A Baseball Weblog

Thursday, August 25, 2011

What to make of Harden? Updated

In July, before Rich Harden's last start against the Yankees, I briefly examined his 2011 whiff rates compared to his previous seasons.  After a terrible 2010, his fastball was back to its normal excellence, but his changeup remained at/slightly under the league average after being one of the best bat-missers in the league in 2008 and 2009.  The same chart is shown below, updated:



It looks like he's on the right track, as the changeup has climbed to just under 40% - not quite his peak, but that kind of rate is still more than 20% better than league average.  As it was earlier in the season, his fastball is looking great.  

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