Staturday: Pitch, Blease: Curve Balls, Sliders and Changeups
by devo on May 17, 2008 8:00 PM PDT
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Print“Christ, you don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is a curveball! In the show, everyone can hit heat.” –Crash Davis
In the last appearance of Pitch, Blease, we saw that the effectiveness of a pitcher’s fastball is very much dependent on a pitcher’s ability to compliment it with breaking/off speed pitches. Heat only helps if you do not have to throw it all the time.
In this article, we will explore some of these other pitches, the curve, slider and change. Before we get into that, here is the article on the knuckler:
Wakefield throws it. He throws it a lot. He throws it slowly. Small Sample Size warnings apply to any conclusions drawn from that data set.
The splitter is only thrown often by a few guys – too many to summarize that succinctly and to few to write a meaningful article about.
First, lets tackle the curve. About half of the pitchers included in this study throw it regularly (at least 10% of the time) and all but 20 throw it occasionally. It is typically thrown at about 75 mph.
|
Most Curves |
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
|
E Bedard |
34.20% |
77.5 |
|
B Sheets |
30.80% |
79.4 |
|
M Morris |
28.80% |
71.9 |
|
J Germano |
28.10% |
68.1 |
|
B Arroyo |
28.00% |
71.3 |
|
Slowest Curves |
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
|
T Wakefield |
3.70% |
61.8 |
|
L Hernandez |
8.90% |
64.9 |
|
R Wolf |
19.90% |
65.8 |
|
O Hernandez |
15.30% |
67.7 |
|
J Germano |
28.10% |
68.1 |
Looking at the first chart we see two of the top pitchers in the game (when healthy), a reasonably solid veteran in decline, a solid inning eater and a young guy, just waiting to be old enough to qualify for the title of ‘journeyman’. Here is another interesting way of looking at those same pitchers, though:
|
Fastball Velocity |
FIP |
|
|
E Bedard |
91.6 |
3.15 |
|
B Sheets |
92.9 |
4.07 |
|
M Morris |
87.4 |
4.41 |
|
J Germano |
85.1 |
4.48 |
|
B Arroyo |
88.4 |
4.53 |
Two pitchers throw above average velocity fastballs – those same two pitchers are the only ones of the five with better than average FIPs. Expanding on that, the following chart compares fastball velocity of the 20 pitchers who threw the most curve balls to their FIP.
As you can see, there is a fairly strong correlation between performance and fastball velocity – and then there is Matt Albers. The rookie struggled with his control and keeping the ball in the park. Not that you necessarily should, but if you were to omit his outlier performance, the r-squared value would increase to .41 – which is a very strong correlation for this kind of analysis.
Turning to sliders, we find a pitch that is thrown by even more pitchers than the curve. 60% of the pitchers in this study throw the slider regularly and only 17 did not throw a single slider in 2007. A typical slider is thrown at about 82 mph.
|
Most Sliders |
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
|
J Sosa |
52.30% |
84.6 |
|
I Snell |
37.30% |
84 |
|
J Bonderman |
35.20% |
83.4 |
|
J Smoltz |
33.60% |
87 |
|
J Towers |
32.90% |
82.5 |
|
Fastest Sliders |
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
|
F Hernandez |
20.70% |
88.3 |
|
G Meche |
15.80% |
87.5 |
|
J Smoltz |
33.60% |
87 |
|
D McGowan |
19.10% |
87 |
|
C Billingsley |
3.40% |
86.7 |
As you can see, the correlation between velocity and success for pitchers who rely on the slider is considerably weaker than with the curve ball. Slider velocity (purple) has almost twice the correlation with success among this group as fastball velocity (blue). Both, however, are all over the place with star pitchers like Peavy and Smoltz throwing gas with great success but others, like Ervin Santana and Edwin Jackson throwing even harder, but having very little success.
Finally, we get to changeups. Everyone throws the pitch, with 60% throwing it regularly and only two (Carmona and Wakefield) never throwing it. It is typically thrown at 81 MPH.
|
Most Changeups |
|
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
Separation |
|
T Glavine |
45.00% |
76.8 |
6.9 |
|
C Hamels |
35.20% |
81.4 |
9.0 |
|
J Shields |
30.20% |
82.6 |
7.5 |
|
C James |
29.50% |
76.9 |
10.6 |
|
J Santana |
29.10% |
81.9 |
9.8 |
|
Slowest Changeups |
|
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
Separation |
|
B Zito |
20.20% |
73 |
11.5 |
|
M Maroth |
20.40% |
73.3 |
9.7 |
|
J Moyer |
28.70% |
73.7 |
7.4 |
|
N Lowry |
18.70% |
75.7 |
11.0 |
|
L DiNardo |
15.00% |
76.1 |
7.7 |
There is a strong correlation between both fastball velocity (blue) and changeup velocity (purple) with success. You will also notice that this group of pitchers is considerably worse than the groups of pitchers who rely on breaking balls.
|
Greatest Separation |
|
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
Separation |
|
A Reyes |
13.60% |
76.3 |
13.3 |
|
B McCarthy |
17.60% |
76.6 |
12.3 |
|
J Verlander |
18.80% |
82.7 |
12.1 |
|
B Zito |
20.20% |
73 |
11.5 |
|
N Lowry |
18.70% |
75.7 |
11.0 |
|
Least Separation |
|
|
|
|
Name |
Thrown |
Velocity |
Separation |
|
M Hendrickson |
18.80% |
81 |
5.6 |
|
G Maddux |
20.80% |
Do you like this story?CommentsWhoaFormatting go boom. Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal. 
Huh ... could have sworn I wrote more than that ..."It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback 
r-squaredwhat ranges of r-squared are strong and weak correlations in these cases? I ask because some of those lines look fairly arbitrarily drawn Bummer about the formatting. H. StreetJust because he is titled “The Closer” does this mean the A’s have to use him in every save situation? Devine, Casilla, Brown ,Foulke all have better stuff and Geren can’t see this? Or does Geren manage by whats on paper rather than whats actually on the field. We can all clearly see Street can’t get lefties out and he’s not sharp. How many games will the A’s have to lose with Street before Geren says its enough? Make the move now, the closer doesn’t have to be anyone with that title, use any of the four I mentioned, whoever is in a groove. Also if you pitch good in the 8th, why not start the 9th as well? by Future MLB Commish on May 18, 2008 9:36 AM PDT reply actions 
This is a really interesting area of study, butI’m not sure what conclusion to draw here. It sounds like: 1) The most important breaking pitch is the slider. If you have a fast one, you will most likely be successful 2) Those who don’t have a good slider are likely to rely on the curve, but they’re more hit-and-miss as far as effectiveness 3) A change is nice to have but you’d better have a good breaking pitch in addition 4) And then there’s Rich Harden and maybe Johan Santana by WaddellCanseco on May 18, 2008 10:12 AM PDT reply actions
Hmm ...1. I think that’s a bit too strong of a conclusion to draw … the slider reliant pitchers seem to be less reliant on their fastball’s velocity for success - but the curve reliant pitchers, asa group, are better than the slider reliant pitchers. "It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback Comments For This Post Are Closed
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