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.

AN has part 1 of the Billy Beane interview up, highly recommended.  It is equally relevant in our situation.  Link

EDIT: Part 2 of the interview is up.  This part is a bit more A's specific, but still some good stuff.  Link

Part 3   Link

Blez:  It’s been a long time since we chatted and the last time we did, you shied away from the word “rebuilding” and called it “retooling” instead.  Since then you’ve gone through the rebuilding process and you yourself referred to it in the media as that. What was the impetus behind that rebuilding?

Billy Beane:  The impetus for it was where I thought we were headed. That to me is as important as anything with a franchise: not where you are but where you are going.  I really thought our best-case scenario for the next year or two was really mediocrity.  Ultimately there was no chance to be a really, really good team and I just felt we were going to just be in that middle area there.  I also knew at some point we were going to have to, so to delay it was really just wasting time.  We were at the FanFest and a few people were upset.  Actually every year there are a few people upset (laughs).  I remember asking the question back to a gentleman in the audience who was upset and it‘s good that he was upset because he cares about the team and he was there spending a Saturday which is why we have those events.  But I asked him the question of how many games he thought we would win if we stood pat and he said something like 75 or 80.  He was upset and I said, “Are you OK with that?”  That was essentially trying to stimulate what was going through our minds and get him thinking the same way.  Winning 75 or 80 games is nothing to get excited about, particularly if that’s what you’re going to do over the next several years.

And this next clip is interesting given that earlier in the season, there were some talks by the FO on "not eroding the fanbse"

Blez:  I’m not really talking about the hard core fans who live and breathe and die with the team like the Athletics Nation people do.  I’m talking more about the casual fan who comes on occasion because the team has an interesting player they want to see.

Beane:  I don’t think people come out on a regular basis to see individuals.  I think people come out to see a team.  We have no other way to operate. We could operate where we have a whole generation of players well beyond its prime but there would be even less people here.  For every one we lose because we don’t keep their favorite player, we’re going to keep two if we win.  And the reverse is true.  The thing that’s always been interesting about being here is that there is always excuses about why people don’t come out.  The fact is that we don’t draw.  The blame has always been on this thing or that thing.  There is always something new.  I mean we went to the ALCS in 2006 and in an era when baseball attendance was shooting up 26 percent or something, we wound up drawing less people the next year.  Explain that.  Over the last decade, we’ve put a pretty good product on the field.  We have a group (of fans) here that’s been here since the first year we came here.  The fact remains is that we’re still well behind the curve when it comes to attendance and some of it is probably the organization’s fault.  Not everyone is completely blameless.  You can understand that when you’re having that kind of turnover you’re going to lose some of that loyalty.  Again the flip side for us, given everything that we have to balance, is that we’re going to maintain that loyalty with the hardcore people by putting the best product we can on the field and having to err on the side of making good business decisions instead of making emotional decisions.  Believe me, my life would be a lot easier if we could just stamp a team down for the next six or seven seasons.

As you know, the A's are in a very similar situation right now as the Rangers.  It appears the Beane and JD has approached the situation in very similar fashion in some areas, but not so much in some other areas.  It will be very interesting to follow the development of these two teams, and it will be tough for JD since he is essentially going head-to-head against one of the best in the business in rebuilding.  The next couple of years will be very interesting to see.

This season has not been kind to CJ.  After a quick start, his recent struggles has been well-documented.  Here I will try to raise a view possible points of discussion as to what is wrong with him.

Before you start, first read the excellent article at Baseball Time in Arlington by Mr. Matschulat Here

Recapping a few points from the above article:  CJ is throwing more fastballs, more strikes, does poorly in stranding baserunners.  He also has low BABIP and low line drive %.  His strikeout numbers are low.

For this reason, it is fitting to start with the fastball.  CJ is throwing the fastball 86.6% of the time, way up from previous years.  They average 92.4 mph with average horizontal and vertical breaks of 5.92 and 9.58 inches.  35% of them are balls, and 6.5% of them are swung and missed.  (see the movement chart below)

Well, really there is nothing wrong with this picture.  The fastball has good velocity and very good movement.  By all means, it's a good fastball, and the fact that he is throwing 65% strikes means he has at least decent command of it.  Since he throws it so much and does not get much strikeouts, the low BABIP implies that most of the time, hitters do not get very good wood on these either, but what about the ones that they do hit?

Well here is a crude graph of the locations of pitches that resulted in hits for CJ so far this season.  All of these pitches except for 1 are fastballs (the other one is a curve).  Not surprisingly, the ones that are hit are pretty much at the middle of the plate.  More surprising though is the circumstances under which they are hit.  Of the 15 hits, 8 are doubles or HRs, and only 1 of these 8 ABs that resulted in double or HR saw more than 3 pitches (the exception was 4 pitches).  6 of these 8 hits were in counts favorable for the pitcher where CJ threw a fastball.  In contrast, only 2 of the 7 ABs that resulted in singles had less than 4 pitches.  What one can conclude from this is that extra base hits are consequences of hitters seeing the pitches they wanted while singles are mostly result from hitters battling it out.

Now looking at the breaking pitches, we find something interesting.  CJ throws essentially 3 breaking pitches, a slider, curveball, and changeup.  So far he has thrown 10 change, hitters have swung at 2 of these pitches, and 7 were balls.  He has thrown 19 curves, and hitters swung at half of them.  Finally of the 12 sliders, hitters swung at only 3 of them and 7 were balls.  These off-speed pitches are designed to generate poor swings by hitters so they can't sit on the fastball, and the fact that they are NOT swinging at the off-speed pitches is troubling.

Here is another crude chart of the locations of off-speed pitches.  CJ is able to locate the curve fairly well, and to some degree the slider, but he does not throw the slider and change for strike, and the hitters aren't bothering with them.  This means that he is essentially reduced to a 2-pitch pitcher, and hitters will just sit on the fastball and/or curve.  In fact, most of them are not very successful at hitting the curve, so they are just looking for the fastball. 

This could be where the problem lies.  Since CJ throws so few off-speed pitches, and does not generally throw them for strikes, hitters can afford to ignore those pitches and concentrate on the fastball.  Not only this, they can sit on certain locations so that CJ can't get away with too any mistake fastballs down the middle (which is why the hits are hit hard).  Also, most of those breaking pitches are thrown on 0-2 and 1-2 counts, but since they are not thrown for strikes and hitters do not swing at them, it's useless a lot of the times.

I for one would like to see him throwing the change and slider for strikes more often.  This will hopefully throw hitters off his fastball, and force them to swing at a few more off-speed pitches.  His release point for all of his pitches are similar, and he should have success with them.

The performance of the starting pitching staff this season has left many of us scratching our heads at this point, so it's fair to ask what is going on and if it will be sustainable in at least some degree.  Of course, Paddy Cake has been one of the biggest cause of scalp irritation so far, so let's see what we can learn about our starters, and see if the 2008 performances so far are sustainable.

For the most part, Vinny's pitching statistics are not spectacular.  His BB/9 (3.2), K/9 (5.86) are  worse than his career lines, (by comparison, his BB/9 and K/9 in 2006 was 3.15 and 7.02), his HR/9 rate (1.07) is about the same as previous years.   His BABIP is exactly at .300, and all this translate to a fielding-independent expected ERA of around 4.5.  His ERA right now is much lower, largely because of the amount of baserunners that have been stranded.  Of all baserunners reaching, 81.1% of them has been left on base.  On average, 70% of left on base is a reasonable number, and only the best and luckiest pitchers get to 80% left on base (no more than 1-2 per year).  So it is expected that this will regress to his career average of around 72% LOB.  A rough calculation shows that this regression along should put his expected ERA at around 4.3 (calculation assumes same ratio of unearned to earned runs).  (Incidentally, the LOB% of Gabbard and Edinson Volquez are both around 90%)  So he is getting a bit lucky, but even with the regression, the results should still be decent.

Just for fun, let's try to see if we can be more substantive in terms of balls in play profile and pitch selections.  22% of balls in play are line drives, 41.8% ground balls and 36.4% fly.  So far his ground ball rate has been slightly down from previous years and fly ball rate slightly up.  The high line drive percentage is a cause of concern.  Padilla has historically given up a lot of line drives, but he has been able to overcome that with high strikeout rates.  Now that his K rate is down, it becomes a bit unsettling.

We all know he is throwing a lot of fastball this year, and this is certainly true- he is throwing 80.4% fastballs.  He has cut down his numbers of curveballs from 14.6% last year to 6.1%, and is throwing similar numbers of sliders (7.5%) and change (6.2%) as he has throughout his career. 

I tried to used the Pitch f/x tool, but it doesn't work correctly for Vinny.  Namely, it calls every single one of his off-speed pitches as sliders, so I'll concentrate on the fastball instead, and it looks like this:

Yeah, so the movement profile of his fastball is a very large blob.  He throws his fastball on average at 92 mph, touching 96 at times.  The fastball has quite a bit of horizontal movement (average of about -6.7 inches), and quite a bit of variety, whether be design or inconsistency.  By comparison,  many pitchers with good fastball, such as Tim Lincecum are more consistent in terms of movement.  There is also a large number of fastballs here that are sinkers or mistake pitches (those with little horizontal and vertical movements).

37.8% of his fastballs are thrown for balls, which is a bit high, but nothing alarming given the movement it has. 4% of the fastballs miss bats, and 18.6% are called strikes.  Speaking of called strikes, the locations of fastballs looks like this:

called strikes:

balls:

So all this says that Padilla has a live fastball, and he gets the wide strike zone common to pitchers with large horizontal movement on their fastballs.  However, he is hurt by not getting low strike calls.  In fact, this seem to be a problem with many Rangers pitchers in general (maybe I will look into this a bit deeper at some later time).  This lack of low strike calls could be related to, if not the cause of, his low ground ball rates.  Also, given the velocity and movement of the fastball, he should be able to use more off-speed pitches to miss bats.  His change is around 80 mph, but he doesn't use it very often (and it doesn't look all that good when he does).

Finally, one last interesting observation about this season so far is the reversed platoon split.  Usually Vinny destroys right handed batters but has nothing on left handed bats.  This season, there is little difference in the splits.   Also, he is especially prone to giving up HR balls early in the season.  May is normally his worst month, but he gets steadily better as the season continues.  These factors are minor and should not affect the big picture very much.

So in conclusion, I expect Padilla to regress a bit in the near future, but his stuff and peripherals are good enough that he should be a solid pitcher.  Nevertheless, he needs to find a way to increase his K rates, since his stuff has not diminished at all.  However, it's hard to do this in the major league level when you throw such a large amount of fastball that are not spectacular in velocity.  Especially when you can't get calls for pitches lower in the strike zone, you are forced to throw them higher, and that does not bode well if they get hit in the dog days of TBIA.