Don't Bring In The Lefty

O'Connor PITCHf/x

2011-11-20T00:16:00.001-05:00

The Yankees recently picked up southpaw Mike O'Connor on a minor league deal. O'Connor, who is now 31, has pitched in 35 major league games; he made appearances for the Nationals in 2006 and 2008 and spent some time with the Mets last year. Only one of his major league games since 2006 has been a start; the Yankees will look at him strictly as a reliever with Damaso Marte and Pedro Feliciano going down with injuries.

We have 14 games and 14 2/3 innings' worth of PITCHf/x data on O'Connor. As little as overall performance metrics mean with this kind of sample, individual pitch type metrics mean even less, so I won't spend too much time on that stuff.

#     Whiff%  Ball%   GB%     
256     22%     46%     33%

Pitch   #      mph      pfx_x   pfx_z
   FF    162     87      +7.6    +9.8
   SL    35      81      +0.5    +3.0
   CU    32      74      -5.1    -6.0
   CH    27      77      +9.0    +9.4

O'Connor's arsenal consists of a tailing fastball, a tight/cutter-ish slider, a curve, and a change that looks similar to his fastball but is 10 mph slower.
He's been fastball/slider recently. He didn't throw any changeups this year, despite facing righties in 14 of his 29 plate appearances. He only threw two curves.
He looks like an extreme flyball pitcher. His groundball rate in 105 2006 innings (BIS data) was 36%.

Soft-tosser, lots of walks, lots of flyballs.

PITCHf/x data for Brackman and Betances

2011-09-23T00:39:00.004-04:00

Finally, Andrew Brackman and Dellin Betances got to make their major league debuts. They both pitched in Thursday’s 15-8 Yankees loss, with varying levels of success. Brackman pitched an inning and a third scoreless with a few hits and a walk, while Betances walked four and hit a batter in just two thirds of an inning. After plenty of hype, we can look at some PITCHf/x data for these guys.

ANDREW BRACKMAN
(charts are for horizontal/vertical movement and horizontal movement/velocity)

	mph	#	LHB	RHB	Ball	Called	Whiff	Foul	X
Cutter	91.5	24	11	13	7	4	3	4	6
Curveball	75.6	7	3	4	5	1	0	1	0
Slider	84.6	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0

Brackman was definitely throwing a fastball with cutting action (both horizontal movement in on lefties and sink, a la Rivera). This might be his cutter grip, but it's hard to tell on that photo. There is photo evidence of a two-seam fastball as well, though he didn't throw one yesterday (also, that's an old pic).

DELLIN BETANCES

	mph	#	LHB	RHB	Ball	Called	Whiff	Foul	X
Fastball	93.3	22	13	9	16	2	0	2	2
Curveball	83.3	4	3	1	3	0	0	1	0

As you can see by the pitch distribution, Betances had no control. Of his 26 pitches, 19 were balls. He showed a straight four-seam fastball (grip) and a hard curveball that he throws with a knuckle grip. In terms of velocity and movement, it's similar to A.J. Burnett's.

I'll try to find some game photos from Thursday (doesn't look to be anything available at the time of this writing), particularly to see what Brackman's doing with his fastball.

Moore pitch grips (with video!)

2011-09-22T15:18:00.003-04:00

After yesterday's double-clinching celebration, the Yankees get to face one baseball's best prospects on the mound today, Matt Moore. This will be Moore's first start; the 22 year old got two big league relief appearances under his belt last week. I wrote about Moore at Fangraphs the other day, and since he hasn't pitched since then, everything there is still relevant today. As something of an addendum to that, I've linked in this post to pitch grips of Moore's four-seam fastball, circle changeup, and spike curveball, courtesy of Four-Seam Images (taken during minor league games from this year). When analyzing and researching pitchers, it's always good to get a look at how the pitch is actually held, so hopefully this is informative. For future posts on specific pitchers, I'll include pitch grips whenever possible.

**EDIT**: Mike Fast just sent me this video of Moore (from 2010) discussing his pitch grips and mechanics. It's very interesting!

A blip on the radar

2011-09-17T17:31:00.003-04:00

We’ve grown accustomed to seeing David Robertson in the 93-94 mph range this year, more than 2 mph faster than he where he was at when he first came up in 2008. In the 8th inning of yesterday’s game, he didn’t bring his velocity with him, averaging under 91 mph for the first time all year:

In Saturday’s one-run game, Joe Girardi opted to use Rafael Soriano in the 8th instead of Robertson, a technique he has not employed much this summer. Is Robertson fatigued? Injured? Was Friday just an anomaly? We’ll see.

What to make of Harden? Updated

2011-08-25T10:00:00.002-04:00

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.

Athletics vs Yankees, game one: Brandon McCarthy

2011-08-23T15:10:00.002-04:00

Taking the mound for the Athletics tonight against the Yankees is righty Brandon McCarthy. You might remember him as a top prospect with the White Sox about seven or eight years ago or so. Back then he was a power pitcher with a four-seam/curveball combination, but he's completely made himself as a sinker/cutter groundball guy with much better control (career low 3.7% walks per plate appearance, fourth best among pitchers with 100+ innings pitched). Dave Allen had a good look at McCarthy a few weeks ago, so I'll make this brief. The charts and metrics that you often see on this site are applied below to McCarthy's pitches.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing%	Whiff%	Ball%	nsCall%*	GB%
Sinker	90.9	697	42%	42%	44%	8%	31%	44%	53%
Cutter	89.9	511	25%	37%	58%	20%	28%	35%	37%
Curveball	79.8	368	24%	20%	49%	18%	33%	35%	51%
Changeup	83.7	58	7%	0%	28%	19%	62%	14%	50%
Fastball	90.7	35	3%	1%	63%	14%	31%	15%	13%
		1669			49%	15%	32%	38%	47%

*non-swing called rate; called strikes divided by called strikes plus balls
The four-seamers are rare, and some may be misclassifications. The ones I identified were often thrown in two-strike counts.

Strikes with everything but the changeup. McCarthy's not a bat-misser, but that's just fine. His sinker looks like a pretty good groundball pitch, as does the curve.

The next graphs show plate locations split up into 5 by 5 quadrants (OZ = out of zone, IZ = in zone).

The sinker, cutter, and curve stay low, while the four-seamer is elevated. The cutter stays in on lefties and away from righties, while he's shown a propensity to keep the sinker away from both lefties and righties.

This post wouldn't be complete without a mention of McCarthy's Twitter feed. He seems like a really nice and thoughtful guy (with a sense of humor). He's been kind enough to respond to my questions/comments when they've come up, so I certainly appreciate that.

Hit graphs

2011-08-15T18:37:00.003-04:00

This is presented without much explanation. Below is a chart of the Yankees' starting lineup (and some prominent part-time players) in hit graph form.

Derek Jeter's obviously the king, as he reached 3,000 hits earlier this year. At 2,762 for his career, Alex Rodriguez looks like he's got a handle on entering the 3K club as well. Two guys who have really leveled are Eric Chavez and Andruw Jones, who were on the fast track before being hit by injuries/general ineffectiveness. Robinson Cano is a hit-machine, though he he's not quite at Jeter's pace through his age 28 season. Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson are similar in their hit profiles and aren't on any sort of special pace. Jorge Posada is notable here as a good player who's been able to cut it for a long time (notice the slight bump at 2007, when he got a career best 171 hits). I put Eduardo Nunez on the graph since he's played a lot this year, but he's no more than a blip on the radar here as a second-year role player.

Who is Garrett Richards?

2011-08-10T12:54:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I don't really know. The Angels' rookie is set to make his major league debut against the Yankees tonight, coming straight up from Double-A. The 23-year-old has seen his strikeout rate drop from over 1 per inning to about 6 and a half per 9 this year, but he should be a big-time ground ball guy. We actually have a little bit of PITCHf/x data on him from the 2010 Cactus League; Harry Pavlidis covered it for The Hardball Times last year. In short, Harry found a 93 mph sinker, 93 mph cutter (maybe it's a four-seamer that gets natural cutting action), 87 mph slider, 85 mph changeup.

I asked Sam Miller, who writes about the Angels for the Orange County Register, if he could provide any further scouting on Richards:

"4-seamer in mid/upper 90s to righties; 2-seamer to lefties gets tons of grounders; occasional plus slider; so-so curve and change ... strikeout rate nothing special, but he can get in a strikeout roll and do double-digits. Very loose comp: Chatwood w/control."

Tyler Chatwood, by the way, is set to make the start on Thursday against Bartolo Colon. As for Richards, his stuff looks pretty nasty. I'll probably have a post on THT Live tomorrow with a PITCHf/x recap of his debut.

Also, read Miller's post on Richards from this morning.

Pitch breakdown from Nova's gem

2011-08-04T23:32:00.000-04:00

Fair to say that Ivan Nova doesn't want to go back to the minor leagues? With his back against the wall in a battle with Phil Hughes for the last rotation spot, Nova turned in the best start of his career. Over 7 2/3 innings, he allowed 1 run on 6 hits. Even more impressive is that he struck out 10 and walked not a single batter. Some quick math tells me that's a 73 game score.

As he did in his two other superb 2011 starts (6/20 against Cincy, 7/30 against Baltimore), Nova relied on his new slider today. He threw 25, which was the most of any start aside from the start against the Reds, in which he threw 26 sliders. Pitch results for all of his four pitches are in the table below.

	mph	vs LHB	vs RHB	Ball	Called	Whiff	Foul	In Play
Fastball	93.9	23	37	21	12	3	8	13
Slider	87.1	7	18	4	2	11	5	1
Curveball	81.0	8	4	5	3	0	1	2
Changeup	88.2	1	1	1	0	0	1	0
		39	60	31	17	14	15	16

For some more reference, I've included a color-coded chart of Nova's spin deflection (pitch movement) from tonight's game. His slider gets unusual movement (it actually moves armside or "backs up"), and because of this, Gameday often labels it as a fastball, change, or cutter. It really is looking like a typical cutter, since it has plenty of velocity and not a whole lot of break. Nova calls it a slider, so I'll stick with that label for now.

Remember that these are from the catcher's perspective and are in inches of movement relative to a theoretical spinless pitch.

Another new curveball from Hughes

2011-08-03T13:09:00.001-04:00

Phil Hughes had what was probably his best start of 2011 yesterday, throwing six shutout innings while walking none and striking out four. If it hadn't been for the rain during the seventh inning, Hughes certainly would have pitched more, since he only had 66 pitches in his outing. In addition to hitting 95 mph, something that we had not seen this year, Hughes unleashed a new variation on his curveball, which he seems to be constantly tweaking. The first one he threw was a nasty one with two strikes to A.J. Pierzynski that registered at 82 mph, which is harder than Hughes has ever thrown his curve in the majors. Hughes confirmed after the game that it was indeed a hard curveball, as opposed to the slider he incorporated in March and ditched after two starts. This is already the fourth time there's been some detectable change in Hughes' curveball:

During Hughes' dead-arm period in April, he was using the same spike grip on his curve that he had in 2010, but his lack of arm strength only allowed him to throw the ball in the low-70s, more than 4 mph softer than his 2010 average.
After his reinstatement from the DL on July 7th, Hughes started throwing his curveball harder, though not as hard as he did in 2010.
Before his July 17th start against the Blue Jays, Hughes announced that he would be switching to a new grip without a spiked finger in order to get a tighter break and more velocity, though the velocity didn't change a whole lot over his next three starts.
Yesterday, Hughes showed a pitch that looks more like a power curve, averaging around 80 mph.

This chart shows the vertical spin deflection (the number of inches the ball drops relative to a spinless pitch) plotted against velocity for Hughes's curveball this year. You can see that the new grip (starting July 17th) gave the pitch less movement without much added velocity until yesterday.

What's strange is that the pitch he was throwing yesterday looks like what he was trying to throw since the 17th, but the velocity spike didn't come until now. My guess is that Hughes sticks with this new variation of the curve, since he's said that he's been trying to add velocity to it.

Arrieta PITCHf/x

2011-07-31T01:48:00.000-04:00

25-year old Jake Arrieta will take the mound for the Orioles as they try to salvage a split against the Yankees. You can view Arrieta's season in a number of different ways: 10 wins on a terrible team is a good thing, 5.12 ERA is pretty frightening. Even more frightening is his 5.29 FIP, due to a monstrous home run rate. xFIP likes him more, pegging him at 4.32, which is serviceable. Arrieta has a full five pitch mix, with good velocity and a huge curveball. His slider can look like a cutter sometimes. Enjoy the charts and graphs.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Chase	Watch	Ball	nsCall	GB%
Fastball	92.5	598	.293	.352	.415	.133	.463	.293	.444	.380	.351	.349
Sinker	92.4	522	.300	.249	.439	.122	.398	.325	.389	.420	.253	.479
Slider	86.1	318	.094	.267	.519	.273	.428	.357	.265	.355	.261	.483
Curveball	77.5	297	.193	.113	.374	.324	.455	.296	.533	.357	.430	.469
Changeup	86.6	144	.120	.020	.368	.208	.271	.276	.385	.507	.198	.409
		1879			.429	.190	.423	.312	.411	.393	.312	.430

The midseason Nova profile

2011-07-30T12:00:00.000-04:00

As Joe Girardi put it, Ivan Nova will make his return to the majors in the tonight "unless something freaky happens." Nova's had his ups and downs in his time as the Yankees' nominal fourth starter in 2011, and overall it would be fair to say that he did a serviceable job in the back-end of the rotation. As a little refresher on Nova, here are the charts and graphs that you typically see around these parts.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Chase	Watch	Ball	nsCall	GB Rate
Fastball	92.3	942	.623	.650	.469	.084	.486	.269	.319	.355	.332	.564
Curveball	79.9	371	.257	.243	.369	.234	.372	.275	.471	.434	.312	.560
Slider	84.1	88	.026	.098	.398	.514	.193	.366	.471	.466	.226	.625
Changeup	85.8	81	.094	.009	.469	.158	.506	.225	.293	.395	.256	.412
		1482			.440	.143	.441	.277	.277	.383	.316	.557

Nova has good tools, with his primary offering being a four-seam fastball that can get into the mid-90s with natural sink. Despite his cross-seam grip and propensity to keep it up in the zone, the four-seamer generates plenty of ground balls. His curveball is hard and has plenty of break, but it doesn't elicit nearly enough swings and whiffs for the amount of times it's thrown for a ball. His changeup is pretty much a show-me pitch at this point. I've mentioned his slider a few times on this site, and it still looks like an intriguing pitch with plenty of potential given that he keeps it down and has been able to miss bats with it. He's brought it back into his repertoire after exiling it from April 19th to May 28th, though he still prefers the curve as his main offspeed pitch.

No doubt, this will be a big start for Nova. Phil Hughes does not look like the pitcher he was last year, and if Nova makes a good impression tonight, he could be looked at as someone to take Hughes's rotation spot.

Burnett's adjustment on the mound

2011-07-30T02:28:00.001-04:00

After yesterday's game, the Star Ledger's Marc Carig noted on Twitter that A.J. Burnett had shifted towards the third base side of the rubber in order to get a better angle to the plate. The chart below, with "release" indicating the location of the ball at 50 feet from home plate, confirms this:

Only 2011 home games were used in order to limit the amount of park calibration variation. You can see that his most recent start is a big horizontal release outlier, as he's shifted about a foot towards third base (or "negatively," since this is from the catcher's perspective) from where he usually is.

Hey, Doug Fister

2011-07-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

The Mariners haven't won since July 5th. They stumbled into New York and now are owners of a sixteen game losing streak. Tonight, they will turn to Doug Fister, who has pitched well but has not much to show for it - he has a 3.30 ERA, but only a 3-11 record. His best skill is his ability to prevent free passes, as his 2 walks per 9 innings is one of the best rates in the league. He's striking out a few more guys this year than last year, but that's not really his game. Isolated metrics for his five pitches are below.

He's primarily a sinkerballer these days, reserving the four-seam cheese for only a few occurrences per game.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Chase	Ball	nsCall	GB Rate
Sinker	89.4	1025	.442	.609	.471	.093	.508	.357	.293	.446	.509
Fastball	89.3	149	.073	.077	.349	.212	.403	.258	.503	.227	.261
Cutter	86.1	337	.183	.154	.570	.177	.418	.413	.341	.207	.398
Curveball	74.9	285	.163	.125	.323	.283	.512	.266	.344	.492	.385
Changeup	82.5	186	.143	.036	.557	.233	.405	.436	.341	.232	.479
		1954			.467	.152	.479	.358	.327	.385	.455

Grounders come from the sinker, which is located higher in the zone than the typical sinker:

As for horizontal locations, the sinker, curve, and change are aimed gloveside, while the four-seamer and cutter go armside:

None of his pitches stand out as plus offerings, but his ability to get the ball over the plate consistently makes him at the very least a league average starter.

What to make of Harden?

2011-07-23T10:53:00.002-04:00

Rich Harden is back with the Athletics, and he will take on A.J. Burnett and the Yankees this afternoon. After beginning the year on the DL, he's made three July starts, pitching to a 5 ERA but with much better peripherals. He's coming off of a terrible year in Arlington in which he lost his ability to strike hitters out while issuing a career high walk rate. He's looking a lot better in his first three starts this year, but his patented changeup is not fooling hitters like it once was. Considering the strikeout is such a huge part of Harden's game, here are the whiff rates on his two-pitch* arsenal dating back to 2008.

*he sometimes throws a two-seamer, but it's rare. Also of note is that his changeup looks more like a traditional slider than a changeup.

Through his first three starts, the fastball is back to its 2008-2009 rate, but the changeup is still about where it was last year. In response to the question posed as the title of this post: it's impossible to know this early in his season. We'll need more data to determine whether the A's are getting the 2008-2009 Rich Harden or the 2010 one.

Musing on David Robertson's changeup

2011-07-19T14:09:00.001-04:00

For the 8th inning of the Yankees' 5-4 win over the Rays on Monday, David Robertson came on and struck out two batters, something that is fairly typical for him. However, both strikeouts came on a changeup, which is the least frequently used of Robertson's three pitches. Given that his shutdown eighth was a big moment in the game and many people were watching, now is probably a good time to discuss D-Rob's change:

Robertson has thrown 20 changeups this year, and 19 of them have been to left-handed batters (the exception was to Nelson Cruz on April 15th).
It might not sound like a lot, but it's plenty more than he threw last year (five all year, and just one from June through August).
At just under 87 mph, it's only about six off of his fastball, but it does have about eight inches more armside tail (something batters are not used to seeing from Robertson, who throws a cutting four-seam fastball and does not use a sinker).
He doesn't like using it in save situations; he usually only throws the change when behind, tied, or with a big lead (more on this later).

Like I said, Robertson has only thrown 20 changeups this year, so take the numbers below for what they're worth; basically, he misses with it a lot, and when he doesn't, batters do.

mph	#	LHB	RHB	Ball	Called	Swinging	Foul	In Zone	In Play
86.8	20	19	1	11	1	5	3	5	0

Now returning to the fourth bullet-point: Robertson has shown an unwillingness to stray from his two more comfortable pitches in save situations. The chart below shows the situation in which he threw each of his changeups.

Date	Inning	Balls	Strikes	Score (ahead/behind)
4/2	6	0	0	A-6
4/2	6	1	0	A-6
4/15	5	2	0	B-3
5/7	7	0	1	B-2
5/7	7	1	0	B-2
5/7	7	2	1	B-2
5/7	7	3	2	B-2
5/14	7	1	0	B-6
5/15	7	0	0	B-1
5/15	7	0	1	B-2
5/17	7	1	0	A-3
5/28	7	0	1	Tie
5/28	7	1	0	Tie
5/28	7	0	0	Tie
5/28	8	0	0	Tie
6/16	8	1	1	Tie
6/29	8	0	0	A-3
7/18	8	1	2	Tie
7/18	8	0	2	Tie
7/18	8	1	2	Tie

Only two of his changeups have been thrown in save situations, though that doesn't necessarily mean that he's not comfortable using it in big spots, given his reliance on it in tied games such as yesterday's. He's proven that he really doesn't need more than two pitches to be lights-out as a reliever, but being able to show the changeup to lefties, as he did yesterday, will make him nastier than he already is.

Cobb f/x

2011-07-18T10:58:00.000-04:00

After getting beaten up in the first two games of the second half, the Yankees were able to salvage a series-split with Blue Jays in Canada. They'll now begin an important four-game series with the Rays at Tropicana Field - if Tampa has a poor week, they could be forced to become sellers at the trade deadline. The set will kick off with A.J. Burnett getting the ball against Rays' rookie Alex Cobb. Cobb, who will be 24 in October, has been posting good minor league numbers, including a strikeout rate over 9 per 9 innings and a walk rate at about 2 and a half per 9 innings since 2010. He's been in Triple A for most of this year, but has made five of his starts for the big club.

Cobb is working with four pitches this year. He'll throw two types of 91 mph fastballs, one that's pretty straight (four-seam grip) and another that sinks and tails (two-seam grip). His primary offspeed pitch is a mid-80s splitter (picture here) that often dives straight down but sometimes moves more like a sinker (the few that appear to be cutting are due to some calibration offsets at Tropicana Field). He also has a high 70s curveball in his arsenal. He hasn't been great at missing bats, and his control is suspect. He will, however, get the ball on the ground with all of his pitches but the four-seamer. Charts and graphs are below; click the graphs to enlarge them.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Ball	nsCall	GB%
Fastball	91.2	150	.275	.372	.347	.096	.427	.420	.357	.269
Sinker	91.0	78	.183	.157	.436	.118	.397	.359	.364	.529
Splitter	85.0	155	.381	.298	.587	.242	.381	.329	.203	.472
Curveball	77.8	77	.161	.174	.338	.115	.481	.416	.373	.667
		460			.441	.167	.415	.378	.323	.457

Looking at pitch heights split into five different zones (below the zone, low in the zone, middle, high in the zone, above the zone), we can see that Cobb keeps his four-seamer up, his sinker a little lower, and his offspeed stuff low.

Hellickson stuff preview

2011-07-08T11:03:00.003-04:00

Tonight, Jeremy Hellickson will take on the Yankees, who are enduring something of a mini-slump before the break. Hellickson is a rookie with a great minor league track record and a good ERA this year despite unspectacular peripherals. You could call him a three-pitch pitcher, but more accurately, he throws six. I have five ID'd: a four-seam fastball, a straight change, a curve, and some rare sinkers and cutters. His fastballs are extremely difficult to distinguish; there are probably some inaccuracies surrounding the splits I made between four-seam/sinker/cutter. He's predominately four-seamers, though. The other gray area is around his curveball, which is slurvey and often ranges in movement and velocity. Hellickson has said that he throws a harder version of the curve with two strikes; for now, I'm lumping all of breaking pitches into a curve group.

Onto the details of his stuff ...

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Ball	Called	GB%
Fastball	90.6	822	.592	.472	.316	.135	.398	.416	.210	.296
Changeup	80.1	519	.317	.351	.520	.359	.370	.316	.079	.285
Curveball	74.7	195	.074	.174	.354	.362	.369	.467	.149	.103
		1551			.391	.259	.386	.389	.157	.275

He's an extreme fly-ball guy. Some changeups are very good at getting ground balls; Hellickson's is not. It's slow and doesn't sink a whole lot, which leads to plenty of missed bats but not many ground balls. The change is certainly his best pitch, regardless, as he can throw it for strikes and pick up whiffs. Hellickson is very comfortable using the change against right-handed batters. The slurve has a nice swing-and-miss rate, but it's thrown for a ball quite a bit. His fastball doesn't look too impressive; it's probably best used to get over the plate early in the count to set up the changeup, but it is worse than average in zone rate and balls per pitch.

Hellickson's K/BB ratio is down to 1.7 after being consistently above 3 in the minor leagues. He's having trouble locating his fastball, and it's leading to way too many free passes (3.4 per 9 this year, with an unspectacular strikeout rate of 5.9). His changeup does look very good, though.

Here is a link to a 2010 article about Hellickson's repertoire.

Putting Greinke's clunker in context

2011-06-29T10:34:00.002-04:00

The Yankees knocked around Zack Greinke last night, scoring seven runs against him in only two innings. Probably the most unusual thing about Greinke's brief (shortest start since 2007) outing was the number of free passes he allowed. In his 2 innings and 16 batters faced, Greinke allowed three walks and hit a batter - all of this without striking out a single batter. This coming from a pitcher with a K/BB near 9 coming into yesterday's game. Strikeouts and free passes are two things that are directly in the pitcher's control, so it's a good (albeit incomplete) thing to look at for evaluating a pitcher's success. Tom Tango's kwERA (strikeout-walk ERA) is an ERA estimator that only uses strikeouts and free passes (walks - intentional walks + hit batsmen) as inputs and converts the differential into an ERA-like number. The chart below shows Greinke's kwERA by start, with the horizontal axis being the NL average ERA.

You can see that before yesterday, Greinke hadn't had a worse-than-average game by this measurement all season. Greinke's still leads his league in kwERA by a lot at 2.12; Clayton Kershaw is next at 2.54.

Nova slides to success

2011-06-20T23:35:00.003-04:00

Ivan Nova just wrapped up the best start of his career a little while ago. He pitched eight shutout innings (a career best), striking out seven (tying a career best), and most impressively, not allowing a single free pass (another career best). In addition, he allowed 16 of his 21 balls in play on the ground (the other five were line drives). He went to work with a different approach than in previous starts - for only the second time all year (and the first time since April 9th), Nova used his slider as his primary off-speed pitch. He threw 26 sliders this evening, making up 25% of his 105 total pitches. He used it in different situations, throwing it on the first pitch (five times) and in strikeout counts (eight times, including once on a full count). Most of them were thrown to righties, though lefties saw two. The breakdown for all of Nova's pitches is below:

Ball Called Foul Swinging In Play
FF 17 11 15 1* 15
SL 11 6 3 6 0
CU 7 0 3 3 1
CH 0 0 1 0 5

*missed bunt

What's very encouraging is that Nova was able to get both called and swinging strikes with his slider. After tonight's performance, Nova's slider whiff rate (per swing) for the year is at a gaudy 60%. That will almost certainly go down, but while it's working, it's good to see him increase usage of it.

A slightly different Ramiro Pena?

2011-06-16T14:14:00.001-04:00

Ramiro Pena was recalled from Triple-A on Tuesday following Derek Jeter's calf injury, and got his first start of the season at third base on Wednesday. He had a big day, collecting two hits and a no-doubt, 401-foot home run, his first homer since September of 2009. You might have noticed that he looked different this year than in previous years - mostly, that's due to a new batting stance. Click the links (2009, 2011) to see how Pena's stance has changed since his last major league home run. You can see that previously, Pena had a much more open batting stance, and now both feet are pretty much equidistant from the plate; he might even be a little bit closed. This is much more speculation, but Pena looks like he's gained some weight since last year, adding to the feeling of "who is that guy?" when he stepped up to the plate yesterday.

I don't know enough about batting stance and mechanics to qualify my comments on this, but one can't help but wonder if this new stance is paying previously unseen dividends for Pena. In 215 plate appearances at Triple-A Scranton this year, Pena hit 4 home runs - by no means a big number, but interesting considering he'd never hit more than two in a full season. His isolated power of .135 is also career high; he's never been above .100 for a professional season. I don't think it's logical to make a big deal out of it yet, but combined with Pena's new swing, the power increase is certainly something to keep an eye on.

Yanks face Holland in game two

2011-06-15T13:45:00.002-04:00

Southpaw Derek Holland will be on the mound for the Rangers tonight. Like yesterday's starter, Alexi Ogando, Holland is young and throws hard. After being with the team in different roles since 2009, Holland, who is now 24, is finally getting his first chance to start consistently. He's had mixed results, posting a 4.41 ERA but a much more impressive 3.52 xFIP in his 81 2/3 innings so far. Graphs and metrics for his five pitches are below.

	mph	#	LHB%	RHB%	Swing	Whiff	Zone	nsCall	GB
Fastball	93.4	522	.477	.476	.395	.184	.475	.377	.479
Sinker	93.4	239	.277	.196	.531	.157	.527	.339	.623
Slider	82.8	181	.223	.143	.564	.353	.309	.152	.514
Changeup	85.4	154	.023	.185	.468	.125	.597	.341	.314
Curveball	75.7	128	.037	.147	.313	.175	.492	.386	.316
		1224			.447	.201	.478	.341	.479

Holland's slider is probably his best strikeout pitch, though is fastball looks pretty good too. Some of this is camera issues (pfx_x in Texas is shifted by a few inches), but the slider does appear to back-up most of the time (it moves gloveside as opposed to armside). His curve moves more like a typical slider but is thrown in the 70s; it doesn't get whiffs, but he can drop it in for a called strike. Also noticeable is that while he throws all five pitches to righties, he's really only four-seam/two-seam/slider against lefties.

Ogando preview

2011-06-14T12:42:00.002-04:00

After a successful series against the Indians, the Yankees will welcome the Texas Rangers to town for a three-game series beginning tonight. For the second time this year, the pitching matchup will be Alexi Ogando versus CC Sabathia. Ogando's story has probably been told a lot by now - converted outfielder, debuted in the bullpen last year, moved to the rotation, and has yet to lose a game all year. He seems like a pretty tough customer. Some bulletpoints on his stuff and pitching style:

Ogando is one of the hardest throwers in the game, averaging about 94.4 with his four-seam fastball. This puts him behind Michael Pineda, Justin Verlander, and David Price as the hardest-throwing starter in the game.
He's all about that four-seamer, as he'll throw it a little under two-thirds of the time (62% against lefties, 66% against righties). He'll throw an 80 mph slider as his offspeed pitch (26% LHB, 32% RHB) as well as the occasional changeup or two-seam sinker.
He'll get swings-and-misses on his fastball about 15% more often than the league average pitcher would. However, his slider whiff rate of .264 is well below the league average of about 32%.
He's below average at getting groundballs with both his fastball (36%) and his slider (32%), so he's prone to the home run ball.
His control is excellent, as he's maintained a walk rate of 2 per 9 innings by being able to throw strikes consistently with both his fastball (35% balls per pitch) and slider (37%).

Given his power arm, Ogando might seem like he'd be more of a strikeout pitcher, but he's making the control thing work well for him so far. His BABIP is .210, so his ERA probably won't stay in the low 2s for long. Even if you throw in some regression, he still looks like a top-flight starting pitcher.

Joba, I'm gonna miss you

2011-06-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

The news is official now, and Joba Chamberlain will have Tommy John surgery next Thursday with Dr. James Andrews. I don't really have a whole lot to say on the subject, but I thought I shouldn't just let it go by without saying anything here.

I'm sure most of you have some sort of "special connection" to a ballplayer, whether it be somebody from your hometown, somebody you've watched from early on in his career, etc. I've been following the Yankees for ten years, but I only really got into all the minutiae a few years ago. Joba Chamberlain might've been the first guy that I really studied closely from his first major league season. Between that, my love of pure power pitchers, and his fun personality, I became a huge fan of Joba's, while being wary of the occasional transgression. Even after his move to the bullpen in 2010, I'd make attempts to arrange my schedule so that I could see him pitch (such as asking myself, can I get home in time to watch the last three innings of the game?). It goes without saying that it won't be the easiest thing for me to not see him out there for at least another year. For him, I hope he has a flawless recovery and can get back out there as soon as possible.

Get well soon, Joba; we'll be pulling for you.

Hello again, Jeffrey

2011-06-09T15:22:00.000-04:00

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but the Joba Chamberlain news pushed me back a bit.

Jeff Marquez was claimed off waivers by the Yankees on Wednesday, making that Nick Swisher deal look even more silly. This is kind of a blast-from-the-past, as Marquez was making his way through the Yankees' system as a starter (along with Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and Ian Kennedy) in the mid-2000s. Now 26, Marquez's stock has fallen a lot in the past five years, and this acquisition is nothing more than a depth move.

Marquez was touted as a sinker-ball pitcher, though his groundball rates dropped a lot from his early professional career (mid 50% ground ball rate 2005-2007, down about 10 percentage points 2008-2010). From his one inning, 18-pitch stint with the White Sox last year, we have some PITCHf/x data on Marquez. He showed five pitches that formed five distinct clusters; below is horizontal spin deflection plotted against vertical spin deflection (in inches):

This one shows horizontal spin deflection and speed:

I don't know how (if at all) Joe Girardi plans to use Marquez in the now-depleted bullpen, but it sure would be nice for him to contribute and get his career going again.

Joba's injury

2011-06-08T16:47:00.000-04:00

The Yankees announced this afternoon that Joba Chamberlain is headed to the DL with a strained elbow flexor, and I'm not the least bit surprised that something is wrong with him. Below are the average velocities for his fastball, slider, and curve over each 2011 appearance. Take a look at the last two:

This one is all fastballs:

You can see that in his past two games, his velocity was down about 3 mph from where it usually is. It looks like he won't throw for two weeks, so I wouldn't be shocked if we don't see him back on the team until July. That's disappointing news.

A (mostly) two-pitch pitcher

2011-06-04T09:16:00.001-04:00

Dan Haren, who was scheduled to start game two of the series, has a mild back injury, which means that the Yankees will face Ervin Santana instead. After breaking in with the Halos in 2005 and turning in a clutch long relief effort against the Yankees in the playoffs (filling in for who but Bartolo Colon), Santana has put together some strong campaigns (2008, 2010) and some that would better be described as "clunkers" (2007, 2009). He's a power pitcher, but he's not throwing as hard as he was a few years ago. He's got four pitches, but his low-90s fastball and low-80s slider make up over 95% of his repertoire. Some 2011 charts and graphs are below (only 33 changeups and 18 sinkers this year, so no individual pitch metrics for them).

	mph	#	vs RHB	vs LHB	Swing	Whiff	Zone	Ball	nsCall	GB%
Fastball	92.4	704	331	373	.469	.088	.474	.337	.366	.364
Slider	81.9	439	241	178	.412	.436	.451	.346	.411	.311
		1194	574	620	.446	.209	.465	.347	.375	.355

The slider is effective at getting whiffs (anything over 40% is impressive), the fastball is not. He's a flyball guy, so he can be homer-prone.

Yankees' first-pitch swing rates

2011-06-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

I noticed a question in a River Ave. Blues mailbag session from earlier today, asking about the Yankees and first-pitch swing percentage. I've looked at that stat a few times before, so it's not too much trouble to load it up for 2011 data. The league average so far in 2011 for swing percentage on the first pitch of an at-bat is .265. Using a 150 plate appearance limit, leaving 207 qualified batters, Vladimir Guerrero leads the majors with a first-pitch swing rate of .423; Jamey Carroll is last at .014. The table below shows where the Yankees fall on the list.

Rank	Batter	FP Swing Rate
6	Robinson Cano	.409
72	Russell Martin	.291
101	Nick Swisher	.263
103	Derek Jeter	.262
112	Alex Rodriguez	.252
134	Jorge Posada	.232
160	Mark Teixeira	.209
193	Curtis Granderson	.138
200	Brett Gardner	.110

Andruw Jones, the only other Yankee batter with more than 50 plate appearances, has a rate of .338.

Might Nova start throwing more sliders?

2011-06-01T21:51:00.002-04:00

Two things about Ivan Nova: he's struggling, and he hasn't thrown a slider since April 15th. I've recently discussed both of those things here. I noticed an interesting Joe Girardi quote in an Avi Zaleon MLB.com article from this evening:

"I think he got to where he was a two-pitch guy, and this is a guy that has four pitches. He's had some ups and downs. There's been some inconsistency, he's walked more people than he's accustomed to walking. It all is part of a learning process for him. We're trying to get him back to using all his pitches."

So what does that mean? Nova's repertoire is dominated by fastballs and curveballs, but he has thrown at least one changeup in each of his starts this year. Anyway, Joe mentioned four pitches, which would imply that he sees the slider as missing in his repertoire. I would agree wholeheartedly with Joe's suggestion; for a guy who's struggling to miss bats, it can't hurt to try another breaking pitch.

UPDATE, 6/2: In a George King column, he says that Nova "vowed to use his slider tomorrow night with a fastball and curve." I'll be on the lookout.

Say hello to Gio

2011-06-01T12:36:00.000-04:00

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.

Brett Anderson f/x scouting

2011-05-31T16:06:00.002-04:00

The Yankees took the first game of the three-game set in Oakland yesterday behind a masterfully brilliant complete-game shutout by Bartolo Colon. After getting Trevor Cahill yesterday, the Yankees will face another young pitching star tonight in southpaw Brett Anderson. The short scoop on Anderson is that he's pretty much like Cahill except with better strikeout and walk rates. His groundball per ball in play rate of 56% is, along with Cahill's, one of the best in the league. Basically, he's really good, and also like Cahill, he's only 23. I'm liking the spin deflection charts these days, so here they are for Anderson's 2011, along with pitch results in tabular form below.

	mph	#	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	Ball Rate	nsCall Rate	GB Rate
Sinker	90.1	246	.362	.101	.459	.435	.318	.688
Fastball	91.4	237	.426	.149	.451	.384	.331	.429
Slider	80.4	411	.474	.246	.457	.304	.421	.632
Curveball	74.8	73	.301	.182	.534	.342	.510	.500
Changeup	82.3	53	.358	.000	.528	.415	.353	.250
		1020	.418	.178	.466	.363	.377	.560

Anderson's signature pitch is his slider. He throws it a ton (40% of the time to both righties and lefties), and looks to be pretty effective despite a below league-average whiff rate. He throws it over the plate a lot and gets called strikes with it; when batters hit it, they usually hit it into the ground. Anderson's sinker generates a ton of grounders as well, and his other fastball isn't bad at getting grounders compared to other four-seamers. As for his other pitches: his curve is just a slower version of his slider (like CC Sabathia's curve), and his changeup is his weakest pitch, only shown to right-handed batters.

Pie charts for selection based on batter-handedness:

Anderson likes to go with his sinker in on lefties and four-seamer in on righties:

He'll keep the ball below the middle-third about 30% of the time, especially with his sinker and slider:

Anderson is not a bat-misser, but he's around the zone and has a nasty arsenal of pitches for picking up grounders.

Yanks visit Cahill

2011-05-30T10:00:00.012-04:00

Following a disappointing three-game set in Seattle, the Yankees will begin a three-game series against the Athletics in California this afternoon. The Yankees will start the well-rested (and brilliant) Bartolo Colon, and the A's will counter with sinkerballer Trevor Cahill. Cahill is just 23 years old and appears to be improving since his 2009 debut. The short story is that he gets a ton of groundballs (54% of balls in play this year) and is improving his strikeout rate (4.5 K/9 in 2009, 5.4 in 2010, 7.1 so far in 2011). His walk rate has hovered around 3 per 9 over his career, which is certainly good enough considering his other skills. I wrote about Cahill for the Hardball Times in April, so I'll refer you to that for a more in depth look. One of my points in that piece was that Cahill seemed to have abandoned his slider this year; since the time that article was published, Cahill has reintroduced the pitch. Again, this is just a quick one to update on Cahill's 2011 numbers. Spin charts and result tables for his five pitches are below.

	mph	#	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	nsCall Rate*	GB Rate
Sinker	88.9	608	.370	.142	.475	.366	.554
Fastball	90.2	72	.403	.034	.486	.233	.273
Changeup	80.5	246	.541	.278	.402	.248	.538
Curveball	78.4	178	.421	.320	.365	.243	.600
Slider	81.2	25	.400	.400	.480	.400	.500
		1129	.418	.208	.443	.318	.540

non-swing call rate - percentage of called strikes on pitches not swung at (called strike divided by called strikes plus balls)

Now for some plate locations, split up into five horizontal and vertical regions (dividing the zone into thirds with two "out of zone" areas on either side). For these purposes, the strikezone extends one foot from either side of the center of the plate and includes pitches 1.5 to 3.5 feet above the ground, normalized for the batter's strikezone.

I'll be posting some league averages at THT soon; for now I'll say that Cahill's sinker, vertically, is where most sinkers are. Horizontally, he is more apt to throw it inside to lefties and away to righties than is the typical major leaguer.

Closing thoughts: his sinker is good, his four-seamer less so. I'd probably say that his curveball is his best out-pitch, based on this and last year's performance. After that hiatus in April, the slider is back and is being thrown a few times per game; it really just seems like a "show-me" pitch and not one that Cahill's going to use to put away hitters. Overall, he has a good repertoire of pitches to pick up groundballs and a strikeout when he needs to, and he seems to be getting better all the time.

Nova's fielding independent problem

2011-05-29T15:09:00.004-04:00

Ivan Nova had a rough day yesterday, giving up four runs and failing to pitch four innings. He allowed four free passes (three walks and a hit batsman) while only striking out one. It was his worst game of the season it terms of strikeout-walk differential, but he hasn't been good in this category for the whole year. A good way to quantify this is kwERA (strikeout-walk ERA), which is a Tom Tango metric that is scaled to ERA and only uses strikeouts and walks as the inputs (walks include hit batsmen and exclude intentional passes). The formula scaled to the 2011 American League run environment is 4.87 - (12*(K-BB)). Nova's kwERA of 4.83 is fourth-worst in the league better than only Tyler Chatwood, Kyle Drabek, and Wade Davis. The chart below shows the in-game kwERA for each of Nova's starts, this time scaled to 100 as the league average (with each number away from 100 representing a 1% difference from the average).

He's only had one game above average this year; that was his May 16th start against the Rays. Nova has a little more freedom than other pitchers due to his mid 50% ground ball rate and low home run totals, but it's going to be very difficult for him to succeed by walking as many as he strikes out.

Pineda PITCHf/x

2011-05-27T13:06:00.001-04:00

Michael Pineda is undoubtedly the best rookie pitcher in the league. The way he's looked recently, he's probably in the discussion for the best pitcher in the league overall. Consider some overall numbers and his rank among American Leaguers:

Metric	Performance	Rank
ERA	2.16	5
FIP	2.26	1
xFIP	2.98	4
Fangraphs' WAR	1.9	7

Keep in mind that he's only 21. Both Baseball Info Solutions and PITCHf/x agree that Pineda throws the hardest fastball in the majors this year, averaging just under 96 mph, so he's certainly got good stuff. In addition to his hard four-seam fastball, he throws a slider that he'll vary from the low to high 80s and a changeup that's usually around 89 mph (click the links for photos of Pineda's pitch grips). There might be some sinkers in there as well, but his fastball is pretty much going to be of the four-seam variety. I've included the spin deflection chart of his pitches below, even though Safeco calibration can get messy at times. I'm guessing there's not as much spread on his fastball movement as the graph might have you believe.

NOTE: The sinkers I classified (exactly three of them) are lumped in with the four-seamers on this chart, and I noticed that there are a small handful of changeups that still have a fastball distinction (Gameday's algorithm had a world of trouble with that); my apologies.

As you would suspect, Pineda does a good job at getting batters to swing and miss at his pitches. In fact, his fastball has the fifth best whiff rate (minimum 150 swings) in the majors so far this year (well, it did as of earlier this week). Whiff numbers, along with some others that I like to use, are in the table below.

	mph	#	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	Ball Rate	Called Rate	GB Rate
Fastball	95.5	538	.537	.215	.498	.288	.175	.234
Slider	84.5	276	.558	.383	.518	.261	.181	.521
Changeup	89.0	49	.408	.150	.347	.551	.041	.636
		863	.537	.268	.496	.294	.169	.353

Pineda is an extreme fly-ball pitcher, but he's got the spacious Safeco Field on his side to help with home run prevention. As you can see, he doesn't throw a ton of changeups, and it's by far his worst pitch. It's "still in development," you might say. These minor quibbles aside, we've got a young ace on our hands here. I definitely look forward to seeing him go to work tonight.

Villanueva opens the series for the Jays

2011-05-23T13:56:00.000-04:00

Carlos Villanueva will make his first start since 2009 and his first of his Blue Jays career later today. I took a look at Villanueva's stuff last December, so I'm not going to do a full f/x profile today. Just a refresher. Or, more accurately, a refresher with updates.

Villanueva won't blow you away with velocity, as he'll average 89 or so with a very straight four-seam fastball.
To compensate for his unspectacular fastball, he'll throw around 65% (or there abouts) offspeed pitches. His non-fastball arsenal includes a low 80s slider and changeup, and two kinds of curves. There might be two different kinds of changeups in there, one that looks like a four-seamer and one that looks like a two-seamer.
His curve is usually in the low or mid 70s, but he's also increased usage of an eephus that is usually in the 60s but dropped down to the mid 50s upon occasion. I count only six from 2010, or less than 1% of his total pitch mix, but I see eight already this year (around 2%).
The slider looks like Villanueva's best pitch. Last year it garnered 44.1% whiffs on swings, and somehow it's at the exact same number this year through 34 swings.

He's definitely a "crafty" finesse pitcher, but the quality of his off-speed stuff allow him to get a lot of strikeouts (just over 8 K/9 for his career, and a career-best 11.8 out of the 'pen last year). It should be a fun matchup tonight against the brilliant Bartolo Colon.

Quick f/x: Zach Britton

2011-05-18T14:10:00.000-04:00

The rejuvenated (you heard me) Yankees start a quick two game series tonight against the Orioles at Camden, and on the mound for the birds will be rookie Zach Britton. Britton has impressed so far with five wins and a 2.42 ERA. I'd expect that to rise to the high 3s based on his peripherals, but that's still pretty good anyway. Britton's a groundball-pitcher, grounder on 55% of balls in play this year. He comes at hitters with four different offerings: two-seam fastball, four-seam fastball, changeup, and slider (click links for pitch grips). He throws his fastballs in the low 90s, his changeup in the mid-high 80s (very little speed difference; tough to split them up from the fastballs sometimes) and his slider, which he reserves for lefties, a bit below that. Individual pitch metrics for Britton in his young career:

	#	Swing Rate	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	Ball Rate	Called Rate	GB Rate
Sinker	294	.490	.146	.510	.361	.150	.539
Fastball	259	.347	.111	.413	.429	.224	.389
Changeup	169	.574	.340	.521	.290	.136	.844
Slider	41	.244	.500	.171	.610	.146	.500

The changeup is definitely his best pitch (it's early, but look at that groundball rate!), and he's not afraid to throw it to lefties. He's got good stuff, but he will give up hits.

Nova returns to the hill, but will his slider come with him?

2011-05-13T17:07:00.000-04:00

The Yankees will square off against the Royals in the rubber game of their three-game series tonight. Toeing the slab for New York will be Ivan Nova, who is coming off the best start of his career (one run in 7 1/3 innings). Nova's been pitching better recently after a rough start, but he's still only struck out as many as he's walked or hit. Interestingly, he's completely ditched his slider over his past three starts after relying on it over his first three:

(click to enlarge)

Nova attributed his Spring Training success to the new slider, so it seems strange that he'd stop using it so soon. It didn't look like a terrible pitch when he used it - of the 26 he threw this year, 15 were thrown for balls, three were called strikes, six were swung on and missed, and two were hit into play. That's a lot of pitches out of the zone, so maybe Nova feels that using the slider too much prohibits him from pounding the strikezone? I can only speculate. Nova currently has the 7th lowest whiff rate among starters, so bringing back the slider, especially on 0-2 and 1-2 counts, might be good for him.

Davies kicks off the series

2011-05-10T09:52:00.001-04:00

The Royals, who are actually playing good baseball, are in town to kick off the Yankees' homestand. Opposing Freddy Garcia will be Kyle Davies, who is pitching to the tune of a 7.32 ERA so far this year. His peripherals aren't good, but his 5.01 FIP and 4.48 xFIP are more reasonable estimates for Davies' ERA moving forward. I'm keeping this quick - no charts or graphs today, but here are a few things about Davies' stuff and pitching style (from looking at 2010 data):

Davies works with four pitches. He throws a four-seamer that averages 91-92, a cutter at about 88, a low-80s changeup, and a high-70s curveball. There may be some sinking two-seamers thrown in with the fastball group, but he seems to be four-seam heavy.
He's a flyball pitcher, averaging only 39% groundballs over his 145 career appearances. Last year he could pick up grounders with his cutter (55%) and curve (49%), but his heater and changeup were both down around 30%.
His control is suspect. Last year he threw over 40% balls with his fastball (league average 36%), cutter (35%), and curve (41%). His changeup was above-average in this regard.
Overall, Davies will allow contact at about the league average, with below-average whiff rates on the fastball, cutter, and curve. His changeup elicited 37% whiffs on swings last year, making it a good pitch to go to in strikeout situations.

Davies is no ace, but he's not as bad as a 7.32 ERA. He's average at best in many categories, but his changeup looks pretty solid.

Gardner's bunts

2011-05-07T19:59:00.001-04:00

There's been some talk recently on the Twittersphere and the webbernets about Brett Gardner's bunting. He has attempted to bunt ten times this year and has yet to get a hit. Over the course of his career, he hasn't been terrible, but he hasn't been great. Consider Gardner's 2008-2011 numbers against some league averages:

	Fair%	Hit%	Sac%	Out%	Average
Brett Gardner	.530	.205	.386	.409	.333
League Average	.502	.184	.520	.286	.392

Fair% is fair bunts per total bunt attempts; hit% is bunt hits per fair bunts; sac% is sacrifice bunts per fair bunts; out% is bunt outs per fair bunts; average is bunt hits per non-sacrifice bunt. League averages are from 2008-2010 (I should update those soon).

Gardner's about average at getting the bunt fair, but once it's in play, he's more prone to being thrown out at first base than the average bunter. What is Gardner doing this year?

	Fair%	Hit%	Sac%	Out%	Average
2008-2010	.507	.243	.378	.378	.391
2011	.700	.000	.429	.571	.000

I don't want to look too seriously at a ten-pitch sample; Gardner has hit it fair more, but hasn't had much success with the bunt in play. Gardner's four bunt-outs this year include a bunt pop-up to first and two fielder's-choice outs that allowed the runner to be thrown out at third base.

Overall, I'm not in favor of Gardner bunting so much. Despite his great speed, he can't bunt for a very high average, and due to his unspectacular rate of fair bunts, he can't be relied on for a sacrifice (which probably shouldn't be used much anyway). Joe Girardi recently acknowledged Gardner's bunting struggles, saying that "the only way to get better at it is to do it." That may be true, but I'd much prefer to see Gardner use his excellent on-base skills than waste an opportunity trying to lay down a bunt.

Yankees pitch metrics, early 2011 edition

2011-05-06T10:45:00.000-04:00

Somehow, we're already five weeks into the season. I've re-classified all of the pitches thrown by Yankees up to this point - or, more accurately, those that were picked up by the PITCHf/x cameras (only a handful of pitches are missing). Some pitchers have pitches that cluster pretty easily - for example, Mariano Rivera only throws two pitches, one that cuts and one that tails, so it's easy to distinguish his pitch types. Joba Chamberlain and Lance Pendleton, who have both shown four pitches this year, also have pretty easy pitch clusters. But other pitchers, like Freddy Garcia and Rafael Soriano, are not so easy to work with. Garcia's extremely difficult as his four-seamer runs in with his two-seamer, his change looks like his split, and some splits might be labeled as sliders. For Soriano, his four-seam fastball blends in with his cut fastball. So, remember that there are always going to be some classification issues, though I do feel pretty confident in most of my IDs here. With that in mind, I'd like to roll out some early season pitch data for the Yankees. First off, average fastball velocities (minimum of 10 pitches to avoid small-sample calibration errors):

Rank	Pitcher	Pitch Type	mph
1	Rafael Soriano	Sinker	94.0
2	Joba Chamberlain	Fastball	93.8
3	A.J. Burnett	Sinker	92.8
4	CC Sabathia	Fastball	92.8
5	Bartolo Colon	Fastball	92.6
6	A.J. Burnett	Fastball	92.4
7	Boone Logan	Sinker	92.1
8	David Robertson	Fastball	92.0
9	Rafael Soriano	Fastball	91.8
10	CC Sabathia	Sinker	91.8
11	Luis Ayala	Fastball	91.7
12	Boone Logan	Fastball	91.7
13	Ivan Nova	Fastball	91.6
14	Luis Ayala	Sinker	91.4
15	Mariano Rivera	Sinker	90.9
16	Bartolo Colon	Sinker	90.7
17	Mariano Rivera	Cutter	90.5
18	Phil Hughes	Fastball	89.2
19	Buddy Carlyle	Fastball	89.1
20	Lance Pendleton	Fastball	88.4
21	Freddy Garcia	Sinker	87.1
22	Freddy Garcia	Fastball	86.7

Who's been throwing the ball over the plate? The minimum for this strikezone% leaderboard is 60 pitches:

Rank	Pitcher	Pitch Type	Zone Rate
1	Bartolo Colon	Sinker	.594
2	Boone Logan	Fastball	.576
3	David Robertson	Fastball	.510
4	Joba Chamberlain	Fastball	.504
5	CC Sabathia	Fastball	.500
6	Freddy Garcia	Sinker	.487
7	A.J. Burnett	Fastball	.475
8	CC Sabathia	Slider	.472
9	Rafael Soriano	Slider	.471
10	Rafael Soriano	Fastball	.464
11	Mariano Rivera	Cutter	.462
12	Phil Hughes	Fastball	.460
13	Freddy Garcia	Slider	.444
14	Ivan Nova	Fastball	.440
15	CC Sabathia	Changeup	.427
16	Bartolo Colon	Fastball	.418
17	Freddy Garcia	Fastball	.408
18	Ivan Nova	Curveball	.357
19	Joba Chamberlain	Slider	.352
20	CC Sabathia	Sinker	.341
21	Freddy Garcia	Splitter	.299
22	A.J. Burnett	Curveball	.270

Remember, sometimes it's good to not be in the strikezone. I like seeing Burnett's curveball at the bottom of this list because when A.J.'s right, he's keeping his curveball low and getting empty swings. Conversely, I don't like seeing the Sabathia and Soriano sliders so high on this list. In a similar vein, the next leaderboard shows ball% (called balls per pitch), which factors in the hitter's ability to take pitches out of the zone. This one's sorted from lowest to highest:

Rank	Pitcher	Pitch Type	Ball Rate
1	Joba Chamberlain	Slider	.268
2	Mariano Rivera	Cutter	.277
3	Bartolo Colon	Sinker	.288
4	CC Sabathia	Slider	.299
5	CC Sabathia	Changeup	.321
6	David Robertson	Fastball	.325
7	A.J. Burnett	Fastball	.332
8	Boone Logan	Fastball	.333
9	Phil Hughes	Fastball	.336
10	CC Sabathia	Fastball	.345
11	Rafael Soriano	Fastball	.348
12	Freddy Garcia	Slider	.361
13	CC Sabathia	Sinker	.371
14	Rafael Soriano	Slider	.371
15	Freddy Garcia	Sinker	.395
16	Ivan Nova	Fastball	.402
17	Freddy Garcia	Splitter	.403
18	Bartolo Colon	Fastball	.408
19	Joba Chamberlain	Fastball	.412
20	Ivan Nova	Curveball	.429
21	A.J. Burnett	Curveball	.454
22	Freddy Garcia	Fastball	.461

Well, it looks A.J. isn't getting batters to swing on that curveball out of the zone as much as we might like. Joba's slider has the good combination of both a low ball rate and a low zone rate (lots of chases out of the zone).

And to wrap this up with my favorite metric, a look at the whiff rates (swinging strikes per swing) on the team, with a modest minimum of 25 swings:

Rank	Pitcher	Pitch Type	Whiff Rate
1	Joba Chamberlain	Slider	.475
2	Freddy Garcia	Splitter	.447
3	A.J. Burnett	Curveball	.395
4	CC Sabathia	Changeup	.382
5	CC Sabathia	Sinker	.296
6	Bartolo Colon	Fastball	.271
7	CC Sabathia	Slider	.271
8	Freddy Garcia	Slider	.265
9	David Robertson	Curveball	.258
10	A.J. Burnett	Changeup	.207
11	Ivan Nova	Curveball	.207
12	Rafael Soriano	Slider	.188
13	Rafael Soriano	Fastball	.179
14	Boone Logan	Fastball	.143
15	Mariano Rivera	Cutter	.142
16	David Robertson	Fastball	.132
17	CC Sabathia	Fastball	.129
18	Lance Pendleton	Fastball	.120
19	Joba Chamberlain	Fastball	.118
20	A.J. Burnett	Fastball	.103
21	Ivan Nova	Fastball	.099
22	Phil Hughes	Cutter	.080
23	Bartolo Colon	Sinker	.072
24	Freddy Garcia	Sinker	.071
25	Phil Hughes	Fastball	.036

Joba's slider looks really, really good. Also, hello Freddy Garcia! That pitch (labeled here as a splitter, though there may be changeups or sliders included in this group as well) has done a very good job at fooling hitters so far this year.

For context, refer to this post with league averages for these metrics by pitch type.