PITCHf/x Work
Pitch F/X Profile: Jon Lester
by David Golebiewski
on Dec 23, 2008 5:57 PM PST
in PITCHf/x Work
A World Series-clinching win. A successful battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A no-hitter. Red Sox southpaw Jon Lester has already compiled a career's worth of accomplishments, and he's only going on 25.
16 comments | 0 recs
Profiling Tim Lincecum
by dixieflatline
on Sep 12, 2008 9:31 AM PDT
in PITCHf/x Work
While profiling CC Sabathia early this week, I mentioned that Sabathia recently overtook Tim Lincecum as the pitcher who has accrued the most pitcher abuse points this season (which Lincecum has now taken back after his last start). I concluded that Sabathia really didn't seem phased by a lot of innings or some large pitch count games. A reader who is an avid Giants fan was interested in a similar look at Tim Lincecum to see how he is holding up in September. There are reasons to be concerned about the heavy workload Lincecum has received this year in comparison to a pitcher like Sabathia. First, Lincecum is 24 and not yet past the injury nexus. Second, Lincecum has already thrown more than twenty more innings than he had thrown last year and will likely end up shattering the 200 innings pitched level (he is at 198 2/3 right now). Before we dive in to Lincecum's wear pattern let's look at a little deeper into what makes him so successful.
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Pitch F/X Profile: Morrow's first start
by David Golebiewski
on Sep 7, 2008 4:51 AM PDT
in PITCHf/x Work
The Seattle Mariners have made plenty of capricious decisions over the past few years. Without even getting into the debacle that is the major league roster, the M's have shown a tendency to expedite players through the minor league system, zooming them past levels that the players are probably not yet equipped to handle. Brandon Morrow is one such example of this trend.
11 comments | 0 recs
Carlos Zambrano's dead arm
by dixieflatline
on Sep 1, 2008 6:58 AM PDT
in PITCHf/x Work
Yesterday Carlos Zambrano was scratched from his start with what the Cubs are calling a dead arm. Apparently he has lost some velocity in his last few starts. We can look at that with something I call wear pattern. Simply put, it is a plot of a certain pitch for a pitcher as the year goes on. Here is Zambrano's four seamer wear pattern.
4 comments | 0 recs
Comparing Carlos Zambrano to himself
by dixieflatline
on Aug 29, 2008 8:35 AM PDT
in PITCHf/x Work
During Carlos Zambrano's last start I found myself chatting online with a Cubs fan in a large group of people and I made the comment that I was worried about his strikeout rate dropping the last few years. He answered that it was because Zambrano was throwing his sinker more. I wasn't so sure about this. Zambrano throws three different fastballs and their movements are very similar so differentiating between them real time is definitely not something I could do. I also took a quite peak at his groundball percentage and it literally hadn't changed in the past two years. Not that a ground ball percentage of nearly 47 percent is bad, it actually is quite good, but it hasn't changed in the last three years. In addition, he hadn't really been lowering the number of pitches he was throwing per plate appearance (3.8 this year 4.0 the previous two years). So why has his strikeout rate dropped from 8.9 per game in 2006 to 7.4 last year to 6.2 this year? Also why has his walk rate dropped from 4.9 per game in 2006 to 4.3 last year to 3.3 this year? If he really is throwing more sinkers early in the count then he likely should be getting more groundballs and definitely should be throwing fewer pitches per plate appearance. Let's try to make some sense of what is going on here.
2 comments | 1 recs
