Say hello to Gio

After taking the first two games of the series against the Athletics, the Yankees will go up against Gio Gonzalez in the Wednesday matinee.  Gonzalez is not as young as Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, as this is his age 26 season.  He's another groundball pitcher, though not as extreme as his younger rotation mates.  He'll walk more guys and get more strikeouts.  His strikeout pitch is an 80 mph power curveball that has a huge groundball rate.  I'm going to make this one quick, so here are your Gio Gonzalez spin charts, pitch results table, and plate locations (in tabular form this time) for 2011.

	mph	#	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	Ball Rate	nsCall Rate	GB Rate
Sinker	91.8	350	.406	.162	.491	.409	.313	.491
Fastball	92.7	349	.427	.242	.387	.390	.320	.286
Curveball	80.1	356	.435	.329	.396	.410	.274	.667
Changeup	84.0	57	.263	.457	.456	.579	.214	.429
		1112	.415	.254	.426	.412	.296	.480

High OZ	10.9%	20.3%	5.6%	1.8%	11.7%
High IZ	22.6%	24.6%	11.8%	8.8%	19.1%
Middle	33.4%	35.5%	27.8%	17.5%	31.5%
Low IZ	23.1%	13.8%	19.9%	36.8%	19.9%
Low OZ	10.0%	5.7%	34.8%	35.1%	17.9%
	SI	FF	CU	CH	ALL

vs LHB	Inside OZ	Inside IZ	Middle	Outside IZ	Outside OZ
SI	8.0%	36.0%	26.0%	20.0%	10.0%
FF	1.4%	7.2%	20.9%	37.4%	33.1%
CU	3.8%	9.6%	26.9%	24.0%	35.6%
ALL	3.4%	13.0%	23.9%	29.7%	30.0%

vs RHB	Inside OZ	Inside IZ	Middle	Outside IZ	Outside OZ
SI	0.3%	10.3%	26.0%	40.0%	23.3%
FF	25.2%	29.5%	27.6%	13.8%	3.8%
CU	16.7%	24.6%	36.9%	13.1%	8.7%
CH	1.8%	21.1%	36.8%	26.3%	14.0%
ALL	11.8%	20.4%	30.5%	24.1%	13.2%

His curveball is probably his best pitch, but his fastball also gets a lot of whiffs.  He can be wild, as he's walked four and a half per nine innings over his career, but he's still got nasty stuff.  The way this series has gone so far, though, facing good pitchers means nothing to the Yankees.