SB Nation User Blog: VictorW

Pujols's sweet swing

VictorW — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:23:32 -0000

Pujols's sweet swing

Detailed and interesting analysis. I'd love to see something like this on Brian McCann's swing.

Tommy Hanson Flight Paths

VictorW — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:01:14 -0000

Flight Paths for Mr Hanson's first big league start. He only threw one changeup so take that data with a grain of salt compared to the rest. Thanks to Harry Pavlidis for the template.

Here is the first base view. If you notice, Tommy Throws the fastball and slider down while throwing the curveball straight forward. Click the images for bigger versions.

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He starts the slider a little more outside than the fastball and curve so it ends up crossing at about the same point as the fastball.

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Here you can see the different release points and the massive hump of the curveball. It looks like he's purposely changing the release points of these pitches and it's probably tipping them. I wonder if he always does this or if it's just first start jitters.

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Enjoy the pretty graphs.

Beyond the Boxscore's Take on the McLouth Trade

VictorW — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:16:50 -0000

Beyond the Boxscore's Take on the McLouth Trade

Everybody wins!

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

VictorW — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:02:21 -0000

Here’s a look at some of the more obscure numbers produced by our Braves. These numbers do not include today’s Braves/Mets game unless otherwise stated.

27.8

Jeff Francoeur’s out of zone swing %. For the last 3 seasons, this number has been a little over 36%. Additionally, his contact % is up to 84%, when it was around 76-77% before. His K% is down to 8.4% from the 18-20% he’s had from years before. His walk rate is also down by a few percentage points, but I’ll take many, many more balls in play for less walks. I’m probably one of the posts more critical about FYF and his plate approach, but he is showing tremendous improvement this season. He’s swinging at less bad pitches and putting more balls in play this season. Our eyes tell us this during his at bats and these stats agree too. He’s putting more balls in the outfield and hitting less grounders and infield flies as well. All of this is a good sign. He can hit like his old self again and has some upside as into maybe a poor man’s Alfonso Soriano at the plate. Oh, and, small sample size of course, but it looks like his defense is trending back up too.

Yunel Escobar’s pitchers per PA. I’m not the first person to talk about this or notice is, but he’s swinging at everything. He’s aggressive and it’s pretty annoying watching him make first pitch outs. In his defense, however, he’s got a career high 22.7 LD% and a career low .301 BABIP. Additionally, his Out of zone Swing is 4% lower than the last two seasons and he’s swinging at more pitches in the zone by about 7%. He’s swinging at more pitches over the plate and I’m guessing he’s swinging at more meatballs because of the high LD%. However, one big knock against him, is that his infield flyball % is up to 11.8% from 3.6% last season. Infield flies are outs about 97% of the time so they’re basically strikeouts. I’m not too worried about Yunel and I think he’s capable of bringing his OBP over .360, OPS over .800, and play great defense at SS.

.825

Kelly Johnson’s PrOPS. This stands for Predicted OPS, a stat produced by J.C. Bradbury of Sabernomics. It predicts a players OPS based on his batted balls, strikeouts, home runs, and walks. According to PrOPS, Kelly Johnson should be hitting something like .276/.359/.467. Kelly’s LD% is down this year from last, but his K’s are down and his walks are up. Kelly’s been playing better than his results have shown. Hopefully he doesn’t pull a Nick Swisher this year.

Casey Kotchman’s infield flyball %. Remember when I said these were basically strikeouts? Maybe his nickname needs to be changed to Captain IFF. Another bad number: 0% HR/FB. On the plus side, every other peripheral is good. Pitches per PA up to 3.8. LD% at 23%. BB and K rate almost even. I have no idea why he’s hitting so many infield flies and he certainly will start hitting HRs eventually. For this season, Kotchman is much more likely to hit like it’s 2007 than 2008.

.162

Chipper Jones’s ISO slugging. And, of course, Chipper hits a HR today (not included in the ISO). If A-Rod hit that HR there'd be 30 articles up about him hitting another "meaingless" Hr. Anyway, this is the lowest ISO ever in Chipper’s career. Expect this to pick up and another .900 - 1.000 OPS season from him. Sorry nothing too interesting to say about this guy.

.208

Garrett Anderon’s BABIP. Yeah he sucks but he’s better than what he’s done. As long as you have your hopes set on a glorious .780 OPS season, then he’s a solid professional

.948

David Ross’s OPS. He’s hitting like Heap is supposed to. Obviously he’s not this good, but he’s probably one of the best backup catchers in baseball. Cannon arm behind the plate and a solid hitting catcher. Would be the starting catcher on some teams.

Jordan Schafer’s strikeout percentage. Yikes. Overall, he’s playing great though. Typically hitting the ball hard when it is in play and still talking a lot to counteract his strikeouts. His HR/FB rate will drop eventually, but I wonder how much of this he can sustain. Also, keep in mind his walk rate is slightly inflated by some intentional walks and his BABIP is .400 right now. I think he can finish with at least a solid .250/.360/.410 season. I don’t think he’s ready to hit leadoff this season, and I hope next season he simply becomes too good to hit leadoff.

4.55

This includes Monday’s game. Javier Vazquez’s K/BB ratio. This is ace-quality. He’s shaky sometimes with the HRs (like in today’s game. Ugh.), but he’s among the lead leaders in strikeouts and not walking a ton.

2.70/3.10

Derek Lowe’s tERA. The lower number is his actual tERA while the higher number is the tERA if he was in the AL and facing a DH everyday. I messed up the calc the first time. tERA is an advanced defensive-independent pitching stat the looks at K rates, walk rates, HR rates, and batted balls data. It’s like FIP on steroids. The number is really low because of his miniscule HR rate, which is bound to go up. However, Lowe’s walk rate is also going to trend down. Either way, he’s pitching like the ace the Braves were looking for when they inked him.

3.86

Jair Jurrjens’s Fielding Independent Pitching. He’s getting pretty lucky on ERA, but he’s still pretty good. Like Lowe, this is fueled by a ridiculously low HR rate. tERA, however, thinks Jair should be around a 4.3 ERA in the NL or 4.7 in the AL. His LD%, FB%, and walk rate are all up with his K rate way down. I think Jurrjens can produce better peripherals than this, but his ERA will start to go up eventually and hopefully it’ll settle in the 3’s and not the 4’s.

4.57

Kenshin Kawakami’s walks per 9 innings. In addition, apparently all the HRs Lowe and Jurrjens aren’t giving up are being given up by Kawakami and his 2.08 HR/9, a number that would make Chuck James blush. His control just isn’t there. Walking batters and serving meatballs to the plate. I really hope he can adjust because he has the ability to be much better than this if he can ever find his command.

56.6

Jo-Jo Reyes’s groundball rate. This is actually higher than Derek Lowe’s. His LD% is ridiculously low as well. These are bound to trend towards the negative, but Jo-Jo is pitching much better than he ever has in the majors. There’s no way Glavine can out-pitch him this year. This could be a breakout year for Jo-Jo, and I think he’s capable of putting out an era around the low 4’s or maybe even high 3’s this season.

83.4

Jeff Bennett’s fastball%. Up from his usual 74%. His velocity is also up about a MPH to 92.9. Looks like it’s working for him because his K rate is over 9 per 9innings, and he has a pretty good walk rate (2.31 per 9). His slider velocity is up to 86.8 MPH as well. His LD% is a ridiculous 31.6% though, which explains his high batting average against. This should definitely go down. Looks like Bennett may have turned the corner from a 6th inning guy or mopup man to a good reliever who could have some upside. (Edit: Alternatively, maybe we can call this "Jeff Bennett with normal rest.")

92.3

Rafael Soriano’s fastball velocity. He should be around 93-94 MPH his velocity isn’t completely back yet, but he’s been dominant. His walk rate is pretty high (4.09), but he’s fanning batters at a rate of 12.27 per 9.

Peter Moylann’s GB/FB ratio. Ridiculous. Beautiful 11.57 K’s per 9 as well. What’s killing him though? 9 walks in 9.1 innings.

14.9

Mike Gonzalez’s strikeouts per 9. Three relievers fanning over 10 per 9? That’s nuts. Gonzo had a couple shaky outings early in the season, but he’s been lights out since

Saturday Pitch f/x

VictorW — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:30:23 -0000

We'll focus on Mr. Kawakami and show what Mr. Moylan looks like when he's back in form.

Here's the horizontal and vertical break for Kawakami's pitches:

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And here's a table via Brooks Baseball

Pitch Type	Average Speed	Max Speed	Average H-Break	Average V-Break	Number Thrown
FF (FourSeam Fastball)	89.91	91.7	-6.77	10.33	41
CH (Changeup)	83.91	84.9	-7.1	5.2	8
SL (Slider)	83.51	84.8	2.2	5.14	13
CU (Curveball)	68.46	70.5	8.35	-5.81	14
FC (Cutter)	85.55	86.5	-0.39	7.85	6
FT (TwoSeam Fastball)	89.43	90.8	-8.19	7.86	7

His movement is as good as advertised. Every pitch has above average break on it and he throws a variety of pitches. I am pretty sure what's classified as a changeup is actually a shuuto. It's what some people call a "reverse slider," but it's faster than a slider. It's basically what would be in between a 2 seam fastball and reverse slider. Oh, and some of the sliders/cutters are mixed together, but you can see the general difference.

His curveball has that massive, massive break, but I'm not a fan of it. Offspeed pitches need to be disguised and every time he threw that curveball, everyone knew it was coming. It just doesn't seem like it'll fool the better big league hitters.

I think the two things that will allow Kawakami to be a good big league pitcher is his command and variety of pitches. His walk rate has been bad in the majors so far, but I hope he'll settle down eventually. Once he gets that down, he'll be very effective because he'll be able to throw 5 pitches ranging from 84 MPH to 90 MPH with different movement. If he throws a pitch down and away to a righty, is it going to tail back into the strike zone like his 4 seamer or 2 seamer might? Or will it tail back in, but fall back out of the strike zone like the shuuto? Will it move half a foot off the plate and dive into the dirt like the slider? Even if the batter is waiting for a fastball instead of a slider or curveball, he'll still have trouble because that fastball can break 3 or 4 different directions depending on which one is thrown. There's a lot Kawakami can do and a veteran pitcher with great control and a ton of options can be very effective. We'll just have to hope the control comes around eventually.

Here's the pitch results for Kawakami:

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Some nice looking swinging strikeouts. That home run pitch is about as far down the plate as a pitch can be. Wow. Lucky that other flyout/lineout/popout next to the home run didn't do any damage.

And here's Peter Moylan looking sharp:

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His fastball/sinker (whatever the heck you want to call it) velocity isn't quite back yet. It's 2 MPH or so down from 2007, but his location was real sharp on Saturday. Kept the ball down and away on this lefties and got two swinging strikeouts from it. The called strikeout was against a righty and he placed it right at the knees for that called K.

Jurrjens pitch f/x from Wednesday

VictorW — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:37:57 -0000

This post from Beyond the Boxscore just taught me how to get pitch f/x data from Brooks Baseball. The data tells you all kind of crazy things like the pitch location, release points, the velocity, and the pitch spin. I played around with the data from Jurrjens's start on Wednesday and here's some graphs.

Here's the pitches Jurrjens threw last night:

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Those "changeups" next to the sliders are actually sliders, but they were misclassified by the Gameday. It would have taken 20 seconds for me to change, but I was too lazy to. The fastball averaged 91 MPH and topped out at 94.5 MPH. The changeup averaged about 82 and the slider averaged about 80-81 MPH. He threw 57% fastballs, 27% changeups, and 15% sliders. It'll be intersting to see what Jurrjens throws to a more righty-heavy lineup.

Both the fastball and changeup have good movement on them. I'm actually surprised how much the horizontal difference between the two pitches is.

The fastballs in the bottom left were actually originally labeled as 2 seamers, and I changed them to 4 seamers. They could very well be 2 seamers though. Anyone know if Jurrjens throws one?

Here's the pitch locations:

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Lots of nibbling on the edge of the plate. Probably why his walks were kind of high (3 in 5.2 innings).

Here's the lefty/righty split:

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Plenty of sliders down and away versus righties, but no K's. Stayed away and away versus the lefties too.

Pitch results here:

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It's funny how two of the hits were off the plate. The strikeout near the middle of the plate was against Victorino. Jurrjens threw a slider and got swining strike. The other strikeout off the plate was a changeup that Utley swung at.

Anyway that's a quick look at some of the things you can do with pitch f/x data. You can gank your own (go read the post at the top from Beyond the Boxscore) and play with it too. There's plenty more (like a velocity plot of some sort) so if you have any suggestions or requests, fire away. Hopefully the game tonight doesn't get rained out and I'll do something like this for Lowe's game.

D-Lo pitch locations vs. the Phillies

VictorW — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:53:24 -0000

D-Lo pitch locations vs. the Phillies

Check it out. Away and away and away.

BtBS Farm System Value Rankings

VictorW — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:30:33 -0000

BtBS Farm System Value Rankings

You can read about the methodology here. I'm very pleasantly surprised. Short answer is that those B level pitching prospects really add up.

Swing Analysis Request: Brian McCann

VictorW — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:29:11 -0000

Since you did Mr. Mauer I was wondering how the two best hitting catchers in baseball would compare (Wieters can join the party later). What amazes me about McCann is his outstanding bat control. McCann can hit for average and foul off pitches effectively, and on top of that, he can still slug home runs. It'll be interesting to see how his off season work regiment to lose weight affects things in 2009.

I'm e-mailing you a video of McCann's swing (CF camera view and a decent side view) and I'd greatly appreciate any analysis you could give on it.

zomg strikeouts correlate with RBI. This data set is based on the last 3 seasons of data with a...

VictorW — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:01:15 -0000

zomg strikeouts correlate with RBI. This data set is based on the last 3 seasons of data with a minimum PA of 500. There's 394 players on this plot. A cookie for anyone who can figure out who the red diamond and/or the green diamond is. It's pretty easy actually. In fact, if you can't do it without looking it up, I can no longer be your friend.