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A reader requested I look at Randy Johnson of the San Fransico Giants and specifically why he is "leaving his not-so-dominating fastball in the middle of the zone, which I think is why his ERA, XBH and HR rates have exploded." First lets look at his numbers that exploded and then see if his fastball is further up in the zone.

Exploding Numbers

Here are Randy's 2008 numbers vs his numbers so far in 2009:

Randy's ERA is about 70 points higher and his FIPS is 54 points. Looking at xFIPS, (which looks at fly balls instead of home runs) it shows that Randy is having a better year in 2009 compared to 2008. Randy is definitely giving up more home runs this year and lets see if it is because of his fastball placement.

Location, Location, Location

A quick look at Randy's velocity in the previous table shows that he hasn't lost any speed this season compared to last season, so loss in velocity is out of the equation.

So far this year 7 of the 13 home runs have been from his fastball at 2.6 feet above the plate being the average height. In 2008, 20 of 24 home runs that Randy gave up were from his fastball with average height on the fastball 2.5 feet above the plate. There is definite location where people hit Randy's fastball out of the park.

In 2008 Randy threw 1767 fastballs averaging 1 home run for every 88 fastballs thrown. While in 2009, he has thrown 537 fastballs for a home run every 81 fastballs. So far this year his fastball has not been as reliable as can be seen since he has thrown it 24% less (69%-45%) this year compared to last year.

Looking to see if more of Randy's fastballs are up in the zone, I grouped them into 0.4 foot intervals using a home plate width of 2.4 feet. I only wanted to look at near the strike zone. Here is the percentage of pitches for each zone:

Johnson is putting 7% more of his pitches in the 2.3 to 2.7 zone, which is where the average home run was hit off him in the last 2 season. It can also be seen that only ~27% of his fastballs are under 2.3 this year while it was 31% last year.

Conclusions

What does this all mean. Lets look at the facts:

• Randy is throwing his fastball higher in the strike zone this year compared to last year.

• Randy's fastball is the same speed as last year.

• Fastball of Randy's are more likely to be hit for home runs

Even though it is a relatively small sample size and should be continue to be monitored, Randy Johnson should be giving up more home runs because of ball location which he is doing. Not much else to say, but one of our readers has a nice eye.

As always I am always looking for other pitchers to look at and my next installment will examine Ricky Nolasco.