SB Nation - Josh Banks

Breaking Down Arnsberg: What Are the Astros Getting?

davoag — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:00:27 -0000

More photos » by Darren Calabrese - AP

Is the criticism of Brad Arnsberg justified?

In case you missed the FanShot from last Friday, the Astros hired a new pitching coach. Brad Arnsberg comes with a reputation as a young pitcher-killer, but was loved by all his staffs and seemed to be able to work some magic with 'reclamation projects.' The World Wide Web was abuzz with articles about his abundance, or lack thereof, of talent. A fine hat-tip to clack and AstroAndy for linking to them.

What I wanted to do, though, is to see if it was warranted. What we're really worried about here are young pitchers, right? Guys 24 years old and younger are in the prime area for suffering from over-use. There are two different models out there currently used to predict injuries to young pitchers. Both were researched pretty thoroughly, but it's hard to tell if they're good predictors of injury potential or just good at explaining what happened in the past.

When I went back to research Arnsberg, I looked at every staff he had from 2000 in Montreal to 2002 with the Marlins and through his five-year tenure in Toronto. I focused on all the pitchers he had that were 24 or younger. This is a bit of a departure from the model, since they stop at 25, but since two-thirds of his stops were of the one-year variety, I downgraded the age a year. The two methods I mentioned were Tom Verducci's theory on an increase in innings from year to year, most recently laid out here. The other was Pitching Abuse Points (PAP), first published back in 1998 by Rany Jazayerli here. I believe it's been tweaked a bit here and there since then, but it's a good starting place for the discussion. My results after the jump...

Arnsberg oversaw 28 different pitchers in their Age 24 season or younger. His biggest year for this was in 2000 in Montreal, when 10 different young pitchers got into games. The 2000 season also seemed to be a learning year for Arnsberg as to how best to utilize pitchers. Of the 10, only one threw more innings than the previous season (Javier Vasquez, +63 IP) and only one had more than 10 PAP per start (Vasquez, 16 PAP). Carl Pavano pitched seven fewer innings than in 1999, but had a PAP/Start of 4.8 and then suffered an injury the following season. The rest all had significant drops in innings pitched and none had more than 2 PAP/start. None of the relievers in his bullpen threw three straight days and only Pavano suffered an injury the following season. Knowing what we do now about Carl, it's easy to see it probably wasn't Arnsberg's fault.

The next year he surfaced was in 2002 with the Marlins. Five guys played at 24 or younger and two of the five had jumps higher than 30 innings. Both Justin Wayne and Nate Robertson pitched over 40 innings more than the previous season, but each threw the majority of their innings in the minors, not the majors. It's hard for me to pin these jumps on Arnsberg for that reason, since their workload was controlled by the minor league pitching coordinator, not the big league pitching coach. As for the other three, Josh Beckett threw 47 less innings than the previous season and averaged 2.1 PAP per start. Pretty reasonable for a 22-year old. Brad Penny had a 69 inning drop in his workload and had 0.8 PAP/start. The other guy in this group was Blaine Neal, a reliever who saw his workload go up by six innings and was used three straight days twice that season. One of those times, though was on both ends of a double-header, when he faced just one batter in the first game. No real injury trouble here, at least not by Arnsberg's work. Beckett had the blister problems, but that's not related to overuse and Penny did have arm trouble, but much later than this.

On to the Toronto years, where Arnsberg saw an impressive group of young pitchers hit the big leagues. In his first season, he had five pitchers in the age range we are looking at. Two drastically increased their inning total (Dustin McGowan, +70, Chad Gaudin +74) while one starter also saw an uptick into the danger zone (Gustavo Chacin +36). The other two guys, Brandon League and Shaun Marcum had smaller increases or decreases, but only Chacin had any PAP to speak of. Chacin's total of 3.7 PAP/start is high, but not distressingly so and his innings increase was slight in comparison to McGowan's. Still, Chacin did suffer a major drop-off in performance and had an injury or two thrown in for good measure. Of course, his delivery is a bit quirky and he came out of nowhere to begin with, so it's hard to say whether Arnsberg led to this flameout. Certainly, the other guys on this list went on to have solid years after 2005, so we may just be dealing with a small sample size.

In 2006, Arnsberg oversaw seven young pitchers, including newcomers Casey Janssen, Ty Taubenheim, Jeremy Accardo and Davis Romero. Accardo, Romero and Dustin McGowan all had inning increases but the rest saw their totals drop. Janssen was the only pitchers with more than 1 PAP/start and his was exactly one. Marcum saw his total drop by 35 innings and had a PAP of 0.8 while League had a slight drop in innings, but was used twice three games in a row. Taubenheim moved from a starter's role in the minors to the bullpen in the majors, which explains his 60-inning drop. None of the evidence here supports the conclusion that misuse led to any injuries.

In 2007, there were only four pitchers in our age-range, including two holdovers, League and Taubenheim. Newcomers Jesse Litsch and Josh Banks both saw increases, though Litsch saw his total rise by 29 innings, just underneath the magic threshold. Litsch also had just 0.7 PAP/start, meaning he wasn't throwing a ton of pitches. League saw his total drop by 59 innings, in part due to injury (I think, though I can't find it anywhere). Taubenheim had his total rise by 15, but was not used in more than two straight games, so he didn't really get overworked.

Litsch was the only pitcher considered young in 2008 and he saw his total innings drop by 11, but his PAP jumped up to 4.2 per start. More distressingly, though was how he was used down the stretch. From August 21 to September 29, Litsch started nine games and threw 61 innings and 980 pitches. He totaled 88 PAP for an average of 9.7 per start, a huge jump over the beginning of the season. He went 5-4 over this stretch and had an average game score of 62.4. Those were both reasons why he pitched so much, I'm sure. He was doing so well that the Jays wanted to keep him pitching to keep them in the race, as the team got to 12 games over .500 on Sept. 12. However, Litsch was pretty much abused during this stretch. He was used once on two days' rest, throwing 49 pitches over three innings and was used once on three days' rest in the back half of a doubleheader. Litsch threw 110 pitches over 5 1/3 innings.

In 2009, Litsch was shut down in April and finally had Tommy John surgery in June. I think it's safe to say that his usage pattern at the end of 2008 may have led to this, but we can't be certain. Arnsberg's last year with Toronto saw five pitchers in our age-group, including Litsch. Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil, Mark Rzepczynski and Brad Mills made major-league debuts and all but Mills saw increases in their inning totals. None saw jumps of over 30, though they all had more PAP than in Arnsberg's past. Romero tallied 6.3 PAP/start and saw his innings jump 14, while Brett Cecil had a jump of 24 innings and 2.1 PAP/start. Rzepczynski made the jump straight from Double-A and saw an increase in 28 innings while having a PAP of 3.8 per start.

What does this mean? Arnsberg gets blamed for the injuries to Marcum and McGowan, but in their formative years with the club, you can see he really didn't do much to hurt them. Only in 2008 did his usage patterns significantly change, and that also coincided with a new manager, Mr. Old School Cito Gaston. This is a classic example of a guy from a bygone era trying to throw pitchers out there like they did in the '70's and hoping it will work. In 2008, for example, Gaston used pitchers on short rest six times, while the American League average was just 3.7. In 2009, he was right in line with the league average of 3, but it still shows that he used his pitchers differently than most of the league. Arnsberg didn't like it, and clashed with his manager as was chronicled here and here. I'm not sure you can blame Arnsberg for what happened to Litsch but you definitely can't blame him for Marcum and McGowan. B.J. Ryan also can't be blamed on him, nor can A.J. Burnett, as both guys had either a history of injuries or a jump in innings before coming to Toronto.

At least one place is mad Arnsberg left Toronto, while there are a couple other places that still levy criticism. I'm not sure how Arnsberg will do with Houston, but I do know he's got a pretty good track record of keeping the young guys healthy. He'll have a tough time on his hands next season, though, as Bud Norris saw a 95 inning jump in his workload, though his PAP/start was just 0.5. Yorman Bazardo was also in the danger zone with a 34 inning jump, and his performance doesn't need any regression. The only worrying part of the bullpen was Sammy Gervacio being used three straight days three different times and once for four straight games. Of course, the 24-year old only threw more than 20 pitches in a game twice, so it's not as worrisome as it appears.

To review, Arnsberg coached for four different managers and only under Gaston did his track record go astray. Out of all his young pitchers, just three were inordinately abused: Chacin, Litsch and Vasquez. Now, we can see that Vasquez was just built to hold up to a higher workload, similar to Roy Halladay. Still, it doesn't excuse the abuse in the first place. Is Gaston more to blame for the last couple of seasons in Toronto? We can't REALLY tell, but after reviewing all this, I certainly feel better about the Astros' new pitching coach.

GM Towers: "I think he'd [Kyle Blanks] be pretty good behind the plate too."

jbox — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:31:18 -0000

XX Sports Radio: Kevin Towers interview (MP3) with Darren Smith

Kevin Towers is a huge University of Oregon fan. He couldn't go to the game because he was in a meeting with Moorad and Garfinkel.
Towers thinks that you can add 3/4's of a run onto a pitcher's ERA when they go from the NL to the AL.
Towers would like for the AL to do away with the Designated Hitter.
He would rather put money into pitching than to sink it into a DH.
Towers likes the Padres game time changes. He needs to find another pitcher with a split finger like to Sterling Hitchcock to pitch in the shadows.
Edward Mujica, Josh Banks or Cesar Ramos will take Mat Latos' spot in the rotation. They'll use September to look at pitchers.
We will see Sean Gallagher in the bullpen before the end of the season. He could be a back end starter in 2010.
The Padres are going to be cautious over the next 4 weeks with Kyle Blanks foot injury. He'll be in the middle of the line up next year. He'll be out of the cast in the next 10 days. He doesn't think it's serious enough to be a career ending injury.
Towers thinks Blanks would make a good catcher. He'd be a nice big target to throw to and no runners would take him out like they did Wiki Gonzalez.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Win

Eric Stephen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:10:53 -0000

More photos » by Denis Poroy - AP

Billingsley was an All-Star both on the mound and at the plate Sunday for the Dodgers, but ended up with a no-decision in what ended up a crazy yet memorable game.

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Chad Billingsley's Sunday started off with the news that he, along with teammates Jonathan Broxton and Orlando Hudson, was named to the National League All-Star team for the first time in his career. He then went out and showed why, pitching into the ninth inning, allowing only two runs and throwing only 97 pitches in the process. He also hit his first career home run, a shot over the left field wall in the fifth inning off Padres' starter Josh Banks. Billingsley also had a double, making today the second two-hit game of his career.

The Dodgers ended up winning 7-6, but did not take the easy route to the win.

Billingsley, who came into the game second in the NL with 51 walks, did not walk a batter for the the first time since the home opener against San Francisco.

Prior to Billingsley's home run, the Dodgers used the long ball to provide him a 4-0 lead. Andre Ethier hit a solo home run in the second, his second road homer of the season, and Casey Blake hit a three-run shot in the third.

After giving up a home run and a double to start the ninth inning, Billingsley was relieved by fellow All-Star Broxton. This is the point of the story when Broxton was supposed to come in and preserve the win, even in a non-save situation. However, Broxton was not on his game, throwing nearly all fastballs on his way to coughing up the 6-2 lead. The Dodgers were only spared when Eliezer Alfonzo overslid third base to end the inning. Broxton faced seven batters, and only retired five of them.

It looed like curtains for the Dodgers in the 10th, when Ronald Belisario started the inning with a hit-by-pitch and a walk. However, Guillermo Mota and Brent Leach came in to get the final three outs, with an intentional walk to Adrian Gonzalez mixed in.

After the 12th inning ended, this game brought us three rare events:

1) Thanks to David Eckstein pulling his hamstring running to first base, and the Padres out of bench players, backup catcher Jose Lobaton made his major league debut...at second base.

2) James Loney hit a home run, a shot off Edward Mujica over the RF wall, his sixth of the year, to give the Dodgers a 7-6 lead.

3) With one out and nobody on base, Adrian Gonzalez was intentionally walked. It was only the fourth time all season in MLB that somebody was walked intentionally with nobody on base.

Jeff Weaver was perfect otherwise, pitching three hitless innings to pick up his fifth win.

The Dodgers travel to New York tonight, and have Monday off before beginning a three-game series with the Mets on Tuesday. Clayton Kershaw is slated to battle Mike Pelfrey in the first game of the series.

WP - Jeff Weaver (5-2): 3 IP, 1 walk, 2 strikeouts

LP - Edward Mujica (2-4): 1 IP, 1 hit, 1 run

Box Score

In Bills We Trust

Eric Stephen — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:43:23 -0000

More photos » by Nam Y Huh - AP

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For the seventh consecutive series, the Dodgers head into the third game tied 1-1. Today they send their ace, Chad Billingsley to the mound, who is looking once again for his 10th win. You know what they say, the fourth time is a charm!

I don't understand people who don't think Chad Billingsley is an ace. By almost any objective measure, he is one of the best pitchers in the game, and has been for some time. Just like those who doubted Jonathan Broxton, its up to you to start appreciating and recognizing Billingsley. If you can't realize just how special he is, that's your loss.

The 102-win-pace Dodgers will face 26-year old Josh Banks, who allowed three runs in seven innings in his only start of the season, on Tuesday.

The Dodgers have won eight of the 12 meetings with the Padres this season, but the two teams have split the six games in San Diego so far this season.

Orlando Hudson is expected to sit out today, for the second straight game.

Get your guesses in for our new July contest, "Clogging The Bases" here.

Baseball Reference Preview

Dodgers vs. Padres Series Preview

Brendan Scolari — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:36:43 -0000

More photos » by Chris Carlson - AP

Just because the Dodgers are ahead of the Padres by 15.5 games doesn't mean they'll be going easy on them.

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Well, July 3rd is finally here. That means Manny Ramirez's 50 game suspension is over and we can finally watch The Dreadlocked One smash the ball all over the park again. The Dodger offense wasn't quite the same without Manny, losing over a run per game of scoring (5.55 runs per game with Manny, 4.40 runs per game without him).

But what about the Padres? The Padres come into the series struglling a bit, having lost 3 of their last four and 6 of their last 9 games. In the month of June the Padres only managed to go 9-16 The Dodgers have won 6 of their nine games against them this season. Their only series at Petco was the first four games of the season and the Dodgers split the series. But one important difference this time around is that the Dodgers don't have to face either of the Padres best two pitchers, Jake Peavy and Chris Young. The Padres best player, Adrian Gonzalez, has also slowed down from his torrid pace at the start of the season. Gonzalez has 24 home runs on the season but only 2 in the past month.

The first game of the series is tonight with Hiroki Kuroda facing off against Chad Gaudin. Kuroda is coming off a loss in his last start against the Mariners, although iin his start before that he was one out away from a complete game shutout against the White Sox. He is 1-4 since his return from the DL and his only other win on the season was against the Padres on Opening Day. Gaudin is coming off three straight superb starts. Over his last three starts he's gone 21 innings while allowing only 5 runs and 11 hits with 5 walks and 28 strikeouts. The Dodgers will hopefully end this streak.

On Saturday, Randy Wolf will go for another no-decision against Josh Geer. Seriously, Wolf has only three wins so far this year despite his superb pitching. Although he might be able to get one against Geer, who isn't very good. Geer has earned his 5.68 ERA this year (5.70 FIP). He is a control artist who forces the opposing team to put the ball in play. Unfortunately, he hasn't been very successful doing that this year, allowing over 2 home runs per 9 innings. That number should regress but ultimately he's just not a very skilled pitcher, his fastball averages less than 86 MPH.

The series finale will pit Dodger ace Chad Billingsley against 26 year-old right hander Josh Banks. Banks was called up a couple weeks ago putting up a 2.47 ERA in 14 appearances, including eight starts, for Triple-A Portland. Banks is not a great player but he is quite interesting to watch. Banks has a 8 pitch reportoire! He throws a four-seam fastball, a sinker (two-seam fastball), slider, 2 different changeups, splitter, cutter, and even a knuckleball. Here's his ridiculous movement chart:

via www.hardballtimes.com

The catcher doesn't even have enough fingers to call all of Bank's pitches, so he has to improvise. Banks said about his reportoire, "If they got a hit on a certain pitch, I try to throw something that looks like that, but at a different speed. Or I'll try to think of a pitch that I haven't thrown 'em. ... The days that I'm throwing well and able to throw 'em all for strikes, you don't really think about, 'This pitch might be the best pitch,' because if you're throwing 'em all over for strikes, it's kind of hard to guess what pitches are coming." So this should be a really interesting game to watch, with the righty going against our even younger ace.

This is a very winnable series for the Dodgers. They are going against some fairly marginal starting pitchers with the Dodgers' three best arms on the hill. With Manny back to help out the offense I fully expect that the Dodgers will win two or even all three games this series.

Pitching Probables:

Friday: Hiroki Kuroda (2-4, 3.77 ERA) vs. Chad Gaudin (4-6, 4.97 ERA)

Saturday: Randy Wolf (3-3, 3.61 ERA) vs. Josh Geer (1-3, 5.68 ERA)

Sunday: Chad Billingsley (9-4, 3.12 ERA) vs. Josh Banks (1-0, 3.38 ERA)

Padres blog Gaslamp Ball

Poll

How many games will the Dodgers win this series?

0

0 votes

1

3 votes

2

32 votes

All 3

66 votes

101 votes | Poll has closed

2008 Mets Post-Mortem: Pitchers And Pitches

Eric Simon — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:00:05 -0000

I love stats. I acknowledge their flaws, and I certainly don't believe they tell you everything there is to know about baseball (does anyone actually?), but they really are just a lot of fun to pore over. Thanks to countless intrepid folks who have contributed the ways and means for distributing and disseminating baseball statistics, we have the tools available to learn far more about the game and its players than we ever have before.

One ridiculously useful site for baseball statistics (among other things) is FanGraphs, which is where all of the stats for this article (as well as the WPA graphs in my daily recaps) were extracted from. I wanted to take some time to look at the Mets' pitchers, their pitch velocities and pitch selection from 2008, so let's do just that.

Fastballs

The fastball is almost every pitcher's bread-and-butter. Better than 85% of pitchers threw fastballs at least half the time. Almost 11% threw their heater three-quarters of the time or more. Three guys threw 90% fastballs, though only one -- Tampa Bay's Grant Balfour (91.3%) did so over a significant number of innings. Eddie Kunz threw a higher percentage of fastballs than anyone else in baseball (92.3%), but he only threw a total of 55 pitches.

So folks throw a lot of fastballs. But how fast do they throw 'em? Here are the average fastball speeds for Mets pitchers this season.

Player	FBavg
Brian Stokes	95.0
Billy Wagner	94.5
Robert Parnell	94
Aaron Heilman	93.3
Edward Kunz	92.9
Mike Pelfrey	92.7
Jorge Sosa	92.2
John Maine	92.1
Johan Santana	91.2
Oliver Perez	91.2
Brandon Knight	91
Carlos Muniz	90.2
Duaner Sanchez	89.8
Joe Smith	89.4
Jonathon Niese	89.4
Claudio Vargas	89.3
Scott Schoeneweis	88.8
Tony Armas Jr.	88.8
Pedro Martinez	87.7
Nelson Figueroa	86.9
Pedro Feliciano	86.9
Ricardo Rincon	86.4
Matt Wise	84.2

It shouldn't be surprising that relievers dominate the top of this list. They come into a game for an inning at a time -- if that -- and can really air it out because they know they've only got 20 or so pitches before they hit the showers. Whereas starting pitchers have to pace themselves, relievers don't have to show such restraint. Anyone watching Mets games the last two months of the season has seen that Brian Stokes throws gas, and this chart corroborates that observation.

Mike Pelfrey had the fastest average heater among Mets starting pitchers at 92.7 MPH; Pedro Martinez had the slowest at 87.7. If that looks a little low, consider that his average fastball in limited action in 2007 was 86.2 MPH, so 87.7 is a clear improvement.

Of some concern is Johan Santana's average heater speed of 91.2. He was at 91.7 in 2007 with the Twins, and while a half-mile per hour doesn't seem like much now, it's definitely something worth keeping an eye on as he adds years to his ledger and mileage to his arm. His slider speed dropped (84.9 to 83.5) as did his changeup (81.9 to 80.0). The good news is that the disparity in speed between his fastball and changeup actually increased, though the velocity dip across the board is hardly encouraging. Whether that had anything to do with the deterioration in his strikeout rate (9.66 to 7.91 per nine innings) is not yet clear.

For those curious types, the fastest average fastball belonged to Joel Zumaya at 97.5 MPH. The slowest belonged to Tim Wakefield (72.9), though the slowest non-knuckleballer was Chad Bradford at 79.6. The slowest non-knuckler, non-sidearmer was Jamie Moyer for the fiftieth consecutive season at 81.2 MPH. The average big league fastball was thrown at 90.5 MPH.

Pitch Types

Let's move on from pitch speed and on to pitch selection. Here is the breakdown of pitch type for all Mets pitchers this season, sorted by highest fastball frequency.

Player	FB	SL	CB	CH	CT
Brian Stokes	69.30%		20.80%	9.80%
Billy Wagner	71.10%	28.50%		0.40%
Robert Parnell	75.30%	21.50%		3.20%
Aaron Heilman	64.00%	12.00%		24.00%
Edward Kunz	92.30%	7.70%
Mike Pelfrey	81.20%	12.80%	0.80%	5.10%
Jorge Sosa	50.30%	44.70%		5.10%
John Maine	70.50%	10.10%	1.00%	18.40%
Johan Santana	59.60%	11.70%		28.70%
Oliver Perez	69.20%	26.90%	1.30%	2.60%
Brandon Knight	62.00%	20.90%	13.20%	3.80%
Carlos Muniz	63.80%	31.80%		4.40%
Duaner Sanchez	46.40%	19.00%	3.70%	30.90%
Joe Smith	66.90%	31.10%		2.10%
Jonathon Niese	63.30%	0.40%	24.70%	9.40%	2.20%
Claudio Vargas	62.90%	23.20%		13.80%
Scott Schoeneweis	78.80%	20.80%		0.50%
Tony Armas Jr.	57.40%	36.80%	0.70%	5.10%
Pedro Martinez	56.10%	1.60%	16.00%	19.00%	7.30%
Nelson Figueroa	55.50%	19.70%	18.50%	6.30%
Pedro Feliciano	55.40%	38.40%	0.20%	6.00%
Ricardo Rincon	31.10%	60.70%		8.20%
Matt Wise	42.10%	0.80%		57.10%

(FB=fastball, SL=slider, CB=curveball, CH=changeup, CT=cutter)

One thing that jumps out immediately is that the Mets have a lot of pitchers who all sport basically the same arsenal: Fastball, slider, changeup. Jon Niese, Brian Stokes and Pedro Martinez preferred the curveball to the slider, and Niese and Martinez threw some cutters, but otherwise everyone threw the same three types of pitch. I'm a little surprised that the Mets lacked a single pitcher who throws a split-fingered fastball. Approximately one in eight (11.7%) big league pitchers threw at least 1% splitters in 2008; none threw them for the Mets. The splitter can wreak havoc on a pitcher's elbow, and who's to say that Rick Peterson didn't have a hand in steering the Mets away from that sort of injury risk. We know he was a mechanics freak, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that he advised the Mets to avoid pitchers who featured a splitter.

Quick Hits

Jose Contreras led all qualified starters with splitters accounting for 24.6% of his pitches.
Taylor Buchholz threw more curveballs than anyone else (34.9%).
Tom Glavine threw 43.2% changeups, more than anyone else.
The Cubs' Mike Wuertz threw 60.8% sliders, again, more than anyone else.
Four pitchers were regular knuckleballers: Wakefield, Charlie Zink (Red Sox), Charlie Haeger (Padres) and R.A. Dickey (Rangers).
Two others threw at least one knuckleball: Josh Banks (Padres) and Ryan Franklin (Cardinals), though the latter threw them so infrequently (.4%) that they were probably changeups or curveballs that were simply mis-categorized.
The Angels' Darren O'Day threw 2.5% of his 671 pitches for pitch-outs.
C.C. Sabathia threw more pitches overall than any other big leaguer: 3,814. NL Cy Young candidate Tim Lincecum was second at 3,682, and Sabathia's fellow free agent-to-be A.J. Burnett threw 3,650. Johan Santana was fifth with 3,598 pitches tossed.