Apparently Jeremy has a new pitching prospect crush. I like to help out where I can, and hey, when Jeremy wants more info on the pitching object of his desire, I deliver.

Of the six stadiums used in the Arizona Fall League, only two have active PITCHf/x installations: the Peoria Sports Complex and Salt River Fields. Fortunately, since Surprise Stadium is currently undergoing renovations, the Surprise Saguaros are playing their home games at Salt River this year as well, bringing the total number of teams with a home PITCHf/x installation to three. Unfortunately for us, the A's send their affiliates to the Mesa Solar Sox, who are not one of those three.

So while the A's affiliates don't pitch in front of high-speed cameras as much as I'd like, the system still catches A's pitchers a fair amount when they go on the road. So far, Brendan McCurry has pitched in four games at the two stadiums with PITCHf/x, which is more than enough data to start taking a look. Here we go.

Nothing all that out of the ordinary, even if five pitches is kind of a lot for a reliever, especially one who was an infielder not that long ago. I threw out the Gameday classifications and reclassified the 66 pitches into five groups:

• A 90-mph four-seam fastball with fairly average movement.
  
• A 90-mph two-seam fastball with a huge amount of tail.
• A 79-mph changeup, also with tons of tail. Seems fairly devastating to lefties.
  
• A 76-mph slider that sweeps laterally more than it drops.
• A big ol' classic 69-mph curve that should be a lot of fun.

There's something a little odd here, though. The spin angle of a four-seam fastball tends to correspond pretty well to a pitcher's arm slot angle. His four-seam fastball suggests a fairly standard three-quarters delivery. But if so, where does all of that two-seam and changeup tail come from? Generating that much lateral movement from a three-quarters delivery seems pretty exceptional. Maybe his release point will give us some answers.

The what now? Finding a pitcher who consistently uses two distinct release points is pretty unusual. Some guys like to stand on different sides of the rubber when facing batters of different handedness. Rarer still are the guys who will actually change their arm slot when seeing hitters in the other batter's box. The two release point groups clearly have different heights, which suggests the latter. Sorting these release points by batter handedness should help.

Huh? He doesn't only use batter handedness when deciding which arm slot to use? Oh man, what if he...

That is so freaking cool. Not only will Brendan McCurry come at hitters with two different arm slots, he'll even switch arm slots in the middle of an at-bat. Looks like that first graph needs some updating.

Brendan McCurry is essentially two pitchers in one. McCurry A is this guy above, who throws from a normal three-quarters delivery and throws a fastball, a slider, and a curve.

McCurry B throws from a far lower sidearm angle, with a fastball, a changeup, and a curve, all of which feature a lot more lateral movement than his upright counterpart.

Seriously, Jeremy. Good call on the pitcher crush. So freaking cool.