On Friday night, after the game against the Arizona Diamondbacks had long been decided, San Diego Padres pitcher Ernesto Frieri entered to pitch the top of the ninth. Frieri promptly retired all three Diamondbacks he faced – Justin Upton, Miguel Montero, and Mark Reynolds – in order, the last two by way of the strikeout. It was only his third career major league inning, first this season.

Here’s the PITCHf/x data on Frieri’s 2010 debut:

Frieri threw just two off-speed pitches out of 14, both curveballs at 79 and 75.6 MPH, respectively. His fastball ranged from 92.9 to 95.2 MPH, averaging 94 MPH.

There isn’t a ton you can glean from an inning, but Frieri’s stuff looked nasty and his minor league track record is impressive. If Frieri can quickly develop into a reliable reliever, it could allow the Padres to trade someone from the pen or – if there’s any interest – Frieri himself for a starting pitcher or a bat.

My latest post on Edward Mujica examined what may be causing his extremely high home run rate. To be honest, I’m not sure we can really conclude much on the issue – at least not from my analysis. Anyway, Larry and Mike made some good points in the comments, and I wanted to further investigate Mujica’s pitch location.

Conveniently enough, just yesterday Jeremy Greenhouse looked at pitchers who are able to locate their pitches on the corners of the plate, but avoid the middle. A home run – or hard hit ball – is most likely to be located somewhere in the middle portion of the plate, and probably slightly up.

Here is Mujica’s pitch location graph for 2010 (view from catcher’s perspective, measured in feet):

Mujica’s pitch location does not look that much like Rivera’s. It seems his pitches are in the middle of zone as often as they are on the corners.

Against righties, Mujica is very reluctant to go inside. Though he keeps it away from righties in general, he appears to miss off the plate quite often. And he’s still putting it in the middle of the plate at a pretty high rate. Against lefties, again, a lot of pitches are located too close to the middle of the zone.

The graphs above are just from 2010. Let’s look at his entire career. This time I’ll use the graphs created from TexasLeaguers.com:

Click for a larger image 

On the left is Mujica in his career vs. all batters, the middle graph is vs. righties, and the furthest right is vs. lefties. And I am pretty sure that changeups are actually splitters, as I discussed in the previous post. Check out the comparison between Mujica and Rivera:

You can see a pretty clear area where Rivera (on the right) doesn’t go – down the middle and up in the strike zone. He’s able to locate primarily on both sides of the plate, but avoid, largely, the dangerous section in the center. Mujica, on the other hand, does not appear to shy away from the middle and upper portions of the strike zone, and that’s a dangerous place to live.

Mujica has the stuff to be a quality reliever. Even with his home run problems, he has still been pretty solid. And this ‘analysis’ is not in any way conclusive. Home runs allowed involve a multitude of factors other than location – the hitter, the environment, pitch sequence, velocity, etc. That said, if Mujica is able to avoid the middle of the plate more often, I certainly think he may see a drop in home runs allowed.

Edward Mujica, right-handed pitcher for the San Diego Padres, is a pretty good middle reliever. Check out his numbers since coming to the Padres:

The strikeouts and walks look good. There is one thing I purposely left out, however, and that is home runs allowed. Mujica has given up 22 home runs in 124.7 innings as a San Diego reliever. That is a 1.6 HR/9 rate. He will have trouble staying in the majors if he continues to allow home runs at this pace. Of course, perhaps he has just been unlucky or in a slump.

We now have a variety of tools at our disposal to investigate Mujica’s home run troubles. First, let’s look at his ball-in-play rates (note that 2006-2008 with Cleveland is a pretty small sample, about 70 innings total):

IFFB: Infield Fly Balls
HR/FB: Home runs per fly ball

According to FanGraphs, the approximate 2010 averages are:

LD: 18.5%
GB: 44.6%
FB: 37.2%
IFFB: 9.5%
HR/FB: 9.3%

What we have in Mujica, then, is a pretty extreme fly ball pitcher. He has a career fly ball rate of about 47%, while the league average is 37%. He is pretty average on line drive%, IFFB%, and a bit over the league average on HR/FB%.  One interesting thing to note is that his infield fly ball percentage is at zero so far this season. So, apparently, every fly ball he has allowed has gone into the outfield. That is probably not helping his HR/FB rate.

Anyway, the sabermetric literature suggests that home runs are essentially a function of fly ball percentage. In other words, HR/FB should regress heavily toward the league average. Let’s take a look at Mujica’s actual home run rate and his home run rate after adjusting his HR/FB to the league average 9.3%.

Since 2009, if Mujica had allowed a league average HR/FB rate of 9.3%, his overall home run rate would be about average. While Mujica is a fly ball pitcher, his strikeout and walk rates are good enough that his propensity to allow fly balls should not be an issue, *if* he puts up league average HR/FB rates. Over these past two seasons, however, he has actually given up 22 homers on 135 fly balls, good for a 16.3 HR/FB%.16.3% is a different story.

Hit Tracker gives us another interesting tool to analyze Mujica’s home run struggles. Before looking at the data, the theory would go that, since Mujica has probably been “unlucky” so far in his Padres career (especially 2010), a lot of his home runs allowed should be unlucky home runs, homers that just barely got out.

Here are some definitions from Hit Tracker:

Std Distance (Standard Distance) - The estimated distance in feet the home run would have traveled if it flew uninterrupted all the way down to field level, and if the home run had been hit with no wind, in 70 degree air at sea level. Standard distance factors out the influence of wind, temperature and altitude, and is thus the best way of comparing home runs hit under a variety of different conditions.
“Just Enough” home run - Means the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence.
“No Doubt” home run - Means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet AND landed at least 50 feet past the fence. These are the really deep blasts.
“Plenty” home run - Everything else, except for the 2 above Homerun types
Lucky Homer - A home run that would not have cleared the fence if it has been struck on a 70-degree, calm day.

Here are Mujica’s eight home runs allowed this season:

Mujica’s average Standard Distance is 418 feet (NL average: 395). The home run to Blake in Dodger Stadium is the only “lucky” home run Mujica has given up:

Here are the landing spots on all of Mujica’s home runs allowed this season:

He has given up some absolute bombs, some normal home runs, and a couple of borderline ones. It is tough to make any real conclusions based on this data because of the sample size. For a little additional context, last year Mujica’s Standard Distance on his 14 home runs allowed was 387 feet. He gave up four in Petco Park and 10 on the road. Six were classified as “plenty” and eight as “just enough.”

If anything, I think we can say that this season Mujica’s homers allowed have not been of a particular unlucky nature. For the most part, they have been hit hard. Of course, that is not to say that he hasn’t been unlucky. After all, it is still a small sample and there are a lot of variables that go into a home run: bad pitch selection, bad execution, the hitter’s swing, etc. Perhaps Mujica has thrown good pitches that hitters have handled, or maybe he’s just thrown a few bad pitches that have been hammered.

We have yet another tool at our disposal: PITCHf/x. I am just going to look at 2010 data, identify Mujica’s pitch types, usage, and then specifically look into his home run pitches.

According to PITCHf/x, here is what Mujica throws:

Here’s the pitch movement graph (x-axis: horizontal movement, y-axis: vertical movement, view from catcher’s perspective):

Mujica throws a split-finger fastball quite often (20% of the time for his career, according to BIS) that PITCHf/x apparently does not pick up on. It appears to me that the changeups classified by PITCHf/x are actually splitters. Here’s a good look at Mujica’s pitches from a bird’s eye view:

If you look closely enough, you can see the four and two seam fastball, along with the splitter (classified as a change), move in on a right-handed hitter. The cutter, slider, and curve all break in the opposite direction.

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to look at is the location and pitch type on Mujica’s home runs allowed this season:

Four homers on four-seamers, three on splitters (I reclassified the changes as splitters), and one on a slider. All located in prime home run territory, up and out over the middle of the plate.

If we’ve learned anything from this, it’s that we can analyze a player’s performance in a lot of different ways and, in the end, still be left with more questions than answers. Mujica is a flyball pitcher who is going to give up his share of home runs. However, if small sample size and regression mean anything to us, he won’t continue to give them up at this rate. At the same time, nobody wants to be testing any mathematical theories in the middle of a pennant race.

Stephen Strasburg made his second start of the year in Cleveland yesterday, giving up just one run (a Travis Hafner homer) in 5.3 innings. While he was still dominant, striking out eight and allowing just two hits, he did have some serious control issues as he walked five batters. As the game went on, it appeared Strasburg was having issues with his landing spot on the mound.

Anyway, here’s his pitch movement graph, with horizontal movement on the x-axis, vertical movement on the y-axis, and from the catcher’s perspective:

If you remember, in Strasburg’s first start the gameday classifications were not picking up his two-seamer, classifying all fastballs as the four-seam variety. I am guessing that after Strasburg’s start, someone went in and “trained” the algorithm to pick up his two-seamer, since it is clear that he throws one. As you can see, his two-seamer generally moves more down and in on righties than his four-seamer.

It is also a couple MPH slower:

While Strasburg is interesting enough to watch on the field, check out his early off-field contributions, in the form of increased attendance and ratings. Strasburg’s marquee value may be as high as anyone is baseball right now.

Stephen Strasburg made his debut Tuesday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

His line: 7 IP, 4 hits, 2 R, 1 HR, 0 BB, 14 K

Unreal. His lone blemish was a changeup to Delywn Young that caught a little too much of the plate, allowing Young to yank it into the right field stands. For most of the game, however, Strasburg toyed with the Pirates’ hitters, blowing 98 mile an hour fastballs by them, dropping unhittable curveballs, and occasionally resorting to his 90+ MPH change.

Watching Strasburg’s performance, I couldn’t help but think that he has the most dominating stuff I have seen since, I don’t know, Pedro Martinez. Sure, I’m probably caught up in the hype. There are plenty of great pitchers in the game today, and one start against the Pirates doesn’t make you the best in the game.

The highest drama came after the 6th, when Strasburg was at 80 pitches and the Nats, behind home runs by Adam Dunn and Josh Willingham, took a two run lead. There was much speculation from the broadcast booth that the Nationals phenom would be taken out. However, not only did Strasburg come up for the seventh, he struck out the side and left to an electric ovation.

You knew it was coming – let’s take a look at some PITCHf/x data on his debut.

That is simply Strasburg’s pitches, in order, accompanied by MPH. He did not lose much on the fastball as the game went on. Here’s his movement chart (from the catcher’s perspective):

Horizontal movement is on the X-axis and vertical movement is on the Y-axis, and the data points are color coded by pitch type. You can see that his pitches cluster into three pretty distinct groups; the fastball in the upper left, the change up just below it, and the curve in the lower right.

I think if we studied his pitches more closely, we’d find two fastballs and perhaps a variation of the curve (a true, knee buckling curve and more of a sharp breaking slider/curve). For now, though, the chart gives us a good indication of his pitch movement.

Using the data from Brooks Baseball, here’s his pitched usage breakdown (with average and max speed):

According to PITCHf/x, Strasburg hit 100.1 and 99.9, both in the second inning. He hit 99 or faster five times and at least 98 a remarkable 28 times. It is completely accurate to say this guys *sits* in the upper-90s. At least he did on Tuesday night. I can’t wait until the next time he takes the mound.

The general consensus is that a four-seam fastball is thrown with less movement and more velocity than a two-seamer. Check the San Diego Padres rotation, using 2010 PITCHf/x data from FanGraphs:

Yeah, check that rotation. Prior to looking up the data, my theory was that the four non-Clayton Richard (since we’ve already looked into the data on him) Padres starters would have four-seam fastballs that registered a few MPH faster than their two-seamers. Instead, we see not only Richard averaging the same velocity with each pitch, but also Garland (a faster two-seamer, in fact), Correia, and Latos (within one MPH). LeBlanc, the only one who has a clear difference between the two pitches, uses his two-seamer sparingly (less than 2% of the time).

What gives? Well, we have (at least) three possible explanations:

1. The Padres employ a staff that just so happens to throw both of their fastballs (ignoring the cutter, for now) at similar speeds. Perhaps they just happen to be on the same staff together or maybe it has something to do with pitching coach Darren Balsley or the Padres organization in general.
2. We are again encountering problems in classification, by Gameday, and are not witnessing real differences in the two pitches, rather difficulties in properly classifying them.
3. I’m crazy, and four-seamers and two-seamers are generally thrown at the same speed.

I think we can rule out choice three, as Dave Allen says here that four-seamers are indeed thrown faster — “about 1.5 mph faster than two-seam fastballs and 3.5 mph faster than cutters.”

My guess is that it is some combination between one and two. But, frankly, I have no idea what the correct answer is and whether or not it is significant. Any thoughts?

Our friend Zach did an analysis of Clayton Richard’s 2010 success over at Gaslamp Ball. He says:

In 2009, Richard threw his 4-seamer 51.3% of the time, and the 2-seamer only 19% of the time. In 2010, he’s dropped his usage of the 4-seamer, throwing it only 23.8% of the time, and upped the use of the 2-seamer, now throwing it 35.6% of the time.
Richard has also increased the velocity of his 2-seamer. Where in 2009 he averaged 87.6 mph, this season he’s throwing it at an average of 91.2 mph.

Indeed, if you look at the PITCHf/x data, located on FanGraphs, that’s what comes out. Check out his usage, in 2009 vs. 2010:

It struck me a bit that he’d change his repertoire so much in one-offseason. What’s also striking is the speed of his two-seamer; it has jumped almost four miles per hour in one season, while his four-seamer – and basically the rest of his pitches – stayed at the same mph.

As I thought about this, it started to click that perhaps Richard’s pitch selection hasn’t changed that much, maybe the PITCHf/x algorithm has. I wanted to look at the raw PITCHf/x data to see if I could find anything.

The first graphs I’m going to show has horizontal movement on the x-axis and vertical movement on the y-axis, and the pitches are a different color based on their pitch type (as classified by MLBAM). Remember, the view is from the catcher’s perspective:

2010

2009

You can see the two and four-seamers clustered in the top right of the graph. In 2010 you can see the two-seamers have slightly more horizontal movement and slightly less vertical movement. What is revealing is if we remove two-seamers to get a better view.

2010

2009

Notice the range of the four-seamer, the circled purple triangles, is much wider in 2009. It looks like in 2009, the algorithm was very reluctant in calling a pitch a two-seamer. Most everything in that upper right hand corner was identified as a four-seamer. In 2010, however, it is much more equal – in fact, as you can see by the graph and the chart above, the two-seamer is now being identified more often than the four-seamer.

If we take the 2010 version of the pitch algorithm as the more accurate one, then it appears what happened in 2009 is that a lot of two-seamers were actually classified as four-seamers. So, in reality, Richard’s pitch selection has probably not changed that much – the pitch algorithm has.

And, indeed, it appears that is what has happened. In an email exchange – and here on the Hardball Times – Mike Fast explained to me that Ross Paul, the guy doing some of the behind the scenes work at MLBAM, is now using a neural networks to classify pitches. A neural net is specifically trained to identify pitches from each pitcher, and should theoretically be a more accurate way to classify a pitcher’s arsenal.

****

I also created spin graphs for Richard, and while they may not add to the point of this article, I think they are still worth sharing.

2010

2009

Interestingly, it appears that the same thing may be going on with sliders and cutters. It appears that a lot of Richard’s pitches that were being classified as sliders last year are now being classified as cutters.

Luke Gregerson has a fantastic slider.  Amongst relievers this season, his slider, which has been almost five runs above average, leads the league in effectiveness.  When starters are considered, Gregerson still ranks sixth.  Given the huge difference in innings pitched, that is incredible. Gregerson on San Diego Padres.

Of course, it doesn’t take statistics for most of us to realize Gregerson has a good slider.  That is evident by watching the games and the horrific hacks taken at the pitch by opposing hitters.

Like I did when looking at Wade LeBlanc’s change-up, I want to examine Luke Gregerson’s slider by comparing it to the sliders thrown by other top slider-throwing relievers.  I will compare Gregerson to Carlos Marmol (Chicago Cubs), Joba Chamberlain (New York Yankees), and Jonathan Broxton (Los Angeles Dodgers), all of whom have consistently ranked amongst the top righty reliever slider throwers.

First lets look at how often each pitcher throws his slider, as well as how fast it, and his fastball are thrown. Because yearly sample sizes are smaller for relievers than starters, all data is approximate, and based off multiple years of data…

Gregerson throws his slider more than the other pitchers do.  This makes sense since his fastball is significantly slower than that of the others.  Not surprisingly, Broxton, who throws the hardest, also throws the least amount of sliders.  Also interesting is that Gregerson’s slider is pretty similar in speed to Marmol’s and Chamberlain’s despite his slower fastball.

Now lets examine the movement on each pitcher’s slider…

This season, Gregerson has only averaged 2.8 inches of horizontal movement, compared to 5.0 inches last season.  His vertical movement has stayed consistent at approximately 2 inches.  Gregerson’s slider seems to move most similarly to Broxton’s.  Marmol’s is the outlier.  He gets serious horizontal movement, as well as some drop.  I guess there is a reason he throws his slider 50 percent of the time.

Finally, lets take a look at the pitch flight charts, which were constructed using data from each pitcher’s last five appearances…

In the birds-eye view, all of the sliders are pretty similar, except for Marmol’s.  There are however differences when examining from the first-base view.  All of the pitchers get movement on their slider–they are all top sliders after all–but they move in different ways.  And that’s sort of the take-away here.  Gregerson, Marmol, Chamberlain, and Broxton all throw their sliders a bit differently.  Yet they are all effective.

Thanks to Fangraphs and Brooks Baseball for the data, and Harry Pavlidis for the flight path tool.

Since replacing injured pitcher Chris Young in the starting rotation, Wade LeBlanc has been lights out for the San Diego Padres.  In 23 innings he has a 1.16 ERA, a 2.15 FIP, and a 3.61 xFIP.  LeBlanc is unlikely to sustain such excellence for the entire season, but based on his performance thus far, there is no reason to think he cannot be a league average pitcher going forward.

LeBlanc’s best pitch is his change-up.  He throws it 25 percent of the time, and according to Fangraphs, it has been 5.73 runs above average per 100 pitches so far in 2010.  LeBlanc throws his change-up at 77 mph, 10 mph slower than his fastball.

Because his change-up is so solid, I wanted to see how it compared to some of the major league’s best change-ups according to pitch f/x.

I sorted by the 2009 leaders in change-up runs above average (total, not per-100), and selected the top three lefties for comparison.  The players with the best lefty change-ups in 2009 were: CC Sabathia, Cole Hamels, and Mark Buehrle.

The following table notes how often each pitcher threw his change-up, as well as some speed statistics:

The speed difference between LeBlanc’s fastball and change-up is a bit less than Sabathia, but compares favorably with Hamels and Buehrle.

This table highlights each pitcher’s horizontal and vertical movement on his change-up;

Sabathia gets the most horizontal movement on his change-up, but it stays up a bit more than the others’. Buehrle’s change-up has by far the most sink.  The movement on LeBlanc’s change-up is pretty similar to Hamels’.

Finally, lets take a look at the pitch flight charts.  The charts were created using data from Brooks Baseball, and are pitch flights for each pitcher’s most recent start:

There are slight differences between each of the pitcher’s change-ups, but frankly, they are pretty similar. For LeBlanc, this is a good thing.  His change-up is pretty comparable from a “stuff” perspective to Sabathia, Hamels, and Buehrle, three of the top change-up pitchers in baseball.  LeBlanc is unlikely to ever be as good as those three because there is a lot more to pitching than just having a good change-up, but it is certainly a start.

by Daniel Gettinger

At Ducksnorts Geoff writes:

Someone should check the data, but anecdotally it seems [Venable] hasn’t seen many fastballs since nearly hitting for the cycle in the home opener.

Using Joe Lefkowitz’s Pitch F/x tool, I was able to check the data.  It turns out, if anything, Will Venable has seen more fastballs since falling a double short of the cycle on April 12.

Up to and including April 12, Venable had seen 92 pitches.  59 percent of the pitches he faced were fastballs. After April 12, Venable faced 88 pitches.  65 percent of those 88 pitches were fastballs.  The difference is not statistically significant.

Its interesting how all too often our eyes deceive us when watching baseball.