I was fiddling around with the new gameday data … here’s what I came up with.
That is Peavy’s last start against the Mets. He struck out 11 in 6 innings that night, but also walked a season high 5 batters. The y-axis is velocity and the x-axis is the pitch number for that start. For example, the lonely data point in the botom left hand corner is an 83 mile per hour pitch … Peavy’s 14th of the game. The only real trend I can pick up is that he went to more off speed stuff as the game went on. In pitches 80-100, he only threw 5 balls over 90 mph.
Here’s his start before that against the Astros. Peavy was even more dominate this outing, striking out 11 and only walking just 2 in 7 innings of work. Again, it seems to me he goes away from the fastball a little bit late. Now, of course, this could just be pitching to situation or something (ie, as the game situation gets more crucial, he goes to the slider more often …). It may not be that he actually changes his pattern late, but it sure seems that way.
Finally, here are all of his pitches from his last two starts, ordered by velocity.
You can see that a lot of his pitches register at 92 mph+. In fact, 111 of his 212 tracked pitches were 92+.
From what I’ve read about the PITCHf/x system, the pitch speeds should be very accurate. I used the “start speed” which is the velocity of the pitch 50 feet from the plate. Of course, there could be some slight errors in what’s being recorded. I don’t think it’s perfect by any means (but it’s pretty damn accurate).
Anyhow, this is just the very tip of the iceberg with this kind of analysis. There is a lot of great work being done. If you’re interested in reading some great articles and learning more about PITCHf/x …
Anthony at Friar Watch has done a lot of stuff with it.
Dan Fox and Joe P. Sheehan have been doing some fascinating work.
Alan Nathan has some great info on his Physics of Baseball website.
Mike Fast is tracking it at Fast Balls.
I’m hoping to get to a point where I’ll be able to do some stuff like that. Uh … that might take a while. It’s fun to look into, though.
I’m fascinated by analysis with PITCHf/x data. What types of pitches does Peavy throw? You could probably classify each pitch in the games you graphed just by knowing the velocities. You could also plot horizontal break on the same graph as velocity — two points per pitch.
And if you classified by pitch type, you could look at Peavy’s patterns: what does he tend to throw first pitch? On 2-0 counts? After fastballs? etc. There’s probably different patterns for LHB/RHB, early in game/late in game, etc. Keep it up.
Did you scrape the data from Gameday yourself? All of it or just these starts from Peavy?
Thanks for stopping by, Sky! I really enjoy your site.
All of the points you make are excellent ones. I’m hoping to get around to some more interesting graphs in the coming weeks. For game situations, I wonder how hard it’d be to look at what pitch he throws compared to leverage index … That could be interesting. I think someone did that already (maybe Sheehan …) actually.
For now, I didn’t want to get over my head and mess something up. I’ve still got to read up on what some of the gameday stuff is and how to plot it, etc.
If your not sure how to download the data (and that very well might not apply to you), here’s how I did it:
http://webusers.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nathan/pob/tracking
Just followed the steps and it was as easy as that. I’m not great with databases, so I’m not really sure how to get a ton of data without the process taking forever. I just took Peavy’s last two starts individually for the time being.
Nice work! I think these simple velocity graphs can really tell us a lot about how a pitcher approaches a game. It was quite clear when Jake started throwing more breaking balls after that trip to Houston, and it was also clear when Chris Young would throw fastballs almost exclusively the first time through the lineup.
<p>Thanks for stoppping by Anthony. Keep up the great work at Friarwatch!</p>
<p>Yea, I love the velocity graphs. They are pretty simple to do and tell quite a bit about how the guy is approaching the game. I hope mlb keeps this stuff free or at least at a reasonable price next year. It’s really fun to look at all the things that people produce.</p>
Hey Mike, thanks a lot for the links on your site. I feel a little (read: a lot) out of place amongst some of those great analysts. But it’s cool nonetheless! I have a feeling your blog is going to get popular in a hurry : )
On a side note … have you thought about making separate pages for the articles you’re keeping track of. It might make things a lot easier for you. You could just copy/paste your articles onto a new page and that page will stay somewhere at the top of your blog. Just a suggestion.
And again … thanks and keep up the great work.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Jake Peavy: Pitch variation and velocity, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Great write up pertaining to Jake Peavy: Pitch variation and velocity! Always enjoy this posts.
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