If you’re new here and like what you see, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Need more info on what subscribing entails? Here’s a primer. Thanks for visiting!In last night’s Detroit-Arizona game there were several moments where I was completely befuddled by CB Bucknor’s strike zone. But I was [...]

Prior to Justin Verlander’s last start we discussed his dip in velocity and a change in arm angle is he was looking to make. Verlander had some improved results in his Tuesday night start against the Rangers. Looking at his pitch f/x data he averaged 93.9mph with his fastball and peaked around [...]

As has been widely documented at this point, Justin Verlander’s velocity is down significantly. Either it is a systematic change in measurement mechanisms, or it is a real dip. Given the remarkable disparity and the fact it doesn’t seem to be effecting other pitchers the same way, I’m inclined to believe it is [...]

From time to time this year (as time permits), I’ll delve in to MLB.com’s pitch f/x data to analyze a starters outing. Tonight we look at Jeremy Bonderman’s start against the Kansas City Royals on April 3rd.
Pitch Mix
This season MLB.com started classifying pitches. This seems pretty convenient, but from what I’ve seen so [...]

Jim Leyland has come out on several occasions and said that Jeremy Bonderman is one of the keys to any success the Tigers might enjoy in 2008. Bonderman’s second half swoon, which I attribute largely to his elbow pain that he finally fessed up to, clouded what was starting out to be a phenomenal season. An ERA of 8.50 over his last 9 starts, combined with the arm troubles meant that Bonderman finished with the highest ERA and lowest innings total since his rookie season. Like with Dontrelle Willis, we’ll delve into the pitch f/x data and see what we can find out about the veteran 25 year old pitcher.

On Friday Lynn Henning wrote a detailed look at Dontrelle Willis with a heavy emphasis on scouting. I found the article fascinating from the stand point of getting a better understanding of Willis’s repertoire as well as the thought processes that went along with approving the deal for the lefty. He was after all coming off a pretty rough year. I also viewed it as a chance to dust off that pitch f/x database I’ve had sitting dormant and explore whether or not the reports meshed with what the system had reported.

Dan Fox at Baseball Prospectus recently did a post where he used the enhanced gameday (aka pitch/fx) data to categorize hitters by eye. He broke hitters down into the following groups and subsequently created some pretty slick graphs.

Square: This is the new metric, defined as the percentage of pitches in the strike zone swung [...]

On Sunday, June 24th Andrew Miller took center stage on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball and promptly pitched 6 shut out innings. Miller only allowed 4 hits and 2 walks and was never really threatened. Was this a dominant performance by a young stud pitcher, or just another day at the office for the [...]

A couple weeks ago we took a look at Joel Zumaya’s 2 inning save against Toronto through the eyes of MLB.com’s Enhanced Gameday. Last night against the White Sox Zumaya had an outing on the opposite end of the effectiveness spectrum.
Zumaya basically couldn’t find the strike zone to save his life last [...]

Taking advantage of the enhanced gameday data once again, I’ll take a look at Jeremy Bonderman’s and Roy Halladay’s awesome performances last night.
We’ll start with Jeremy Bonderman. The table below shows the mix of pitches and results for Bonderman:

It was a little surprising to see that Jeremy Bonderman didn’t miss that many bats last [...]

I think everyone was mighty blown away by Joel Zumaya’s 2 inning save last night. He pounded the strike zone with 100mph plus heaters and buckled knees with his curve ball. But just for fun, and because we can, let’s take a look at all the pitches that made up his night.
I don’t [...]