Matt Harrison's Turnaround
by Desert Ranger on May 9, 2009 2:52 PM CDT
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PrintAdam asks and I answer: A look at Matt Harrison's season through pitch f/x, his first 3.5 starts vs his last 2.5 good starts.
Warning: lots of figures.
So I think we are all fairly curious what has gotten into Matt Harrison lately. His first 3.5 starts, not so great; his last 2.5 starts, pretty darn good. I was just going to do a look at yesterdays (5-8-09) start, but since Adam asked for a broader look, I'll present that data first.
Using pitch f/x I was able to get the data from all of Harrison's games so far and sort it out by pitch type.
First, I'll show you pitch selection by start.
via i42.tinypic.com
First, please note that start "4" is the first 2 innings of the Baltimore game and start "5" is the last 5 innings where he seemingly turned it around (yes, the graph axis title is wrong). I already looked at that start in another fanpost and couldn't get too much out of it, so for analysis purposes I just want to focus on the first 3 and the last 2. Right away you can see that his last start against Chicago was a lot of fastballs. Harrison had a great fastball yesterday, as I'll show you in a bit. The 2nd thing to notice is that he hasn't thrown his cut fastball in his last 2 starts. Changeup count was a bit high in his first start against Chicago, but then it dropped off for yesterday. He completely changed his pitch selection from a pretty normal fastball/changeup mix the first time against Chicago to just blowing it by them the 2nd time.
Slider count has been fairly regular through all his outings. Curveball count has decreased a little.
Next I'll show a graph of average pitch velocity. This one can be a little tough to read so I included the table of pitch velocities beneath it.
via i41.tinypic.com
Four seam fastball velocity has gone up pretty steadily over throughout the season, with the average at 93.2mph for his last start. That helps a ton, especially when your offspeed stuff is all below 85 like it was yesterday. His slider velocity was also at its highest point yesterday. Curve and changeup velocity have stayed fairly consistent, and two seam fastball velocity has dropped some.
Here's a look at his pitch movement for yesterday.
via i40.tinypic.com
His four seamer is showing a pretty broad range of movement, all of it going away from righties but to varying degrees. The graph shows a pitch as FS, a split fastball, which is either something completely new or is his two seamer. It has pretty much the same movement and velocity as the two seamer so that's what I classified it is, but I suppose their is the possibility he's dropped it for a splitter.
You can see that the slider as very little vertical movement difference, but quite a bit of horizontal difference. With it's increased velocity, this is a pretty useful pitch. He only threw five and only one was in play, but it was the double play grounder to end the 6th inning.
Here's his four seam fastball location and result from yesterday.
via i43.tinypic.com
Harrison was definitely pounding away with his fastball to the righty-heavy lineup yesterday, and even got a few generous calls which make up for the few bad ones in the zone. The point that sticks out to me is that only 3 pitches that were put in play were up in the zone. Harrison did a great job of working down in the zone.
This, on the other hand, is the four seam location and result for his start against KC on the 17th of April
via i44.tinypic.com
Lots of stuff in the middle of the zone and most of it is high. That is not where you want to be with an 89.6mph fastball like he had that day.
So that's all I've got for right now. AJM, I know you said you wanted to look at specific pitch locations aside from just fastball, before and after, but I think that may need to be trimmed down. The sheer number of data points make the graph extremely hard to read. I'm also planning on looking at what pitches he's giving up hits on what he's getting outs on to see if there's a trend. I'll get that up when I can.
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Where are you getting your pitch data?
I noticed one thing that stood out using the pitch data on MLB gameday: their measurement and classification system has no idea what to do with a cutter. I noticed this on both Harrison and Feldman. I think they have both been throwing it but it is being variously classified as a slider, split, 4seam or 2seam.
It also has some lesser problems with a changeup and slider but to a much lesser extent…
Yea, the slider is really more of a cutter
as OP pointed out, it has all of its movement pretty much horizontal. Its a good pitch to have in there to off set the tailing action on his FB. From what i noticed last night, he really only needed his FB, cutter, and Changeup. He showed his Curve maybe once that i remember, but it doesnt look like much of a pitch to me and was hit hard when he threw it (it went foul b/c Dye was out in front)
"The House That Ruth Built, 85 years old, goes out as The House That Hamilton Knocked Down"
As someone pointed out in another thread
the MLB gameday velo is about 2mph fast compared to park (tv) guns
That was only for last night's game I believe
For the most part, the two guns are usually giving the same readings. I’ve noticed though that the TV gun has usually been the fast one though (if there is a difference).
By 2028, Mark Teixeira will be in the HOF.
-The Outlaw
I wonder how much Matt's 1st outing
played into last night. Having thrown so many changeups, maybe the Sox were anticipating them which made his fastball that much more effective.
Jay Zygmunt, now that you have fired yourself, please have yourself hired by Seattle. Thanks.
Nice Work
I’m still not seeing a real correlation or, at least a delineation between terrible Harry and good Harry. Am extremely interested to see what you can turn up.
Exactly
there’s not much there that really stands out as being different. The pitch selection hasn’t changed a lot, but I wonder if the selection by count is different (first pitch, 0-1, 1-0, etc.).
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
Oops
accidentally hit post too soon, stupid laptop touchpad. I suspect there is a little bit of luck here, bad luck before he the awesomeness, and good luck since it started. But someone smarter than me needs to nitpick this data.
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
I was listening to the Frisco broadcast tonight
Scooter said he’s noticed a crisper, quicker mound routine for all the RR starters recently. He didn’t know if it was the PC’s call or has come down from the org. I wonder if Harrison’s success with a quicker pace has caused the org to trickle the edict down thru the farm.
Ummmm
It’s called luck. His BABIP was way abnormally high early while lately it’s been low. It’s not rocket science.
Not really
In his first 3 starts, he struck out only 6 people in 14.2 IP while walking 11. In none of those starts did he even strike out as many people as he walked. No BABIP, no matter how low, could save numbers like that, even before you consider that he gave up 4 homers in those first 14.2 IP. His BABIP was high (.367 or thereabouts), but not truly appalling. Those 3 starts were just bad, no ways about it.
His K rate hasn’t improved significantly over the past 21 IP (11 Ks), but his control has been wonderful (only 2 walks, giving him a K:BB of 5.5), and he hasn’t given up any homers. His BABIP has been unusually low (.246), but again, not astonishingly so. Had it been .300 (the usual number), then he would have given up an extra 4 hits over the past 3 starts, for a WHIP of 1.1 or so rather than the .9 that he’s had.
I think the guy above who said it was difficult to see any difference in the quality of pitches is onto something, though. Harrison hasn’t been particularly better at striking people out, at beating the batters. What he has improved at is that he isn’t walking as many people, which for a pitcher like him is the difference between being a flatly terrible one and a pretty decent pitcher.
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by OldProspects on May 10, 2009 9:02 AM CDT up reply actions
*no TWO ways about it
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by OldProspects on May 10, 2009 9:02 AM CDT up reply actions
Very good stuff.
and it all lends to two simple points:
1) Harrison walked 2 batters in his last 3 games; he walked 11 in his first 3
2) He hasn’t given up a HR in his last 3 games; he gave up 4 in the first 3
Cutting down on the walks means he’s locating his pitches more effectively, and same with HRs. His increased velocity is helping as well, but his control is what will make him successful.
"Hang-Dai, Wu...Hang-Fu$&ing-Dai"
by Walter Sobchak on May 10, 2009 6:14 PM CDT reply actions 1 recs
Exactly
The question, though, is if this is continuable. Less than a walk per 9 innings is ludicrously good control, and I doubt if it is sustainable. Before 2007, though, his walk numbers were significantly lower and it is possible that he might be reverting back to that, though it is of course far far far too early to say. The other thing is that it’s highly unlikely that he will never give up another homer again.
For a sense of the difficulties that Harrison will face, consider the case of Andy Sonnanstine, another pitcher who has a reasonable amount of success despite not striking out a lot of hitters because his walks are kept limited. Over his career in the majors, Sonnanstine has struck out a little more than 6 batters per 9 innings; Harrison 4.4. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any pitcher who has had significant success over long periods of time while striking out so few batters (Maddux late in his career had one or two years like this, but he’s Greg Maddux. Over his career, he struck out 6.1/9IP. So did Tim Wakefield). I am not especially optimistic that his success will continue unless his strikeout numbers rise.
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by OldProspects on May 10, 2009 11:37 PM CDT up reply actions
another southpaw Ranger
From 2002-2005 Kenny Rogers had a K rate of 4.8 per 9 and an ERA of 4.16 (ERA+ 114). The big majority of that came while pitching at RBiA.
But I agree with you that this is exceedingly rare, and not something to be expected out of Harrison. I’m hopeful that he can increase his K rate, but that is another thing that you don’t see often. 200+ innings and an ERA a shade under 5 is about what I expect and I think Harry can deliver that, which has a ton of value – especially for this team.
Doctor please. Some more of these.
I'm reasonably optimistic
that he can raise his strikeout rate. His K rate was somewhat higher in the minors, and he does have good stuff. We’ll see
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by OldProspects on May 11, 2009 12:18 PM CDT up reply actions
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