This is cool

by Adam J. Morris on Sep 19, 2007 3:16 PM CDT in News

Really neat piece at THT on pitch identification with the Gameday fx system.

And the author has put together charts to show, for individual pitchers, how much their individual pitches break and at what velocity. He breaks down several pitchers as part of the article, and attaches PDF files at the end for about 150 others.

Really neat stuff...for example, with Brandon McCarthy, his fastball has almost no "tailing" action, but is among the most extreme in terms of "rising" (which, of course, is a misnomer, since fastballs don't actually "rise," as the author explains), while his curves almost all have almost the same horizontal break, but with a great deal of variation in their vertical break.

C.J. Wilson, meanwhile, has quite a few pitches that are the velocity of sliders, but which have almost no horizontal or vertical break, which (from reading the article) could be the famous gyroball.

Really neat stuff...check it out...

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Wow

I think I'm about to lose a week of my life to this...

by BAC on Sep 19, 2007 3:33 PM CDT reply actions

Awesome

Thanks for the link. Here are a few charts I found interesting. Check out the vertical break on Zito's curveball. We all new it was big, but it 12-13" inches big. Most pitchers don't have a single point below the 10" line, while almost all of Zito's curves are down there.

Verlander is also interesting. His fastball and change are in the upper left quadrant as expected. It also looks like both his curveball and slider have the exact same break, they are just different speeds.

Also, to make sure I understand this correctly, the reason the changeup breaks down is because it is slower, so gravity works on it more. It has the same spin as a fastball so if it was the same speed, it would act the same, correct? So if this is true, wouldn't Verlander's curveball appear to break downward more than his slider since it is a slower pitcher?

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 3:43 PM CDT reply actions

About Verlander

After looking a little more at Verlander, I don't know if he is throwing two breaking balls. Since the orange color is 70-80 mph, you can't really tell if he is throwing in the lower or upper 70s. I see two possibilities.

He is throwing a slow curve in the low to mid 70s and a slider that sits around 85 mph. The orange would be the curve and the red would be the low to mid 80s slider, which would also explain the few green (85-89 mph) green dots in the plot.
He is throwing one breaking ball, a power curve that sits in the upper 70s and lower 80s, which would explain why there is about an even split between the green and red and why they have identical breaks.

I haven't seen Verlander pitch enough to have his repertoire memorized, but right now I am leaning more towards #2. If they would just split the 70-80 mph pitches into two colors, this would be much easier to figure out.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 5:08 PM CDT up reply actions

juvenile humor quote of the day

We all new it was big, but it 12-13" inches big

Baseball Fever - catch it!

by t ball on Sep 19, 2007 6:41 PM CDT up reply actions

well done

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."-Socrates

by slc ranger on Sep 19, 2007 9:21 PM CDT up reply actions

Robinson Tejeda's charts is very

telling. All his pitches are elevated. He cant keep the ball down.

"Dwyade is to basketball what the 40 is to the Rangers." -thedirkatron

by coolaid on Sep 19, 2007 3:51 PM CDT reply actions

The charts

don't tell you where the pitches actually end up; they only tell you where the pitches end up relative to where they would go with no spin.
(The article talks about how the analysis doesn't say anything about a pitcher's command).

Tejeda could have the same charts and still do a decent job of keeping the ball down if he had better command of where he wanted to throw.

by cjcheng on Sep 19, 2007 3:57 PM CDT up reply actions

Tejeda

It doesn't look to me like his pitches are elevated, or at least I don't think that is what the chart is saying. His fastball (purple/blue) and changeup (orange) are right where you would expect them to be on the chart. I don't know what the red (80-85 mph) pitch is, but if it is a slider it doesn't have any break. By looking at the chart I just see a pitcher that can only throw a fastball and changeup and is clueless when it comes to throwing a breaking ball, which is about what I have seen out of Tejeda.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 3:59 PM CDT up reply actions

Sinking fastballs

I looked at Brandon Webb's chart to see what his sinker looked like. Most of his fastballs sit right on the line of no vertical movement. I guess since a sinker doesn't have the same spin as a four-seam "rising fastball," it doesn't fight the forces of gravity as much and as a result, sinks more due to gravity. Don't know if that explanation is accurate, but it makes sense to me.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 3:54 PM CDT reply actions

Yup

That's how I've always understood a sinker / splitter to work.

I think I first started thinking about this after playing Wii baseball, where the only way to tell that a pitch is a splitter is by recognizing that it has very little spin.

by cjcheng on Sep 19, 2007 3:58 PM CDT up reply actions

Yep

When I played baseball in high school, we had a pitcher in our district that threw a splitter. When I first saw one I thought it was just a horrible knuckle ball since it just kind of tumbled forward towards the plate. The spin was a heck of a lot slower than you would see on any other pitch.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 4:01 PM CDT up reply actions

those splitters

are fucking unhittable. The day I learned to recognize/lay-off them, I became a Wii baseball juggernaut.

by rubbersoul103 on Sep 19, 2007 10:40 PM CDT up reply actions

Brian Bannister

Bannister is sort of interesting also, since the chart clearly shows that he throws two or maybe three different fastballs and that they break differently.

His green pitches are his four seam fastball, which has less tailing action then a lot of other pitchers. The red pitches on the left of the graph are probably a two-seam fastball, since they are slower, would sink more and have more tailing action then his four-seam.

Moving to the right side of the chart, we have his slider/cutter which appears in red, and his curveball which is orange. Both appear right about where they should be.

This all meshes nicely with the Baseball America scouting report on him, which says his fastball is in the upper 80s and can touch 90 mph (hence the green dots). Says he also throws a cutter and a curveball. They make no mention of a two-seam fastball, but the fact the pitch has tailing action, is slower than his four seam and shows up where we would expect a two-seamer to appear, lead me to believe he is now throwing one.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 4:28 PM CDT reply actions

My favorite chart

is Wakefield's. Amazing how many different breaks, horizontally and vertically, a knuckleball can have.

by Inkara1 on Sep 19, 2007 4:31 PM CDT reply actions

Yeah

I thought Wakefield's was pretty funny...everyone else has 2-3 small isolated splotches of difference colors, and his is just one giant green blot.

by Adam J. Morris on Sep 19, 2007 4:40 PM CDT up reply actions

Jose Contreras

has an interesting one also. He has a gigantic four colored blob that is just a little left of center.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 4:43 PM CDT up reply actions

Loe's is interesting

I think you can pick up the sinker, as he's closer to 0 in vertical movement.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

by WyoRanger on Sep 19, 2007 4:59 PM CDT reply actions

Yep

His fastball is a lot closer to zero on the vertical axis then most pitchers, indicating some sink. His fastball plot is also centered well to the left of where most pitchers are, which is what you see when you see the extreme tailing action his sidearm delivery generates. Also, he does have a few pink plots, indicating a pitch in the 90s. Since they almost all appear around the 10 line for vertical movement, that may be the four-seam fastball that we sometimes hear about him throwing.

His breaking ball generally is what I would describe as a frisbee slider, which the chart certainly seems to confirm.

by uthornfan on Sep 19, 2007 5:12 PM CDT up reply actions

Hmm

Interesting to compare Padilla with Roy Oswalt directly above him on the chart. Seems like they throw roughly the same pitches, but Oswalt has much more consistency with his motion. That's probably not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, except where it keeps Padilla from throwing strikes, which seems to be pretty often. And does Micah Owings really not have a breaking ball?

by a bebop a rebop on Sep 20, 2007 7:25 AM CDT reply actions

Owings

has a slider, which would be the red pitch that is right at the intersection of the two axis/axi/axis's. I don't really know what to think of seeing the sliders that apparently have no break, because I have seen pitchers that it says have no break and watched their pitches break. Maybe this is saying the only break they get is gravity, but that still is movement so the hitters still swing and miss.

by uthornfan on Sep 20, 2007 10:16 PM CDT up reply actions