The Dutch Revolution has begun.

A simple look at how Holland faced up against the righty-heavy Astros lineup in his major league debut.

Yesterday's first major league start for Holland went very well other than one mistake to Lance Berkman, who makes a living destroying mistakes as we saw. Right around 75 pitches, almost all of them fastballs and almost all of them to right handed hitters. His only lefty faced was Michael Bourn 3 times, who grounded out in 5 pitches, singled on 3 pitches, and singled on 2 pitches. That last one was the bunt single towards Jones though, and the other was deflected.

I went ahead and ignored the 3 Bourn at bats since it's such a small sample size and instead focused on the righties. He only threw 15 offspeed pitches to righties, a mixture of changes and sliders. 2 of those 15 were hits, one a single by Matsui, the other...well, I'll get to that later.

So, that leaves the fastball to right handers. To begin with, here's a plot of Holland's fastball velocity by event, i.e. the farther right on the graph, the more pitches he's thrown.

via i39.tinypic.com

He's average fastball velocity was 93.4mph, which is very good, and he peaked just below 96. Also very good, there are no signs of fatigue on that plot, his velocity didn't decrease over time.

Next is a very simple of fastball movement to right handers.

via i42.tinypic.com

A varying degree of movement away from righties and a pretty steady amount of backspin. Not much to notice here. How about fastball location?

via i39.tinypic.com

This plot shows that Holland really wasn't working down and away to righties as much as everyone thinks he was. If anything it appears he was working up and in for the most part. But how does this graph look when the result of the pitch is factored in:

via i39.tinypic.com

You'll notice right away that only one fastball was put in play as a hit, Carlos Lee's single in the 2nd. I made that point, the purple triangle, a bit larger as a point of emphasis. All four of Holland's swinging strikes (orange circles) were in the upper portion of the strike zone, or out of it. He wasn't screwed any fastballs called balls and even got a little help from the umpire or Astros hitters for stuff outside the zone. All in all, his fastball had good life, velocity and movement wise, and he apparently hit all the right spots. I'd like to see pitches a little further down in the zone, but when you're facing the Astros fairly anemic lineup you can get away it.

Unless you make a mistake pitch to Lance Berkman.

Holland threw 12 pitches to Berkman over 3 ABs, 4 sliders and 8 fastballs. The first 2 pitch at bat, a pop out to Kinsler, was 2 fastballs. The second at bat, a 5 pitch strikeout, was 3 fastballs 2 sliders. The 3rd at bat, a 5 pitch 3-run homerun, was 3 fastballs and 2 sliders again. Here's what those at bats looked like to Berkman.

via i39.tinypic.com

The four sliders I've made much larger than the fastballs. He got very lucky with the red slider in the 2nd at-bat, as it was pretty much in the wheelhouse. The 2nd slider, which Berkman struck out on, was a thing of beauty, down and in. The 1st slider of the homerun at bat was acceptable, an 0-1 pitch in the dirt. That 4th one though, was just... hanging. It was the first slider but about 7 inches higher and Berkman did not miss.

That's ok though. One mistake pitch to a great hitter will hurt you, but if that's your only problem as a 22 year old rookie who throws absolute gas left-handed, I think we are all more than ok with that. Great first start by Dutch and I honestly can't wait to see the next one.

If there's anything else you'd like to see graphed, let me know.