Opening Night, 2010: CC Sabathia vs. Josh Beckett

It's here! After the always excruciatingly long wait, real baseball is back. And what better way to kick it off than with the Yankees and Red Sox dueling at Fenway. Slated to toe the slab are CC Sabathia for the defending World Champions and Josh Beckett for the Sawx. As is typically my wont for these things, I have prepared a PITCHf/x profile (mostly numbers, since there's not a whole lot for me to say) for these two aces so we can get a quick look at their stuff before heading into the season. I'll start with Sabathia.

CC SABATHIA

The big man from California had an extremely successful first season in the Bronx, winning 19 games in the regular season and adding two gems in ALCS against the Angels. If you're a hard throwing lefty that can keep the ball in the strikezone, you've got an inside track to success in the big leagues. Here are the splits from 2009.

Pitch Data

	Average Speed	Max Speed	pfx_x	pfx_z
FF	94.32	98.2	4.33	9.52
FT	93.72	96.5	9.05	6.95
CH	86.46	89.9	9.01	5.97
SL	81.44	85.0	-5.36	-0.61
CU	77.84	81.3	-2.38	-2.17

Pitch Results

	Pitch#	Pitch%	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Wide Zone Rate	Zone Whiff Rate	Chase Rate	Watch Rate
FF	1585	44.6%	.447	.131	.522	.099	.260	.367
FT	599	16.9%	.476	.161	.571	.133	.207	.339
CH	663	18.7%	.623	.400	.555	.357	.288	.201
SL	596	16.8%	.483	.385	.466	.221	.434	.414
CU	110	3.1%	.155	.294	.536	.231	.235	.780
	3553	99.9%	.482	.245	.528	.185	.287	.349

	SLGCON	RSv/100	xRSv/100
FF	.474	0.68	-0.00
FT	.400	0.77	-0.20
CH	.350	3.10	1.94
SL	.692	0.03	1.38
CU	.429	0.10	0.32
	.461	1.02	0.57

Count-Based

	First	Ahead	Behind	Full
FF	46.2%	38.9%	54.1%	53.5%
FT	23.1%	14.2%	17.8%	5.7%
CH	11.9%	18.9%	21.7%	30.2%
SL	9.9%	26.8%	5.6%	10.7%
CU	8.9%	1.3%	0.7%	0.0%

Sabathia has a lot of confidence in his changeup, as evidenced by the high percentage of pitches in all counts. While groundballs are not really his forte, he got a ton of them off of his sinking fastball.

JOSH BECKETT

Sabathia's right-handed counterpart is Josh Beckett. He, too, has electric stuff.

Pitch Data

	Average Speed	Max Speed	pfx_x	pfx_z
FF	94.34	97.7	-6.91	9.24
FT	94.24	97.4	-10.10	5.69
CU	77.35	80.7	7.18	-5.48
CH	88.99	92.7	-8.35	2.72
FC	91.73	94.8	-0.73	7.39

Pitch Results

	Pitch#	Pitch%	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Wide Zone Rate	Zone Whiff Rate	Chase Rate	Watch Rate
FF	1126	33.5%	.438	.154	.506	.128	.318	.411
FT	847	25.2%	.470	.101	.570	.068	.334	.451
CU	858	25.5%	.373	.331	.512	.244	.347	.524
CH	336	10.0%	.574	.285	.426	.224	.399	.189
FC	197	5.9%	.594	.188	.477	.115	.333	.181
	3364	100%	.452	.197	.514	.146	.340	.420

	SLGCON	RSv/100	xRSv/100
FF	.600	0.70	0.62
FT	.522	0.67	0.98
CU	.485	0.63	0.15
CH	.349	1.86	0.95
FC	.571	-1.33	-0.01
	.514	0.67	0.59

Count-Based

	First	Ahead	Behind	Full
FF	45.4%	25.5%	35.7%	41.1%
FT	23.2%	23.5%	30.4%	31.9%
CU	19.0%	33.4%	17.9%	11.7%
CH	8.5%	11.2%	9.4%	8.6%
FC	4.0%	6.4%	6.7%	6.7%

Like Sabathia, Beckett gets more grounders on the two-seamer, but sustained a higher overall groundball rate of just under 50%, well above the league average of ~43.5%. Though he did not miss as many bats as Sabathia did last year, he was able to make up for it with a lot of called strikes on the curveball.

BOTTOM LINE

I didn't really need to roll out all of these numbers to say that the first day of the regular season will feature a spectacular pitching matchup. It's always fun when two ace-type pitchers go head-to-head, and when one is on the Yankees and the other is on the Red Sox, it's even more fun. So on Sunday night, sit back, relax, and enjoy the beginning of what will surely be another spectacular season of baseball.

Gameday PITCHf/x data is from MLB Advanced Media; it can be easily accessed via this tool.