Pitching
29 posts
Chicago Cubs and The Gleyber Allstars
The Chicago Cubs had a banner day retooling their farm system. In a few years, when the Cubs are looking good and have a surplus of power arms in the organization, we can look back on July 2, 2013. The international…
What's Up with Mike Scott?
Surely, there are others who woke up this Thanksgiving morning and started looking at pitching stats from 1982. I'm starting a pitching project from 1982-present, and thought I'd share some early morning musings. Thirty…
Justin Verlander's Velocity Chart
Courtesy of Brooks Baseball , via the essential Getting Blanked , we present Justin Verlander 's velocity chart from last night: While this may not be out of the ordinary for the bionic Justin Verlander, please keep in…
Who Should Win the MVP?
Buster Olney got it started early this morning... In the wide open AL Cy Young race, the frontrunners from here look to be: 1. Felix Hernandez. 2. Verlander. 3. Weaver. As of today. — Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) August…
Heaven Help Tim Lincecum
A couple of weeks ago, in the Czech Republic / Portugal match, Cristiano Ronaldo clanked an open shot off the post at the tail end of the first half. Visibly frustrated, the well known footballer and model looked and…
Checking in on OOPS
A year ago, we looked at leaders in Opponents' OPS , then again with historical perspective . Recapping what we learned last season: Opponents OPS Leaders (ERA Qualifiers) 2000 AL: Pedro Martinez , Red Sox .473 NL:…
Change of Pace
We did this a few times last year, and it seems to have fairly decent predictive qualities for future success. We are looking at which pitchers have the largest discrepancy between their fastball and change-up average…
Royals Add Broxton, Fail to Improve
This past summer, the inside scoop from of LA was that Jonathan Broxton was a country bumpkin. He hated it in LA and would embrace free agency as a chance to relocate to more comfortable surroundings. You know you're a…
The Best of the Scrapheap
The month of August is a good time to keep tabs on Ben Nicholson Smith's continuously updated Players Who Cleared Waivers post. Reading it on the Subway tonight after work, a handful of pitchers stood out: Chris Capuano…
Ugliest Pitcher Wins of 2011
On Friday night, Jered Weaver and Aaron Harang exemplified what pitcher "Wins" are worth. Weaver wound up with a no-decision in his team's 1-0 extra inning victory over Seattle. He pitched 9 shutout innings, scattering…
Our Return to Dontrelle's Bandwagon
Dontrelle Willis is four games into his comeback. Carrying a 3.52 ERA and 0-1 record into his start in Houston on Wednesday night, D-Train fans have reason for optimism. According to Fangraphs , Dontrelle Willis has…
Change of Pace Update
About 12 weeks ago, the day after the Wedding of the Year, we did this study to see which pitchers have the largest difference in average velocity between their fastball and change-up. Today, we are increasing the…
MLB Pitchers with Best Stuff
We did this a few months ago, when there was such a small sample size, it was almost a waste of time. Tonight, we'll be looking at the Fangraphs Pitch Value Leaderboards to determine who has the best stuff. No hyperbole…
Looking Back at Opponents' OPS Leaders
Expanding on our last post , looking at pitchers’ Opponents' OPS, here is a historical look at Oops leaders of this millennium. In our constant quest to find the best pitching in baseball, this time, only pitchers…
Mark Worrell's Pitching Motion
The Orioles called up Mark Worrell for their bullpen the other day. He didn't fare very well in his first game, versus the Red Sox, allowing two hits and a walk, without retiring a batter. I hope he gets another chance…
Is Brandon Morrow Elite?
He shut down the Yankees We've been fans since he was a prospect in the Mariners organization. A flame throwing right-hander who threw strikes with a plus slider? Sure, let's go check him out. He had some arm trouble,…
Grounders and Popups in the First Half
We did this a couple of weeks into the season , and hope to have more meaningful data to share when looking at pitchers from the entire first half of the 2011 season. We're looking at pitchers with a minimum of 50…
Masato Watanabe Hit an Inside-the-Park Homerun off Yu Darvish Today
Once again, thank you to Patrick Newman of NPB Tracker for keeping us informed about Japanese baseball. Regular readers of this space know we are enamored with Yu Darvish. We hope the Cubs eschew the desire to take…
Hyperbole, I has It
Walked into the office this morning to see Hall of Fame writer, Peter Gammons, tweet this : From one who knows pitching:"The command and stuff Pineda gets from that angle is uncanny. He could end up better than Felix"…
Looking for Arms?
The last time we publicly looked for arms , we used our 12-team H2H league as a case study and concluded with the decision to stick with Marc Rzepczynski . He didnn't last long on the team and turned into Carlos…
Time to Shine: Andrew Miller
Earlier today, we started hearing whispers and rumblings that Andrew Miller was going to get called up. He has a contract clause allowing him to opt-out of his deal if he's not in the Majors by June 15th. What we don't…
Why Not Travis Banwart?
The Oakland A's rotation has taken a big hit in the last few days. We've been picking the A's to win this year since the start of the season. They lost Dallas Braden for the season over a month ago. In the past couple…
MLB Bullpen Rankings
In February, we judged every Major League bullpen from the micro perspective . We looked at individual player stats like FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), HR/9, and K:BB ratio from 2008, '09, and '10, plus Marcel…
Pitch Value Leaderboards
No time nor use for rhetoric tonight. The following are current 2011 leader boards for Fangraphs' Pitch Type Linear Weights , Pitch Values. The statistic shown is total runs saved above average. Best Fastball Tim Hudson…
Change of Pace Review
This is not new, but it's alarming how more and more discussion topics must be relevant to the moment, and the moment is constantly shortening. Years ago, we could discuss something that happened in the first week of…
3-Pitch Stars, NL Edition
We're looking at Fangraphs's remarkable pitch value data today in an effort to find pitchers with the highest cumulative score of their three best pitches. Although we're still in the midsts of small sample size…
Grounders and Pop Ups
It's still a bit early for any 2011 statistic to mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but it can be insightful to get a head start looking at certain statistics that aren't printed in The Sporting News . In…
Change of Pace
Which pitchers have had the largest difference in average velocity between their fastball and change-up? According to fangraphs : National League Travis Wood , Reds 90 - 78 = 12.1 Daniel Hudson , Diamondbacks 94 - 83 =…
Throwing Strikes or Effectively Wild?
Warning: This post includes a lot of numbers, some observations, and unfortunately very few conclusions. Last month, we looked at pitchers with extraordinary abilities at missing bats in the zone . Tonight, in the…
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)