.  Work off the fastball, throw changeups and sliders to lefties to get bad swings, and slider to righties to K.  If he continues to have good command of these pitches, his only real task is to cut down on mistake pitches.  This will also confirm the suspicion that we've had regarding his AAA performance.  His stuff and command is good enough to get a lot of strikeouts, but those Xs down the middle are bad for his performance and my mental health.

Finally, just because I just figured out how to do it (thanks Jeff), here is a new plot you may or may not have seen:

This plot shows the average trajectory of Hurley's pitches from a side view.  The horizontal axis is the distance away from home plate, and he is assumed to release his pitches at a point 50 feet away from home plate.  The vertical axis is the distance off the ground.  An average hitter's knee will be at a height of around the 1.5-2 feet region on the y axis.  The first thing that you may notice is the similar path of all of his pitches in the initial part of the flight.  The 3 pitches look similar to one another from the side.  The changeup and fastball follow similar paths on average, so in essence, his changeup is a slow fastball.  Some pitchers use their changeup as a strikeout pitch, and their changeups will deviate dramatically from their fastball in the last 15-20 feet from the plate and drop down.  In Hurley's case, his changeup arrive at a similar spot to the fastball as it crosses the plate.  So hitter may think it's a fastball and swing at it, but since it's slower, they will get in front of it and won't get much of a swing.  It is a bit more difficult to net strikeouts because the deviation in speed alone may not be enough to avoid the batter's bat as he swings.  In today's game, batters swung at 5 of the changeups, fouling 3 off and hitting into 2 outs.  Be aware, small sample size is in effect.

Now, look at the trajectory of the pitches from a "birds eye" view.

The horizontal axis still stands for the distance away from the plate, and the vertical axis is now parallel to the ground (think of the line running alone the direction of a batter's foot if he stands in the batter's box facing the plate).  The 0 mark on the vertical axis is the center of the plate, and the strike zone will fall between the +1 and -1 marks on the y axis.

First thing I point you to is the path of the fastball and the slider.  At the time when an average hitter must make his decision whether to swing or not, the slider and fastball are at around the 40 ft mark on the horizontal axis.  Now, up to about 30 feet away from the plate, these two pitches look EXACTLY the same.  Afterwards, the slider curves outside to right handed hitters and drops down.  Since they are also the same in the side view initially, it is going to be very difficult for a hitter to tell if a pitch is a fastball or a slider as it comes out of his hand, unless they can pick up the spin.  If he commands the slider properly, it will be agonizing task (especially for righties) to try to hit it.  This is an out pitch.

The changeup looks similar to his fastball in this view as well, but it's interesting to note that he seem to release both the changeup and slider further away from his body.  It might be something worth keeping an eye on lest he tips off his pitches.

Overall, Hurley features a decent fastball in tandem with a good slider and a changeup - whose effectiveness in the major leagues remains to be seen.  I think he will have a tough time trying to blow the fastball by hitters with a 91 mph fastball, but the slider, if commanded well, is a strikeout pitch.  Obviously he needs to cut down on his mistake pitches, but perhaps he could also utilize the changeup to throw off hitters so they don't captialize on those mistakes as much.  If he retain this level of command, however, I am not too worried about him.