I R Fast

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Yokohama DeNA Baystars Pitcher Deliveries

By almost every simple metric, the Yokohama DeNA Baystars had the worst pitching staff in the Central League. This is why, despite having the best offense in the league by runs scored, the Baystars finished 15 games under .500. They still weren't without some good pitching performances, such as Jorge Sosa's dominance in relief, Shugo Fujii's weird year (leading the team's starters in ERA despite just 3 more strikeouts than walks), and another year of Daisuke Miura. I wrote about a scouting report on Miura here, so his delivery is not including in the GIFs below.

Shugo Fujii

Shun Yamaguchi

Hiroshi Kobayashi

Teruaki Yoshikawa

Futoshi Kobayashi

Shoichi Ino

Shigeru Kaga

Kazuki Mishima

Hitoshi Fujie

Kota Suda

Kisho Kagami

Kentaro Takasaki

Masanori Hayashi

Yujo Kitagata

Kazumasa Kikuchi

Takayuki Shinohara

Shigeki Ushida

Yasushi Kamiuchi

Shinji Ohara

Tateki Abe

Kenji Tsuchiya

Kenjiro Tanaka

Takayuki Makka

Taketora Anzai

Takehiro Fukuda

Jorge Sosa

Yota Kosugi

Tim Corcoran

Atori Ota

Shoma Sato

Enyelbert Soto

Kai-Wen Cheng

Shuichiro Osada

Yuki Kuniyoshi

I-Cheng Wang

Takuro Ito

Kosuke Tomita

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Daisuke Miura Scouting Report

In my International Free Agent list, I somehow missed one of the more reliable starting pitchers in the NPB, Daisuke Miura of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars. Miura will turn 40 this offseason, entering the Ichi-gun with a cup of coffee in 1992 with 1995 being his first full season. The right-hander has racked up over 3000 career innings with a 3.97 career kwERA. With 2005-2006 as exceptions (and 2010-2011 being the bad exception years), Miura for the most part not been dominant, but reliable, above league average with a good amount of innings. In 2013, he had the 6th most innings pitched in the Central League with a 4.15 2013 kwERA, just worse than Bryan Bullington and Jason Standridge. Miura had a 4.42 kwERA over 2011-2012, so he actually improved in 2013 in walk and strikeout rates, but he really struggled with homers in 2013, something he has really struggled with over the past couple years on a whole:

Central League 2013: 2.16 HR %
Central League 2012: 1.42 %
Miura 2013: 3.56 HR %
Miura 2012: 2.03 %

He is probably most known for his ability to throw an extremely slow curve/eephus

His average curve velo, while still slow, has actually bumped up in the past couple of years as he has gone away from using the eephus as much. It seems to me that he is basically just using it as a joke in the All-Star Games now.

It seems a little silly to talk about the pitching mechanics of a 39 year old innings eater, as clearly he has something to work for him and that he can repeat. From a deception standpoint, he has a lot going on, getting in the middle of the air with his front leg, and not only pausing, but doing a motion that I can only describe as jiggling, bringing his leg slightly higher two to three times. After doing so, he brings his arm behind him, hiding the ball for another split second. The arm action seems to be a high 3/4ths, perhaps described as as over the top.

Along with the occasional curve, Miura throws four distinct pitches (excluding an occasional cutter according to the Yahoo data, which I think are just sliders that stay mid level and break into righties), the first being the most obvious, the fastball, a pitch that usually averages in the mid-80s. For the most part, he tries to move it around armside and gloveside and he keeps it pretty low, trying to get some movement instead of a lot of strikeouts with high whiffs.

Miura will also throw an occasional 2-seam/sinker, even against right-handed batters, breaking back into a righty. Here is an example of this working:

Miura's second pitch, used almost as often as the fastball, is his slider:

Against lefties, Miura can also throw a forkball that really looks like a changeup to me (though it doesn't get the changeup designation).

Even if interested, I think it is hard to see any MLB teams wanting to guarantee Miura money if he decided he wanted to come to the States. He may be an interesting 5th starter type, but many teams don't like to guarantee money to those types. His strength is his ability to eat innings, but you have to believe that his changeup and slider are going to make his fastball play up, or else they won't be very effective innings. I do like the movement and deception Miura brings, but that can be hard to quantify objectively, especially how that will play on a different level. Also, with him being 40, counting on him to continue to soak up innings may be dangerous. I think he is one of many NPB players whose maximum value lies in the NPB, not the MLB, meaning he can continue to make more money in Japan, even though he was only making about 2 million dollars this year in the NPB.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Yakult Swallows Pitcher Deliveries

By ERA, the Yakult Swallows were the 2nd worst pitching staff in the NPB Central League (and were almost worst in the league in runs allowed, with a high volume of unearned runs, they were also tied for league high in hits allowed per 9 innings), and were 2nd worst in allowing home runs. They were just below average in limiting walks (tied for league high in hit batters), and were league average in getting strikeouts.With that said, they have a couple of promising pitchers such as Yasuhiro Ogawa and Taichi Ishiyama

Yoshinori Sato