RZ
Nov 11, 2009 Mar 09, 2011 45 272
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What Do They Throw?
by RZ on Jan 31, 2011 8:30 AM EST
on DRaysBay
During the Arizona Fall League this off-season, the Tampa Bay Rays had four pitchers on the same roster for the Peoria Saguaros: Alex Cobb, Sergio Espinosa, Neil Schenk, and Jeremy Hall. That team's stadium just so happens to have Pitch F/x cameras installed, with the data freely available. This data allows us to know what type of pitches these guys throw.
Alex Cobb
The right hander wasn't ranked among the Rays top ten prospects by Baseball America's or ESPN's Keith Law (16th in BA's complete rankings), but he has the potential to become a decent major-league pitcher. Anyway, on to the charts:
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My visual response to PGP's article earlier this week. I would be worried about Manny's ability to stay back on off-speed pitches.
over 1 year ago
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Price's Speeding Two-Seamer
by RZ on Dec 16, 2010 8:13 AM EST
on DRaysBay
David Price's best pitch is the fastball, being able to reach back and hit triple digits when he has the chance. His two-seam fastball has been a bit of a project this season, having introduced it to his Major League repertoire halfway into the 2009 season. I looked at his pitch selection earlier in the year and noted that his improved pitching may have been the result of adding a two-seamer. Price kept using his two-seamer for the 2010 season until July, when he abruptly ended its usage. After six starts, Price reintroduced it. Except this time, it was a different pitch.
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A Look Into Jeremy Hellickson's First Start
by RZ on Aug 6, 2010 9:36 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
Jeremy Hellickson had an excellent first start to his very promising Major League career. You can read more about it here. I actually ended up attending the game so I didn't have the pleasure of watching him up close via television broadcast, but from my vantage point, it appeared Hellickson mixed his pitches well (especially with his change up) and inducing whiffs from all three of his pitches. Of course, it looked like he only had three pitches.
Steve had a good preview on Jelly Helly before the game and noted that he had five pitches: the four seam fastball, a two seam fastball, change up, curve, and a cutter that he has been working on this season. And when looking at the Pitch f/x data after the game, I noticed that he may have thrown all five. Here is a spin movement plot for Hellickson's start:
(Note: the Trop's Pitch f/x data in the past couple of months has been off from earlier in the season, namely the horizontal pitch movement. So I "corrected" it by subtracting five inches for this particular graph.)
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Is Chad Qualls Good?: A Look at DIPS and His Pitches
by RZ on Aug 5, 2010 7:00 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
Chad Qualls is a serviceable reliever, a sinker-slider pitcher who induces a high amount of groundballs and can rack up the strikeouts. I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but Qualls has not had a good 2010 season. In fact, it is down right ugly. Among qualified relievers, Qualls has the highest ERA, opponent's batting average, BABIP, and second lowest left-on-base percentage in the Majors. This is after six solid seasons with the Astros and Diamondback, never posting an ERA above 3.76 the entire time.
Those stats I mentioned above - ERA, batting average against, etc - don't necessarily tell us how well Qualls pitched. Rather, they tell what happened, which is still useful. Looking at some DIP metrics - Defense Independent Pitching - this season Qualls has performed slightly worse than he has in the past, notably posting the highest walk and home run rates of his career. Other than that, saber-thinking tells us that his performance has been dictated by luck and should regress to his career levels.
Crawling out of the spreadsheets, Qualls had surgery last August to repair his dislocated patella in the left knee (the patella is the kneecap, ouch!). The left knee is the leading foot for a right-handed pitcher and becomes the planting foot as the pitcher delivers the baseball. Qualls might have felt some change in his knee after the surgery, enough to cause the change in mechanics that occurred this season.
Recently, Harry Pavlidis found that Qualls whiff and ground ball rates are also declining this bad season. This shows that there has been some change in how he has performed this season other than luck. Since he has only two pitches, it was easy for me to classify Qualls's pitches and to determine whether one pitch worsened more than the other.
Evan Longoria and Hitting the Inside Pitch
by RZ on Jul 23, 2010 11:01 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
The title says it all: I wanted to know how good Evan Longoria is at hitting the inside pitch. As usual, I took a look at the Pitch f/x data provided by MLBAM and made this graph plotting his wOBA on contact (wOBAc) by horizontal location and the Major League average for right-handed hitters. So here it is:
Gray lines are the edge of the plate plus the radius of a baseball (20 inches wide). Negative numbers are inside to right-handed hitters; positive numbers are away from right-handed hitters.
The graph takes data for the current season only, but it only gets smoother if the previous two seasons were added. Regardless, Longoria is above average when comes to doing damage on pitches inside. Even on inside pitches off the plate, the graph shows that Longoria still has the ability to cause damage.
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Jeff Niemann Is Using His Power Sinker More
by RZ on Jul 16, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
The American League's starter for this season's All-Star game was the Rays' own David Price. But there was another Rays starter that some thought (from a non-sabermetric crowd) deserved to make the team: Jeff "The Big Nyquil" Niemann.
The reason for him to be on the roster is that he's posted a nice 7-2 record, with a low 2.77 ERA, and a .778 team winning percentage when he starts....but none of those stats accurately reflects his true performance. Steve Slowinski refreshed us on the whole DIPS discussion yesterday and depending on what DIP statistic you look at, Niemann either marginally improved or is just about the same as he was all of last season.
The major difference for Niemann this season is that he has had less runners on base due to a low .245 BABIP (prime for some regression) and keeping those few runners from scoring with a low left on base percentage (LOB%, also due for some regression) meaning less runners scored.
But my post today is not a full-fledged Jeff Niemann analysis; rather I want to bring attention his best pitch of this season, his two-seam fastball.
Rating The Starters' Pitches
by RZ on Jul 9, 2010 1:00 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
I've been too busy this week to write a lenghty post, but I have been able to classify all the Rays starters' pitches for this season. Now my handy database can easily compute metrics like run values and contact rates. Some brief notes after the jump.
| Pitches | Number | Pitch | rv100 | rv | Whiff% | Contact% | OTP% | Swing% | SLGCON |
| David Price | 64 | CH | 0.36 | 0.23 | 3.1% | 93.8% | 51.6% | 50.0% | .474 |
| David Price | 304 | CU | 0.17 | 0.51 | 7.6% | 82.6% | 46.4% | 43.4% | .528 |
| David Price | 1039 | FF | -0.82 | -8.48 | 9.8% | 79.4% | 47.4% | 47.5% | .466 |
| David Price | 297 | FT | -1.72 | -5.12 | 9.1% | 80.0% | 46.1% | 45.5% | .353 |
| David Price | 126 | SL | -1.79 | -2.25 | 9.5% | 78.9% | 39.7% | 45.2% | .345 |
| James Shields | 413 | CH | -1.81 | -7.47 | 22.8% | 62.5% | 37.0% | 60.8% | .481 |
| James Shields | 219 | CU | -0.43 | -0.94 | 10.5% | 75.8% | 41.1% | 43.4% | .333 |
| James Shields | 327 | FC | 0.13 | 0.41 | 5.8% | 86.8% | 45.9% | 44.0% | .429 |
| James Shields | 574 | FF | 0.96 | 5.49 | 3.5% | 92.4% | 60.3% | 45.8% | .720 |
| James Shields | 180 | FT | 5.73 | 10.32 | 2.2% | 94.6% | 42.2% | 41.1% | .975 |
| James Shields | 8 | SL | -6.16 | -0.49 | 0.0% | 100.0% | 75.0% | 75.0% | .200 |
| Jeff Niemann | 217 | CU | 0.62 | 1.34 | 12.0% | 67.5% | 40.6% | 36.9% | .667 |
| Jeff Niemann | 196 | FC | 0.19 | 0.37 | 9.2% | 77.5% | 46.9% | 40.8% | .537 |
| Jeff Niemann | 507 | FF | -1.09 | -5.55 | 4.3% | 88.5% | 50.1% | 37.7% | .410 |
| Jeff Niemann | 158 | FS | 0.40 | 0.63 | 17.1% | 72.2% | 36.7% | 61.4% | .579 |
| Jeff Niemann | 489 | FT | -2.57 | -12.58 | 5.9% | 89.1% | 51.5% | 54.6% | .346 |
| Jeff Niemann | 7 | SL | -8.76 | -0.61 | 14.3% | 80.0% | 71.4% | 71.4% | .000 |
| Matt Garza | 87 | CH | 1.58 | 1.37 | 10.3% | 67.9% | 34.5% | 32.2% | .545 |
| Matt Garza | 153 | CU | 0.90 | 1.38 | 6.5% | 76.2% | 35.9% | 27.5% | .529 |
| Matt Garza | 814 | FF | -0.87 | -7.07 | 5.3% | 88.6% | 48.0% | 46.2% | .467 |
| Matt Garza | 414 | FT | 1.14 | 4.72 | 5.1% | 88.3% | 39.1% | 43.2% | .548 |
| Matt Garza | 288 | SL | 1.23 | 3.53 | 18.4% | 65.8% | 37.8% | 54.9% | .738 |
| Wade Davis | 64 | CH | 5.24 | 3.36 | 3.1% | 93.1% | 31.3% | 45.3% | .750 |
| Wade Davis | 199 | CU | -0.10 | -0.21 | 5.0% | 87.2% | 49.7% | 39.2% | .419 |
| Wade Davis | 893 | FF | 0.19 | 1.74 | 4.7% | 89.9% | 49.7% | 46.4% | .603 |
| Wade Davis | 214 | FT | 0.83 | 1.77 | 7.5% | 84.0% | 35.5% | 46.7% | .571 |
| Wade Davis | 171 | SL | 0.54 | 0.92 | 9.9% | 78.2% | 35.1% | 45.6% | .452 |
*Definitions at the end of the post.
**If you cannot see the full chart, click the "Wide" screen option on the right.
Knuckleball hangover
There is a chart in the link that shows how hitters don't hit the day after seeing a knuckleball pitcher (Wakefield). Here are the probable pitchers for the Indians series in order: Jake Westbrook, Fausto Carmona, Aaron Laffey, and Justin Masterson.
The Shift And Lack Of Air Hits Are Hurting Carlos Pena
by RZ on Jul 2, 2010 4:00 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
Out of all the left-handed hitters in the Majors that face a defensive shift, Carlos Pena may be the worst at beating it. His numbers this season for BABIP and wOBA to right field are the lowest of his career and his ground ball percentage to right field is also the highest of his career (excluding a short 2006 MLB season). The MLB average for BABIP on ground balls is usually around .300. But for Pena and other slow runners, it is usually under .300 with Pena's career number coming in at .207. Looking at his overall batted ball percentages, his ground ball rate is at a career high while his fly ball percentage and line drive percentage are at career lows. This shouldn't be due to diminishing power since his home run to fly ball percentage is around his career average.
In a nutshell, Pena is just not getting the ball in the air as much as he should be. I don't know if Pena changed his swing mechanics, intentional or unintentional, or not but he really needs to change this or he won't get on-base as much as he should via the base hit. Plus, more air balls equals more home runs and extra base hits meaning more runs for the Rays.
Jeremy Greenhouse took an extensive look at the shift and found that left-handed hitters who face the shift more often, have a lower BABIP to right field (more infielders) and a slightly higher BABIP to left field (less infielders). Greenhouse provided some numbers for every left-handed hitter in the Majors since 2008. Those numbers includes two local regression models based on the batter's batted ball angle for ground balls and how it would fare in a shift and when there is no shift. For Pena, his numbers for the shift model was the worst in the Majors since 2008. He also had one of the most extreme batted ball angle towards the right field foul line.
These graphs may not be necessary since they are really just a visual summary of my findings. But they are neat to look at.
Price Has Been Whiffy Lately
by RZ on Jul 2, 2010 12:56 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
For a pitcher showcasing a mid-90s fastball, David Price's strikeout per nine innings ratio seems like it shouldn't be below 8. However, during his first 12 starts this season, Price had a K/9 of 6.36. That hasn't been the case recently. In his last three starts, all against inter-league opponents, Price's K/9 has been a superb 12.79. His K/9 for the season now stands at 7.59, an increase of over one strikeout per nine in just 19 innings. Here is a look at his game logs for this season along with the innings pitched, strikeouts, and swinging strikes.
| Rk | Date | IP | SO | StS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apr 9 | 7.2 | 7 | 10 |
| 2 | Apr 14 | 7.0 | 7 | 7 |
| 3 | Apr 20 | 5.0 | 3 | 11 |
| 4 | Apr 25 | 9.0 | 9 | 12 |
| 5 | May 1 | 6.0 | 1 | 6 |
| 6 | May 7 | 7.2 | 6 | 9 |
| 7 | May 12 | 6.1 | 6 | 11 |
| 8 | May 18 | 6.0 | 5 | 9 |
| 9 | May 23 | 5.0 | 2 | 9 |
| 10 | May 28 | 7.0 | 4 | 6 |
| 11 | Jun 2 | 8.0 | 3 | 8 |
| 12 | Jun 9 | 6.0 | 4 | 4 |
| 13 | Jun 15 | 5.0 | 7 | 9 |
| 14 | Jun 20 | 6.0 | 9 | 14 |
| 15 | Jun 26 | 8.0 | 11 | 15 |
| 99.2 | 84 |
Price had some good strikeout numbers in most of his starts in April, although he didn't get more strikeouts than innings pitched in a game until June 15th. Overall, there does seem to be a moderate correlation between the number of swinging strikes and the number of strikeouts, so I split up Price's starts in my pitch-by-pitch database and found the contact and whiff rates for each of his pitch types. That way, we can see which pitches have been missing more or less bats.
A Look At the Rays' Free Swinging Ways
by RZ on Jun 25, 2010 10:01 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
There have been several references to O-Swing lately here at DRaysBay and elsewhere. A commonly used stat from Fan Graphs plate discipline section, O-Swing is moderately correlated with walk rate (about an r-squared of .4-.6 depending on sample). So I decided to pull up the O-Swing numbers from both Fan Graphs and my pitch f/x database* for each of the Rays hitters for this season and the previous two (when full season pitch f/x data was first available).
The results after the jump...
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Shields And His BABIP
by RZ on Jun 18, 2010 1:00 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
There has apparently been some worry about starter James Shields this year who now sports the second highest ERA of the rotation. Tommy went over his thoughts yesterday and believes that Shields may have been placing his fastball over the heart pf the plate more frequently as of late. I noted in the comment section that overall, his BABIP has been extremely high and much higher than his career average. Take a look at the year by year numbers:
| BABIP | |
| 2006 | .332 |
| 2007 | .292 |
| 2008 | .292 |
| 2009 | .317 |
| 2010 | .349 |
| Total | .310 |
Other than his first half season in in 2006, this season is clearly the outlier. He now has the sixth highest BABIP among qualified starters this season. That doesn't mean Shields has been pitching badly this season. More of a luck thing as the DIPS stats suggest that he is pitching about the same if not better this season.
| FIP | xFIP | |
| 2006 | 4.39 | 3.95 |
| 2007 | 3.86 | 3.78 |
| 2008 | 3.82 | 3.92 |
| 2009 | 4.02 | 3.92 |
| 2010 | 3.95 | 3.48 |
| Total | 3.98 | 3.84 |
I like xFIP because it tries to normalize the home run rate which can skew FIP one way or another. This applies greatly to Shields as he is tied for seventh in the Majors for home runs allowed.
Back to the original stat subject, I ran the numbers and found the BABIP for each pitch type for Shields compared to the numbers from the 2008-2009 seasons to this season. This should tell if his fastball is giving up most of his hits which he may have been placing over the plate too often as noted in Tommy's article.
David Price's High Heat Location
by RZ on Jun 11, 2010 1:03 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
There was something different coming from David Price's arm in his last start on Wednesday. In that start against the Toronto Blue Jays, Price went six innings on 104 pitches, allowing only one run with a 5:4 walk-to-strikeout ratio. Maybe his arm was feeling really good that day or maybe he wanted to attack the homer happy Blue Jay hitters as he threw the highest percentage of four-seam fastballs since a start a year ago today against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. On Wednesday, Price threw a total of 83 fastballs averaging 94.9 mph with a total run value of .15 and three swinging strikes. You can read a little more about Price's pitch usage in this post.
There were three left-handed hitters in the Blue Jays' lineup, so here are two plots of Price's fastballs. Bold points are strikes, takes are in light blue, pitches made contact with are x's, and swinging strikes are marked with a circle.
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Breaking Down James Shields' Pitches
by RZ on Jun 4, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
James Shields is having an excellent 2010 season. His K/9 is around nine, which would be his career high if the season ended today, and his xFIP is 3.26, ninth in the Majors for starters. Interestingly, his pitch usage and pitch run values are pretty consistent throughout the course of his career. His fastball's velocity is at a career high, while his fastball is still a below average pitch per linear weights. However, I won't be analyzing why Shields is getting more Ks in this post. Instead, with about two and a third full seasons of pitch f/x data, I will look into the sequence of his pitches to get a general sense of how he pitches.
Starting with step one, here is a visual breakdown of his pitch usage by count and by batter handedness.
There are some interesting patterns that I find here for each pitch.
- The four-seam fastball is thrown the most with no strikes.
- The changeup is thrown as much to right-handed hitters (RHH) as is to left-handed hitters (LHH) and is his primary putaway pitch to both.
- The cutter is most used when ahead in the count against LHH, likely to force them not to sit on the changeup.
- Shields doesn't throw too many two-seam fastballs, with the exception of the first pitch to LHH. It's a good pitch to start out away to lefties since his two-seamer has really good sink of his fastball.
- The curveball seems to be used mostly ahead of the count with it being pitched more to RHH.
- For the sliders, I classified those pitches as either really slow or breaks more compared to the cutters for the specific game. They could be just really slow cutters although Shields "cutter" has more slider movement from his arm angle. But he must throw it since he uses it more to RHH, having it break away from them.
It is easy to just look at pitches individually, but pitching is about sequencing with one pitch setting up the other. Using the data, here are the run values for Shields pitches when preceded by a certain pitch. (This an idea from this post by now Rays employee Josh Kalk. I didn't included Shields' slider because of the small sample size. Run value numbers are run values per 100 pitches or rv100.)
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Checking Up On Win Probability
by RZ on May 28, 2010 10:08 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
When it comes to baseball statistics, one of my favorites is Win Probability and everything associated with it. Of course, most saberists ignore it beyond the game-by-game level since it doesn't give a true talent evaluation of a player, which is so very true. So why care? Because it tells us a story or as Tom Tango eloquently puts it:
.... the quantification of your feelings as the game unfolds, assigned to the players involved.
Win Probability stats are more suited for hitters since they are like ERA for pitchers - they describe what's happened. I like these stats because the score, base-out state, and leverage are taken into context. So let's check in on the current Win Probability statistics for the Rays hitters along with WPA/LI, which is context neutral wins.
Here is a chart of Win Probability Added (WPA) and WPA/LI for the whole season and split for the first two months.
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Improving Plate Discipline From Longoria
by RZ on May 25, 2010 11:45 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
Editor Note: Too good for the side-bar. RZ's graphs are amazing as always.
I got the idea for this article from Tommy's post on Longoria. Looking at FanGraphs data, the only major changes in Longoria's plate discipline from his first two season and this season is that his swing rate has gone down a tad and his contact rate is up to the highest of his career. These two stats will likely trend one way or the other as he continues on with his career, more so in his early seasons as continues to improve his batting skills.
I then made a couple contour graphs to visualize his changing contact rate and swinging rate.
First up, swinging rate. In this chart, the solid line denotes Longoria's 55% swinging rate (AKA the location where he's swung at 55% of the pitches thrown) and the dotted line marks his 40% rate, which is closer to his overall career average.
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Grant Balfour: Doing More With Less (Speed)
by RZ on May 21, 2010 10:45 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
So with J.P. Howell now out for a year, the Rays will have to rely more on the pitchers they already have in the pen. Grant Balfour is one. This season in 17.1 innings, Balfour has a slightly better Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) at 2.11 than he had in 2008 (2.22 FIP). Whether it lasts or not is another story, but something is definitely different with Balfour's pitches this year.
Using MLBAM's Pitch F/x data, here is a histogram of Balfour's fastball by season since 2008:
Balfour's average velocity is the lowest in his career this season by one mile per hour, yet he is still pitching very well. Of course he has dropped his fastball usage a bit and is working in his off speed pitches more, but the fastball is working well when it is used. At least, that's what run values (AKA pitch type linear weights) says.
Here are the run values of Balfour's fastball based on velocity and separated by season:
Looking Further Inside Pena's Bad Snap
by RZ on May 14, 2010 12:02 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
I guess am I going to be beat on a thrice beaten dead horse. Tommy got us started with the Carlos Pena "O-fer" streak subject on Tuesday, followed up by FFreeZo giving us Pena's rolling 40 at bat batting average since 2007 and then later by pitcher handedness. For my analysis, I will attempt to be a little more process-oriented using the data from pitch f/x to see how much Pena has changed his approach at the plate during this bad stretch.
I divided up the data into three periods the first being 2008 and 2009, the second is this season before April 30th, and the third is April 30th and onward.
| Period | rv100 | rv | Strike | CON | Swing | OSWING | InPlay | BABIP |
| 2008-2009 | 1.16 | 52.99 | 56.7% | 68.5% | 44.4% | 20.9% | 13.6% | .274 |
| Pre Bad Streak | 1.22 | 4.32 | 56.1% | 77.7% | 46.4% | 27.8% | 15.6% | .275 |
| Bad Stretch | -3.18 | -6.31 | 62.1% | 66.0% | 50.5% | 33.0% | 11.1% | .091 |
I see his contact rate in this bad stretch is actually near levels that he had prior to this season with Pena making contact way above average in April which Fan Graphs has my backing. But remember the small sample size rule (another dead horse). According to Pizza Cutter (who is now with the Cleveland Indians), contact rate stabilizes in about 100 plate appearances. Pena now has 138 PAs and his contact rate is up about 10% from last season and about 4% from his career average. Other than that, Pena has had more swings at pitches outside the zone while maintaining an insanely low BABIP during this funk. I'll stay with BABIP right now for my analysis and try to find out if Pena has been unlucky in this extremely small sample.
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Garza's Nasty Slider
by RZ on May 7, 2010 10:15 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
Jeez. It seems like the Rays start an ace on the mound every game. One of them is Matt Garza who is widely believed to have the best "stuff" on the Rays staff and is the most likely one to throw a no-hitter or a perfect game. This season is looking like it will be the best so far in his career going 5-1 in his first six starts with a 2.09 ERA and 3.28 FIP. His best off-speed, the slider, continues to work for him as it has since he joined the Rays in the 2008 season. According to MLBAM pitch f/x data, Garza's slider has got contact rate of about 60%. That is ninth best in the Majors for a pitcher who threw the slider at least 70 times. And out of that same data set, Garza is third in run values per 100 pitches.
Stealing the idea from Dave Allen, here is a plot of all his sliders this season marked by pitch outcome.
The Best and Worst Pitches of the Rays Staff: First Month
by RZ on May 4, 2010 10:32 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
We have about a month of play finished already so here are the best and worst pitches of the Rays staff sorted by run value with negative being good for the pitcher (run prevention). I only charted those pitches thrown at least 20 times with the contact rate added for show (just look at Garza's slider).
| NAME | # | pitch | rv100 | CONTACT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Price | 43 | SL | -5.44 | 81.0% |
| Jeff Niemann | 38 | CU | -5.35 | 76.9% |
| David Price | 131 | FT | -4.91 | 80.4% |
| Dan Wheeler | 37 | SL | -4.70 | 75.0% |
| Matt Garza | 82 | SL | -4.29 | 52.1% |
| Wade Davis | 77 | FT | -2.90 | 87.9% |
| Jeff Niemann | 142 | FF | -2.87 | 88.9% |
| Rafael Soriano | 35 | FT | -2.62 | 83.3% |
| Andy Sonnanstine | 102 | FC | -2.38 | 89.8% |
| James Shields | 121 | CH | -2.22 | 60.3% |
| Jeff Niemann | 28 | SL | -2.19 | 45.5% |
| Dan Wheeler | 54 | FA | -2.17 | 95.5% |
| Randy Choate | 33 | SL | -2.06 | 46.2% |
| Grant Balfour | 163 | FF | -1.96 | 83.5% |
| Grant Balfour | 22 | SL | -1.88 | 66.7% |
| Lance Cormier | 120 | FC | -1.47 | 93.1% |
| Matt Garza | 25 | CH | -1.46 | 62.5% |
| Wade Davis | 58 | SL | -1.36 | 75.0% |
| Matt Garza | 236 | FF | -1.31 | 88.4% |
| Wade Davis | 284 | FF | -1.05 | 89.3% |
| David Price | 234 | FF | -0.33 | 75.9% |
| Jeff Niemann | 45 | FS | -0.19 | 80.8% |
| Mike Ekstrom | 46 | FT | -0.15 | 100.0% |
| Lance Cormier | 39 | CU | -0.09 | 66.7% |
| Matt Garza | 34 | CU | -0.01 | 81.8% |
| James Shields | 192 | FF | 0.15 | 91.3% |
| David Price | 22 | CH | 0.22 | 100.0% |
| Rafael Soriano | 42 | SL | 0.22 | 78.3% |
| James Shields | 60 | CU | 0.56 | 81.0% |
| James Shields | 94 | FC | 0.69 | 87.2% |
| Rafael Soriano | 95 | FF | 1.06 | 90.0% |
| Jeff Niemann | 112 | FT | 1.34 | 93.8% |
| Matt Garza | 152 | FT | 1.37 | 91.8% |
| David Price | 91 | CU | 1.79 | 90.5% |
| Randy Choate | 86 | FA | 1.98 | 93.3% |
| Wade Davis | 49 | CU | 2.24 | 87.5% |
| Mike Ekstrom | 57 | FF | 2.30 | 90.0% |
| Mike Ekstrom | 24 | SL | 2.70 | 62.5% |
| Jeff Niemann | 23 | FC | 4.07 | 100.0% |
| Wade Davis | 22 | CH | 5.02 | 100.0% |
| Scott Kazmir | 32 | SL | 6.88 | 66.7% |
| James Shields | 68 | FT | 8.22 | 93.5% |
| Andy Sonnanstine | 29 | SL | 8.56 | 83.3% |
Hey! David Price's slider is making a comeback. And somehow I forgot to take Scott Kazmir out but his "new" slider is atrocious when put into play since his SLGCON is at 2.000. But it seems most pitcher's get their whiffs on sliders.
Data from MLBAM. Classifications are my own. Google Doc of table above.
This And That: Run Efficiency, Velocity, Jaso Love, VOPB, and More
by RZ on Apr 30, 2010 12:30 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
Sorry no one topic committed here or any pretty graphs. Just some thoughts and observations I had recently.
- Don't see any reason why the Rays will send Jaso back down to Durham once Shoppach gets back. His regression won't be that bad compared to some other catcher on the team.
- The addition of Joaquin Benoit brings another legitimate flame thrower in the pen as I'm sure he surprised many fans yesterday hitting 94-95 in his Ray debut. Grant Balfour's is up a little, hitting 93-94 recently. And James Shields who is underrated in velocity has had his best average in his career according to BIS data.
- The Rays don't play the Twins until July. Would be cool if both teams are still on top.
- Pat Burrell has zero runs above average (wRAA). That's right zippo. But he does have a WPA of .36.
- Speaking of WPA, Ben Zobrist has the worst out of the Rays hitters with a -.66.
- Scott Kazmir and Jason Hammel were two starters that were traded last season. Both have been on the DL this season. Hmm...
Best Pitches So Far For The Rays Staff
- Davis: Two Seam -5.77 rv100
- Price: Two Seam -5.36
- Niemann: Curve -5.17
- Sonnanstine: Cutter -4.57
- Wheeler: Slider -4.40
Two Seamer Improves David Price’s Game
by RZ on Apr 23, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
Coming into professional baseball, David Price essentially had only two pitches: a four seam fastball and a slider. Two years later, Price now has five: two fastballs, a slider, a spike curve (same as a knuckle curve), and a change-up. This season Price has been throwing his spike curve quite frequently; BIS data has him throwing it over 17% of the time, although it seems like a get-me-over pitch at times, with its FanGraphs run value at -1.8. But little has been talked about his two seam fastball, which Price began using about halfway into his 2009 Major League season.
Here is a line graph charting his pitch usage during the regular season using MLBAM data:
Notice the two seamer coming full throttle in his 17th game of his career. That game happened to be his 12th start of the 2009 season where he pitched seven innings of one run baseball against the weak Royals. Let's look at his season numbers before that game and compare them to the numbers for that start and after.
Quick Visuals: A Look at Evan Longoria's Sweetspot(s)
by RZ on Apr 16, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
Does this get your attention?
Yes, RZ has finally pulled through and brought DRaysBay its very first "heat map"! Taking a cue from Jeremy Greenhouse of Baseball Analysts, here is my own short version of a visual scouting report that JG has done here and here (this counts too). My first subject will be everyone's favorite 2010 AL MVP candidate, Evan Longoria.
Looking at that colorful first graph, the color bar shows that anything not dark blue is positive run value. Focusing on the inside the strike zone, there are two notable sweetspots that Longoria seems to possess. Up in the zone and over the middle part of the plate, and just a little in from the middle of strike zone. This seems right considering where his home runs have been located.
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Upton's Swing Rate and Batted Ball vs. Location
by RZ on Apr 9, 2010 12:29 PM EDT
on DRaysBay
Author's Note: This wasn't suppose to go up until later this afternoon as I added an updated chart to include data from the first three games of the season. Apologies if this was any inconvenience.
I just can't stay away from this guy. B.J. Upton is a popular subject in the media as of late as people are asking if he can really bounce back and hit to his potential this season. In the first three games this season, Upton has only two singles in 12 at bats with two walks and three Ks. Not good, but the sample size is even worse. So lets get to the analysis.
The major difference between the 2008 season and the 2009 season for Upton was the walks (ignore balls in play for now). His walk rate dropped six percentage points in 2009 to 9.1% after a career high of 15.2% in 08. This is a plate discipline issue that is likely related to Upton's O-Swing% which rose about 4.5 points last season (numbers per Fan Graphs).
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He does look a little like Matt Damon.
Joaquin Benoit & Mike Ekstrom: A Look At Their Approach
by RZ on Apr 2, 2010 7:30 AM EDT
on DRaysBay
The Rays will have likely made their choice already, internally at least, by the time this hits the interwebs, but the final spot in the bullpen will go down to two pitchers: Joaquin Benoit and Mike Ekstrom. There are several differences between the two that will factor in the Rays decision, mainly the health issue for Benoit and trusting the inexperienced Ekstrom. But Trance L. already went over their peripherals yesterday so I will go another way and focus on their approach with their fastballs.
The following plot is the frequency of the vertical location of their fastballs over home plate(with the top and bottom strike zone in black).
Benoit saw his fly ball rate jump 10% over his career average during the 2008 season (what is recorded here) so I am inferring that this was likely a very extreme approach compared to his previous seasons. But that is just my theory. Then there is Ekstrom who pitches mainly down in the zone. The reason for their approach is likely related to the vertical movement on their fastball as shown in this frequency plot which depicts the vertical movement on their fastballs.
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