Pitcher Comparisons: Pedro Martinez vs A.J. Burnett

World Series Game 2 was a very good game. It marked Pedro Martinez’s return to Yankee Stadium (or, more accurately, the return of the “who’s your daddy” chant, since this was Pedro’s first game in the New Yankee Stadium). It also marked what could be considered A.J. Burnett’s “defining moment as a Yankee,” as he pitched 7 brilliant innings when his team needed him most. Martinez pitched well, but Burnett pitched better. Here are the pitcher line scores from yesterday:

Pedro Martinez: 6 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 2 HR, 2 BB, 8K, 54 Game Score
A.J. Burnett: 7 IP, 4 H, R, ER, 0 HR, 2 BB, 9 K, 72 Game Score

Although Burnett was more effective, the two actually pitched quite similarly. Here are pitch results from Burnett, who mixed his “power curveball” in with a combination of four-seam fastballs and two-seam fastballs. I classified two of his pitches as changeups, although it’s possible that they were just two seamers with slightly less velocity.

	Pitch#	Pitch%	Swing%	Whiff%	IWZ%	Chase%	Watch%
FF	25	23.4%	32%	0%	60%	12.5%	53%
FT	35	32.7%	45.7%	25%	77.1%	31.3%	48.1%
CU	45	42.1%	37.8%	41.2%	17.8%	70.6%	37.5%
CH	2	1.9%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
	107	99.1%	38.3%	26.8%	46.7%	43.9%	48%

Martinez worked with a four-seamer, changeup, slider, and curveball. He threw a fifth pitch that looked kind of like it was somewhere between his changeup and fastball, both in terms of velocity and movement. I classified it as a two-seam fastball.

	Pitch#	Pitch%	Swing%	Whiff%	IWZ%	Chase%	Watch%
FF	47	43.9%	31.9%	66.7%	55.3%	26.7%	57.7%
FT	9	8.4%	44.4%	0%	44.4%	50%	50%
CH	22	20.6%	63.6%	50%	40.9%	42.9%	11.1%
SL	16	15%	50%	0%	62.5%	0%	20%
CU	13	12.1%	61.5%	25%	30.8%	75%	50%
	107	100%	45.6%	20.4%	49.5%	36.7%	41.5%

Burnett had the better whiff and chase rates, which makes sense considering he’s more of a strikeout guy than Pedro is these days. Pedro was able to miss bats as well, just not to the extent that Burnett could. Pitch movement data and graphs from both pitchers:

Pedro Martinez

Pitch	Average Speed	Max Speed	Pfx_x	Pfx_z
FF	88.3	90.7	-6.54	8.2
FT	84.53	85.7	-9.58	2.83
CH	76.05	79.1	-11.91	0.38
SL	79.73	81.7	2.7	2.43
CU	71.22	73.8	9.39	-8.75

A.J. Burnett

Pitch	Average Speed	Max Speed	Pfx_x	Pfx_z
FF	93.74	96	-6.72	8.22
FT	93.57	96.2	-10.21	3.38
CU	82.33	84.7	5.68	-6.95
CH	90.35	90.5	-8.99	3.18

It was an impressive performance from both pitchers. Pedro was able to mix up his pitches well enough to keep the Yankees off-balance, even without having nearly as much velocity as Burnett. But, as I said, Burnett was better, and so the World Series will head to Philadelphia tied one game apiece.

Joba's slider

The Yankees bullpen, a distinct strength during the regular season, hasn’t been too sharp this postseason. Although he’s only given up one run, Joba Chamberlain has looked particularly shaky. In 3 1/3 innings over 7 postseason appearances, Joba has allowed 7 hits (that’s a .438 batting average and a .750 slugging percentage for the opposition). Although he does have 3 strikeouts, he doesn’t seem to have much command of his slider. Take a look at his strikezone plot from this postseason (the slider is highlighted in green):




Of the 24 sliders he’s thrown, only four have been low and out of the strikezone. That's not exactly a recipe for success.

Biggest plays of the postseason

Everyone loves a clutch performance, especially in the playoffs. As we all prepare ourselves for the beginning of the World Series between the Phillies and Yankees, I thought it would be fun to look back at the games so far this postseason and see what was the “biggest” play, the play that drastically changed the outlook of the game. What better statistic to use for that than WPA (explanation here). So, courtesy of baseball-reference’s postseason play-by-play logs, here are the top eleven plays of the postseason through the lens of WPA:


1. Jimmy Rollins' double off of Jonathan Broxton - NLCS Game 4 - 0.82 WPA
2. Vladimir Guerrero's single off of Jonathan Papelbon - ALDS Game 3 - 0.57 WPA
3. Alex Rodriguez's homer off of Joe Nathan - ALDS Game 2 - 0.45 WPA
4. Ronnie Belliard's single off of Ryan Franklin - NLDS Game 2 - 0.44 WPA
5. Alex Rodriguez's homer off of Brian Fuentes - ALCS Game 2 - 0.43 WPA
6. Jeff Mathis's double off of Alfredo Aceves - ALCS Game 3 - 0.43 WPA
7. Ryan Howard's double off of Huston Street - NLDS Game 4 - 0.38 WPA
8. Mark Teixeira's homer off of Jose Mijares - ALDS Game 2 - 0.35 WPA
9. Mark Loretta's single off of Ryan Franklin - NLDS Game 2 - 0.34 WPA
10. Jayson Werth's double off of Huston Street - NLDS Game 4 - 0.34 WPA
11. Yorvit Torrealba's double off of Ryan Madson - NLDS Game 4 - 0.34 WPA

So, Jimmy Rollins' double off Jonathan Broxton in the 4th game of the NLCS was the "clutch-iest" hit of the postseason so far. Not a big surprise, since that one hit took the Phillies from one out away from a disappointing loss (and a 2-2 series tie) to a thrilling comeback win (and one win away from the World Series). Here is an HTML of the spreadsheet, which includes detailed play descriptions.

Greetings

Welcome to the Don't Bring In The Lefty weblog. I'm a big baseball fan, and hopefully I can convey my passion of the game through this blog. I like numbers, so I'm quite certain that there will be plenty of statistically-oriented posts here. One of my goals for this blog is to successfully use modern statistics and technology (PITCHf/x!) to try to answer questions that we may have or refute claims that we may have heard. For example, is Tim Lincecum's apparent loss of velocity actually having an effect on his performance? Did Mark Teixeira actually see fewer fastballs before Alex Rodriguez returned from his hip surgery? (By the way, the question about Teixeira was already covered and answered earlier in the year.)
That's all I've got for now, so I'm going to sign off. Cheers!