SB Nation User Blog: ultxmxpx

Pitch Specific Stats

ultxmxpx — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:30:50 -0000

If you go to this website (http://theuniverseas.com/baseball/baseball.html) you'll find stats on every pitcher's pitch last year (that there was enhanced gameday data for last year: 625 pitchers). There are stats like ball speed (v0), the spin put on the pitch (rpm), BABIP, SLGBIP, and contact rates when the pitcher threw the indicated pitch. There are also pitch selection splits in the comma delimited files (.csv files).

Here's a sample:

via i34.photobucket.com

Pitch Characteristics, Selection, and Outcomes

ultxmxpx — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:02:15 -0000

I've put together this page (http://theuniverseas.com/baseball/conrate.html) to look at a number of different stats for a pitcher's different pitches (e.g. Santana's changeup, Barbaro's curveball). You can see who among the 50 or so I've listed gets the most whiffs on swings or what pitcher's pitch gets a lot of ground outs. There's also a look at situational selection such as in a 2-2 count, vs. lefties, or the 7th inning. There's also BABIP and SLGBIP stats and I was wondering if that would be preferable or not to regular old BA, averaging in when the pitch ends the at bat with a strikeout. There's more I could do with this data like creating pitch charts, seperating contact rates and BA between when facing lefties and righties, or looking at how close to the edges a pitcher pitches, but I ran out of columns in excel. Is there anyway to increase the number of cloumns? Or something like excel with more columns?

It's kind of hard to differentiate between a pitcher's pitches when he throws a splitter, but thankfully only a few do. I'm mainly uncertain about Smoltz's pitches. Is his slider that slow, or is that actually the curve I calculated and the splitter: the slider; changeup: splitter?

Also, what's a good pitcher I left off with a plus-plus offering? There's no data for Lincecum and just one start for Zito, but that should change as it appears the installed the pitch f/x system in San Francisco for the All-Star game.

Please voice any comments, suggestions, or reactions.

Also since this in a minor league blog, there's data from the futures game below. Unfortunately there was only 4 pitches for Deolis Guerra, so I had to ignore him:
http://theuniverseas.com/baseball/futures.html

Now hopefully MLB doesn't gun me down, then make this pitch f/x data unavailable to the public no matter your hacking abilities. I would think Scouting Agencies who sell this information would hate this adventure MLB is doing.

C.C.'s breaking ball

ultxmxpx — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:54:41 -0000

Is it a curve ball, slider, or a slurve? Or does it sometimes look more like a curve and then sometimes more like a slider or slurve?

Also what's the range of speed of Westbrook's slider? Does he throw it much?

Answers would be well appreciated. . . . .

ML pitch selection

ultxmxpx — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:49:32 -0000

The following chart shows how the pitches of select young MLers compare to each other. I used the enhanced gameday data to come up with this crap. At the least, you can look at the "% thrown" column which tells how often that pitch is used by that pitcher and also the speed of that pitch in the "mph" column then things get a little more difficult to understand. But a relatively small "pfz" value (vertical spin) means the fastball has more of a sinking action. There's more detail here and I also described it in more detail here and if you go to that last link you'll also see a more detailed look at Shields (e.g. what percent of swinging strikes are on changeups for Shields?). Also somebody at the baseballanalysts has written about some of the data as well. So here:

The Peavy data is to be taken with some salt as it was hard to differentiate between his 2 seam fastball, slider, and changeup.

I'll also repeat what I said at the end of the Slowey thread:

Slowey pitch selection: 73 fastballs, 16 sliders, 5 changeups, 5 curveballs

Initial speed of those pitches, respectively according to enhanced gameday:
90.1, 83.2, 78.3, 73.6

And the home run was off a 84.0 mph slider that had the least break of the bunch, but wasn't really an outlier.

He pitches pretty high up in the zone. It looks like only 2 pitches were below the strike zone, a curve and a fastball.

Long-term: The King or Hamels?

ultxmxpx — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:49:47 -0000

Factoring in injury risk, who will be better? This year? The next several years? Sure both have great stuff, but how will that translate to performance?

Felix was absolutely great in his first two starts, but since coming back from the DL he's been averaging over a hit an inning and a BB/9 over 4.5. He still hasn't allowed a homer so far though. OOPS of .634 and K/9 of 10.6. Is he getting unlucky? Did management tell him to throw a fewer number of a certain pitch? Or has his command just been the problem? His groundball ratio is still great... even better than last year's.

Hamels has been winning games and could be on his way to a 20 win season. His BB/9 is just 2.5 while his K/9 is 10.3. But he's allowed 10 HRs so far and has allowed an isoP of .180 compared to Felix's .077. Why does Hamels allow so many XBHs? His GB/FB ratio is slightly improved over last year, but is still just 1.13. Will his ERA improve as the year goes on and allow fewer XBHs in his first full year starting in the bigs?

Poll

Who is the best for the next 5 years or so....

Felix Hernandez

69 votes

Cole Hamels

51 votes

120 votes | Poll has closed

Some pitch-by-pitch AAA stats

ultxmxpx — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:59:00 -0000

Here are some pitch-by-pitch stats of some AAA prospects (with half being crappy Durham Bulls):

"#P" is the number of pitches thrown to each batter so far this year in AAA. "B" stands for balls, "S" for strikes which includes the following: called strikes (CS), swinging strikes (SW), foul balls (F), and balls hit in play (InP). P/PA is pitches per plate appearance. %S is the percentage of pitches that are strikes. Con% is the percent of swings that make contact with the ball (i.e. foul balls plus pitches hit in play divided by foul balls, balls hit in play, and swinging strikes). SW% is the percentage of pitches that are swinging strikes. And Sw% is the percent of pitches swung at. So an aggressive hitter will have a high Sw%. "Eye" is just really useless and is balls divided by pitches taken (i.e. balls plus called strikes).

Butler's stats show he was ready for the majors. He has a contact rate like Loney has, but he has also hit 6 home runs. Evidence of the 18/12 BB/SO ratio, you can see that pitches were afraid of him with just 55% of pitches being strikes and shows that he can learn more in the majors than AAA at this point.

B and S1 would be what the pitch count goes to in an average plate appearance. It would include ball 4 of a walk or strike 3 of strikeout but it wouldn't consider a ball hit into play as a strike. S2 would be how many strikes are thrown in an average plate appearance and would include the strikes associated with 2-strike fouls and balls hit into play. K% is the percentage of batters faced that are struckout and likewise with BB%. The cutoff "GO/" is GO/FO. LO would be line out and would perhaps mean more if it included line drives that fall for hits.... it relies a lot on the scorekeeper's opinion anyways.

The following are pitching charts. The numbers are the percentage of pitches that are thrown in that portion of the strike zone. The chart is from the view of the catcher. It uses mlb gameday and the xml pages associated with it. It surely has its flaws, but it can paint a general picture. So here:
Hammel:

J.P. Howell:

Niemann:

Sonnanstine:

Talbot:

Lincecum:

Bailey:

Gallardo:

Garza:

Hughes:

Adam Miller:

McGowan:

Slowey:

Everything about Lincecum is absolutely disgusting. The pitch chart shows him keeping balls down in the zone like absolutely no one else is.

William Inman

ultxmxpx — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:23:51 -0000

What's up with William Inman? Doesn't he have injury? What kind? Any idea when he'll be back?

He looked pretty dominant with great control up until what I believe was his last start/outing.

Yep. Uh, huh.

Morlan vs. Inman

ultxmxpx — Tue, 30 May 2006 23:01:33 -0000

Who do you think will be the better pitcher?
Here are the stats so far this year:
Morlan: 2-2 W-L, 1.45 ERA, .165 BA, ~.505 OPS, 37.1 IP, 21 H, 19 BB, 49 SO, 1 HR, .39 GB/FB
Inman: 3-1 W-L, 1.80 ERA, .242, ~.584 OPS, 35 IP, 31 H, 5 BB, 43 SO, 0 HR, .85 GB/FB
Both are righties. Inman turned 19 in February; Morlan 20 in March. Both for some reason are more dominant over lefties and throw there fastball in the low 90's. Morlan has a curvaball and change-up. Inman has a plus slider. Both strikeout a good number of batters. Inman has great command and because of that am liking him more.

And this is a fantasy-related question.

Poll

Who do you think will be the better ML pitcher?

Eduardo Morlan

25 votes

William Inman

20 votes

45 votes | Poll has closed

Justin Upton already to CF; will miss 1st 2 weeks

ultxmxpx — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 03:39:31 -0000

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060403&content_id=52304&vkey=n ews_milb&fext=.jsp

He has a shoulder injury (hence the the two weeks), and will still start out in low-A South Bend.

"I just think we all put our heads together and felt like it was best to do it right now," Byrnes said. "We think this is the best thing for him. This could allow him to advance at a faster pace."

Looks like they're prepared to advance him quickly. So now what do they do with the OF situation of Chris Young, Carlos Quentin, Carlos Gonzales, and Justin Upton? Trade one for pitching or watch one bust?

prospect question (sim league)

ultxmxpx — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 20:13:26 -0000

I'm in a sim league and have to reduce my roster.

Which 6 of the following would you choose to keep?
Elijah Dukes
Javier Herrera
Chuck Tiffany
Wes Bankston
Miguel Montero
Elvis Andrus
Nick Adenhart
Brad Snyder
Mark Trumbo
Travis Denker
Greg Miller
Chris Nelson
James Loney
Chad Gaudin