Yankees pitch metrics, early 2011 edition

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.

Colon and his two-seamer head to the rotation

With Phil Hughes injured/pitching poorly, the Yankees will give Bartolo Colon his first start in a Yankee uniform (and his first start overall since early 2009) this evening.  You could argue that Colon has actually been the team's best pitcher so far, as he's posted a team-leading 2.70 xFIP and 10.3 K/9 over 11 1/3 innings (4th most on the team) in long relief of Hughes.  He's shown four pitches so far, mainly relying on a combination of two and four-seam fastballs:

	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z
Two-seam fastball	89.9	-9.4	+5.0
Four-seam fastball	92.0	-4.8	+10.3
Slider	81.9	+2.0	+1.4
Changeup	82.1	-8.3	+6.7

The two-seam (45.7%) and four-seam (35.9%) have been his main weapons, though he's thrown a few sliders (12.5%) and changeups (6%).  Despite the 13 strikeouts, Colon's only garnered 13 swinging strikes - over 73 swings, that's a whiff rate of .178, which is below average.  Despite the small sample size, here are the whiff rates for Colon's pitches so far:

	Swings	Whiff Rate
Two-seam fastball	27	.074
Four-seam fastball	25	.320
Slider	12	.167
Changeup	9	.111
	73	.178

The four-seam fastball has looked very good in the whiff department, but in two-strike counts, it's been the two-seamer that's been most reliable for Colon.  A lot of his sinkers have been on the glove-side (inner to lefties, outer to righties) half of the plate, and he's been able to fool hitters with it in the strike zone with a watch rate of 50% (league average is around 37% for sinkers).  Of his 13 strikeouts, six of them have come on the spill-over, the "Greg Maddux pitch."  The graph below shows those six pitches (including some possibly generous calls), overlaid on an approximated strikezone.  Also, you can watch these videos to see some of Colon's strikeouts this season.

Colon has shown impressive command over his first three appearances, and if he pitches well, I wouldn't be surprised to see him hang around the rotation for a while given Hughes's injury and Ivan Nova's ineffectiveness.  I think the first big question is whether or not he will be able to hold up over a full start - questions about his durability were what landed him in the bullpen in the first place.  Also, will the spill-over fastball lose effectiveness as hitters see it more?  Will the free-swinging Blue Jays refuse to take it for a strike tonight?  I guess we'll find out.

Spring stats for Colon and Nova

I love Spring Training stats because they typically say a lot about future regular season performance.  NOT!  Nonetheless, it's intriguing that Bartolo Colon and Ivan Nova have been pitching this well.  The lines:

	IP	H	R	HR	BBHBP	K	GB	FB	LD	PU
Bartolo Colon	15	10	4	1	2	17	20	8	5	1
Ivan Nova	14	8	2	1	4	7	29	9	3	0

I'm not supposed to read into Spring Training numbers ... but isn't the winner (or in this case, winners) of the rotation battle going to be based on the better spring stats?  Now you're confusing me.  Anyway, Colon has had a very good spring, with a 2.40 RA/9 and excellent strikeout and walk numbers.  The groundball rate (.588) over 34 balls in play is great, too.  Nova has a lower RA/9 (1.29), but has shown much worse strike zone dominance.  29 ground balls out of 41 balls in play (rate of .707) is superb.  I would be shocked if we don't see these two guys beginning the season in the rotation - in other words, I would be shocked if Freddy Garcia makes the rotation.