Futures Game Locations and Results

Continuing our look at Pitch F/X data from the Futures game, this post will take a look at pitches in the game sorted by results, mainly pitches that were put in play versus pitches that were swung through.

Here are the locations of the whiffs in the game, labelled with the hitter and the pitcher (the former first):

Xander Bogaerts actually swung and missed at a pitch down the middle (not to mention the pitches he missed low and in versus high pitches). Christian Walker swung and missed at 3 different pitches by Carlos Contreras. Since both are right-handers, this means that they are pitches thrown low and away. Two of them were fastballs (95-96 MPH)and one of them was a curveball. Taijuan Walker got whiffs using his high fastball. Addison Russell seemed to have problems pitches that were low or away.

There were two home runs in the Futures Game, and I posted the location, pitch type, and release points of the home runs in the graph below. The change was thrown by Michael Ynoa to Matt Davidson. The fastball was thrown by Ranaudo to Alcantara. 

Here are all the pitches that were put in play by hitters in the Futures Game (click on the image to enlarge)

The first things that stand out are the pitches outside of the strike zone that were put into play. Henry Urrieta seems to be quite a mid to low ball hitter. George Springer made contact on pitches both inside and outside. Kolten Wong made contact with the highest pitch, and he also hit a ball that was thrown low and away.

Here were the average locations of results (along with the two home runs), regardless of platoon, with the average velocity. The entire graph is the strike zone:

The velocity of the average pitch and the average whiff is the same, though the average whiff is slightly lower than the average pitch. The average contact is actually lower as well, but a couple of miles per hour harder than the whiffs or average pitches.