AFL PitchFX Pt. 3: Grant Desme

Well, it occurs to me now that PitchFX really isn’t all that useful for batters, especially on this small sample scale. Anyway, I’ll post what little information I was able to throw together.

PitchFX caught only seven games from Grant Desme, for a total of 34 plate appearances. Unfortunately, I have data for only three of his eleven HRs. I’ll get to those in a second, but first, here are all of the pitches that Grant Desme saw (that were in parks with PitchFX installations), separated by swinging or not swinging.

Nothing really jumps out, aside from a weakness to sliders outside the strike zone (everyone has that) and a few wacky verging-on-Zito-esque curveballs that fell from eye level to the thigh area (TW…I know, I know).

Here are the pitches that he swung on, this time separated by contact vs. no contact.

Again, not very many useful observations here. He’s not so good at hitting things that are outside the zone (normal), but fouls off most of the pitches that are inside. Nothing out of the ordinary.

As far as his home runs, I can’t say much with only three points of data, but for what it’s worth, they were three very different pitches. One was a hanging slider right in the middle of the zone, one was a changeup off the plate inside, and one was a high two-seamer with a wicked amount of tailing action. Three home runs mean almost nothing, but it’s a little encouraging that they didn’t all come on easy fastballs.

Odds and Ends

• For those that really care, here's the pitch locations of the baseballs sitting outside of the fence.
• The little batter shadow guy isn't necessarily to scale (probably isn't, actually), but the strike zone box is, based on the "strike zone top" and "strike zone bottom" numbers that the Gameday operator keys in for every at bat.
• Once HitFX rolls out, I'll hopefully be able to generate something a little more substantial for batters, like spray charts and the like.
• That about wraps it up for the notable A's representatives in Arizona this year. Now I'm just hoping they'll install the cameras in all of the parks next season, or at the very least, in Phoenix Municipal.