2013 AFL Pitch F/X Data: Location

There were approximately 8856 pitches by 110 pitchers correctly and fully tracked by Pitch F/X in the Arizona Fall League  in 2013. On the blog, I would like to look at all the pitches as a whole, along with some individual hitters and pitchers. This is the first post in the hopeful series. First, I wanted to look at how pitches were located by individual pitchers. So the following picture (click to enlarge) is the average location of all the pitches thrown by each pitcher. The entire graph is the strikezone:

I thought it would be helpful to highlight some of the more extreme pitchers. Cam Bedrosian and Omar Duran were the most extreme high ball pitchers. Duran is a 23 year old lefty reliever in the A's organization with extremely high strikeout rates in the lower levels. He has also been extremely hard to hit home runs off of. Bedrosian was a 1st round pick by the Angels in 2010, but statistically, he has really struggled with walks, despite an okay strikeout rate and a low home run rate. John Stilson was an extreme low ball pitcher in the AFL, and he has been mostly successful in the Blue Jays' system out of Texas A&M since being drafted in 2012 as both a starter and a reliever. Yankees left-hander Fred Lewis was also an extreme low ball pitcher in the AFL and the 26 year old former 47th rounder has had low home run rates along with good strikeout rates in the minors.

Lefty Jarret Martin was an extreme arm side pitcher in the AFL, and he has really struggled with walks in his career, currently with the Dodgers after being drafted twice by the Orioles. Chris Bassitt, a 6-5 24 year old with the White Sox, was an extreme arm side pitcher as a right-hander. He is coming off a strong season where he pitched well in his first taste of AA. Two pitchers that stand out as being pitchers that throw the ball slightly below the middle of the strike zone on average, along with pitching both sides of the plate equally, are Vidal Nuno and Chad Rogers. Nuno is a control specialist that had some success with the Yankees this year while Rogers is a former 28th round pick in 2010 by the Reds. The undersized right-hander was a full time starter in the upper minors for the Reds in 2013 and had a solid year, despite not having flashy peripherals.

Since we are talking about mostly young pitchers trying to refine their stuff and command and make it to the Majors, I thought it might be at least interesting to look at the wildest pitches thrown in the AFL out of the ones tracked by Pitch F/X. I broke the wildest pitches into two graphs, fastballs versus non-fastballs (using MLBAM tags). Then for each graph, I looked at the pitch furthest to the left, the right, and highest and lowest. Here are the "wildest" (not counting intentional balls) fastballs, labelled with actual MLBAM tag:

It is no surprise that Omar Duran had the highest thrown fastball because of what we saw with the first graph. Angel Baez is a 22 year old Royals right-hander that really struggled with command in 8 A+ starts this year. He does have some strikeout potential, but has really failed to put a lot of innings together. Couch is a 24 year old right-hander in the Red Sox system that is actually a control specialist, with not a lot of walks in his career, but not a high strikeout rate either. Ferrara is a left-handed pitcher that really struggled with walks and homers in his first full year in AA.

How about non fastballs?

Simon actually had the two wildest curves to the left. The Phillies' reliever's problem was walks in AA in 2013, it was a lack of strikeouts. Cravy, showing up twice with two different pitches in the graph, was dominant as a reliever in A+ for the Brewers, and if there is a problem, it is strikeouts, not walks. Ramirez, with the Red Sox A+ and AA, was also very good, with no such question about strikeouts for the former 4th round pick.

In general, here were the average pitch locations, regardless of handedness, of each pitch type in the AFL in Pitch F/X games in 2013:

Michihiro Ogasawara Scouting Report

In the most recent list of players who have exercised their free agent options in the NPB, an interesting name popped up: Michihiro Ogasawara. Ogasawara is a 40 year old left-handed infielder that has spent the last seven years with the Yomuiri Giants, but has played in just 56 Ichi-Gun games over the last two seasons, yet he has not exercised his domestic free agent option, but his international free agent option, meaning he must be looking to come to the United States or play in a different league.

Statistically, Ogasawara was a very interesting NPB player for quite some time, posting an OPS of at least .900 each season from 2000-2010, playing in at least 100 games each year (and at least 130 in all but one). He has hit 377 homers in the NPB, and had an OBP over .400 from 2000-2004 (.389 for his career). However, the drop off was sudden and dramatic. In 83 games in 2011, Ogasawara's walk rate dropped to 8.6 % (from his career rate of 11.1 %) and his strikeout rate jumped to 21 % (from 15.98 % for his career). His power was sapped as well, as his slugging rate dropped to .338, poor for even the run starved environment of the NPB's 2011-2012 seasons. In 99 plate appearances in 2012, he hit a hilarious .152/.194/.185 and was given just 40 plate appearances in 2013.

Ogasawara had 100 plate appearances in the Ni-Gun in 2013, and he was below average at getting hits, extra base hits, walks, and strikeout too much. Statistically, Ogasawara looks done. He has moved from mainly 3rd base to exclusively 1st base, and he has never really been a stolen base threat, which has only been exasperated over the past couple of years (no stolen bases over the last two years in the Ichi-gun, no stolen bases in the Ni-gun this year). So all the value comes out of his bat, something that has disappeared over the past three years.

Since he is a free agent, it doesn't make sense to look back at what he was, but instead, who he is now.  Here is Ogasawara's only NPB homer in the last two years

The pitch doesn't appear to be especially fast, but he does an okay job of getting around on a pitch up and in despite the crazy hand positioning and the weird way he holds his bat. The bat path is smooth, and apparently the speed works, but he doesn't look like a prototypical power hitter. It makes me wonder where he generated his power from when he was a big time NPB home run hitter.

Here is another 2013 swing, where he apparently thinks he hit a homer, but actually makes an out:

The pitch is more on the outside part of the plate, and about 89 MPH. He pulls it with some authority, but I do find the fact that he flips the bat like it is a homer, only to see that it is not. I don't want to read too much into it, but he has nearly 400 career homers, you would think he would know when he has homered. The power is clearly not what it used to be, and we can judge that by statistics.

I really can't see him making an impact or even an attractive option for teams outside the NPB. He doesn't appear to have a quirk, like Shunsuke Watanabe, that may make him attractive as a part time player. At one time, he would have made sense for MLB teams since he had real power, but those days are gone.

Fighters Sign Michael Crotta

Michael Crotta signed with the Nippon Ham Fighters in the NPB for equivalent of $500,000. A 6'6 30 year old right-handed pitcher, Crotta pitched in the Major Leagues in 2011 for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that drafted him in the 17th round in 2006 out of Florida Atlantic University. The short stint didn't go very well, as he gave up 11 runs in 10.2 innings. He then didn't pitch at all in 2012 thanks to a terrible elbow injury.

Crotta spent the entire 2013 season on the Nationals' AAA team, pitching only in relief and statistically, not a whole lot stands out. He had a 3.57 ERA, with a 17.2 strikeout percentage and walk percentage of nearly 10 percent. However, I thought it was worth looking further to see what the Fighters might see in Crotta.

Despite the injury, his delivery has remained virtually the same. Here is a look at what his delivery looked like in 2010:

And here was his release point in 2011:

 Here is what his delivery looked like in 2013:

And his 2013 release point:

The Lehigh Valley gun on MiLB.tv tends to be slow, but I checked the last time he pitched at the park (one of the few MiLB broadcasts with on screen radar guns) and Crotta was throwing 95 MPH with some armside tail. He occasionally kept it high, but would really bust in on a right-hander's bat, seeming to use the two seam like Japanese pitches often use the two seam, trying to get inside rather than throwing it to opposite platoon batters to keep it outside. He can get occasional sink glove side as well and didn't give up a homer all year, so it doesn't seem that staying over the middle of the plate was a problem. He was up to 96, with very consistent velocity, throwing mostly 94 the next inning.

The other pitch Crotta showed was a 84-85 MPH slider. He perhaps had some problem getting on top of it, with mostly downward movement. It was mainly used against lefties, against an occasional righty (though it stayed arm side). It did not appear to be a splitter or change and didn't appear to be a very good pitch. Against impatient hitters when he gets it somewhat down it can be a groundball pitch.

In the Majors, Crotta didn't throw near as hard, averaging under 93 MPH. The MLBAM tags and the Pitch Info tags disagreed whether he threw mainly sinkers or mainly four seamers, but they agreed that he threw a slider as his main breaking pitch and just one changeup. I definitely saw two different fastballs in my short look, but I would probably label them two seamer and sinker.

In my previous article I looked at how NPB teams targeted height and velocity, and the Fighters were above average at possessing both. Crotta is a great example of a guy possessing both, almost at an extreme. 

You do wonder if he is going to miss enough bats to be a successful back of the bullpen pitcher in the NPB, where getting strikeouts can be difficult. The track record and breaking pitch do not suggest he will rack up many strikeouts, but the fastball velocity might. If he can work a little higher in the zone, and still throw 94-96 MPH, he will get plenty of swings and misses.

Which NPB Teams Value Velocity the Most?

With the off-season rumor mill now in full swing, I wanted to see if we could find some tendencies in each NPB team and how they approach and evaluate pitching. I figure we could do this with two (relatively) easily verifiable and findable measurements: pitcher height and fastball velocity. I used Baseball Reference for the former, and NPB Tracker for the later. Because of this, the data set is limited to 2009-2012, as those are the years NPB Tracker has data up. I chose to only look at foreign imports because scouting younger players, especially high school players, is tricky. Many of them will grow and add velocity, while some won't, and some may even lose velocity. With "veteran" professional players (though Industrial League players that are then drafted fall under this, though I excluded them from this study) teams essentially know what they are getting. They may not know exactly how effective they will be, teams know how hard the pitcher throws and how big he is (I excluded Taiwanese players as they are often signed by NPB times while they are young. I limited my scope to players that were signed from MLB or American affiliated baseball). I looked at the first year the pitcher pitched in the NPB (or for players that were already in the league at the time, 2009) for their velocity, and I also labelled their role for that season. For relievers (or pitchers that had more relief appearances than starts in their first year), I took off 1.5 MPH off their velocity to adjust their velocities by what you would expect a reliever to lose in the rotation (I did not adjust the velocity measuring being slower than the measuring in the MLB). This way, we aren't rewarding a team artificially for signing mainly relievers versus a team that signed mostly starters. Velocity and size are two simple and basic components scouts use to evaluate pitchers, so hopefully this small study shows which teams value these the most.

The Rakuten Golden Eagles seem to, whether intentionally or unintentionally, value height the most (which is ironic since 5'6 Manabu Mima was the Japan Series MVP in the Eagles championship in 2013). The Swallows seem to ignore height all together with their average import from 2009-2012 being under 6 feet tall. The Swallows' pitchers also throw slower than average, while the Giants' imports throw the hardest, despite being a little shorter than average. The Baystars, despite being the third tallest team on average, are the slowest pitchers on average. The Fighters, Tigers, and Eagles are the three teams whose imports are above average in height and velocity, while along with the Swallows, the Dragons, Lions, and Buffaloes are below average in both categories. It may be worth revisiting this topic when the offseason ends to see which teams targeted and acquired height and velocity.

Hideaki Wakui Scouting Report

Seibu Lions 27 year old right-handed pitcher Hideaki Wakui has exercised his domestic free agent option, which allows him to sign with other interested NPB teams. The Lions are not said to be interested in bringing him back, meaning he will end up elsewhere. Wakui is an interesting pitcher because he is still in his prime, meaning he started very early in the Ichi-gun to already have his option (he made his debut in his age 19 season in 2005), which tells us, without even having to double check, that he was very highly regarded coming out of high school and quickly found a role on the Lions. While his debut season was a disaster (as far as hits and homers go, which made his ERA over 7), Wakui quickly settled in as a dependable and very good starter. From 2006-2011, Wakui threw over 170 innings each year, with an ERA under 4 each year (only even close in 2008, with an ERA of 3.9). However, the Lions moved him to the closer role in 2012, and he really wasn't that effective, with a 4.60 kwERA and 122 ERA -. In 2013, Wakui was in the rotation early on, but was moved back to the bullpen, pitching in some low leverage roles before righting the ship and pitching in higher leverage situations before the season was over. It was an improvement, with a 3.89 kwERA and 109 ERA -, but it wasn't the same Wakui as we saw in 2006-2011.

I won't spend time looking at his delivery because I already did that in my breakdown of the Lions' deliveries.While his head is straight at the time of release, it appears that there is some arm drag as his body is closer to the plate than a pitcher normally is by the time he lets go of the ball. Because of this, his posture isn't that great, which could cause him to jerk the ball. In his actual delivery, he uses a large leg kick and hesitation to get deception, and hides the ball with a very slight body twist after the pause.

Before trying to take a look at what exactly went wrong with Wakui, first let's take a look at what Wakui is currently. Below is a quick summation and look at his pitches. Each GIF, excluding the change/fork GIF, is from a pitch this season. All 2013 pitch data comes from Michael Westbay and ScoutDragon, while all data 2012 and before comes from NPB Tracker.

Wakui's slider averaged about 80.4, a full MPH tick below what it was in 2011-2012.

Like most pitchers, Wakui has two different fastballs, a 4-seam and a moving fastball. His 4-seam averaged 88.2 MPH in 2013 and he threw it about 46 % of the time.

Here is Wakui's low moving fastball, something that works like a sinker. This is used a lot less frequently, less than six percent of the time. This averages about one MPH lower, at 87.2 MPH in 2013.

His curve is a slow curve, averaging about 69.7 MPH, and thrown about 7.3 percent of the time

The data says that Wakui throws both a change and a fork, but for our purposes here, I combined them. He threw the changeup just over six percent of the time in 2013, and the forkball just over 5 percent of the time. The changeup is about three kilometers slower, at about 79 MPH.

Now that we have taken a look at what Wakui is at this point and what to expect from him, I think looking at why he regressed from dependable starter to mediocre reliever. Anecdotally, it appears that the slider has lost a lot of sharp downward movement, but things like movement from year to year can be really hard to quantify without Pitch F/X data, so I thought I would look at location. First, here is a breakdown of Wakui located all his pitches in 2011, his last full year as a starter, where he had a 99 ERA - and 4.32 kwERA (he had actually seen a drop off of strikeouts that year, signally the start of his regression). Each square is broken down by percent, and it is from the pitcher's perspective, so the far right would be the arm side part of the plate for Wakui:

If Wakui was going to throw a pitch outside of the zone, it was going to be low and glove side, like a slider. His most common location overall is glove side and middle, though if he was going to go high in the zone, it was more likely to be arm side. This isn't too unusual, as it is traditional fastball/slider locations for a right-hander. Compare this to his 2012 graph:

As a reliever, Wakui increased his fastball usage, which helps explain why there is an increase in middle to high arm side pitches. However, instead of throwing the changeup less as a reliever, he threw it more in 2012, subtracting his slider usage more, which helps explain the difference in low and glove side pitches (a disappearance almost). However, it is tough to see him increasing low arm side pitches. It appears that overall, he was working higher in the zone more across the board. How about in 2013?

Obviously there is a huge difference in pitches thrown low and glove side out of the zone, with a heavy increase. There are less pitches high and arm side as well, going for more glove side pitches in general. While he saw a slight bump in slider usage in 2013 compared to 2012, but it was still lower than it was in 2011.

2013 MLB Release Point Leaderboards

Before the 2013 season, I created release point leaderboards using Pitch F/X data, something that is not really out there anywhere else. A search suggests that this blog is still the only one that has them. In this post, I am updating and revamping the leaderboards. In the old post, I used Brooks Baseball's data, which is done using a 55 feet release point instead of the Pitch F/X standard of 50. This means that you have to use Brooks' data to compare release points of new pitchers to old pitchers. For this post, I am using the traditional 50 feet release point, just for easier comparisons. Also, in the older post, I only looked at fastballs. While I don't think it will change a lot (most pitchers have fairly uniform release points for all their pitches), this leaderboard will be all pitches thrown. Also, this leaderboard will only look at the 2013 season and won't differentiate between starters and relievers.

So below should be the average release points for every pitcher that pitched in 2013. First there are a few things that should be pointed out. I tried to take all position players out, so it should be all regular pitchers. However, because I did it by team using Baseball Savant, if a pitcher pitched for multiple teams in 2013, their name will appear multiple times. I also included a sheet of each team's average vertical release point as a whole, just because I found it interesting. The overall graph is going to be messy (and may not load easily, for me, it works a lot better in the Google Chrome family of browsers than Firefox) just because of all the names. I suggest following the link to get a better (and more interactive) look at the graph, but the main point is not the graph, which is just a visual aid, but instead the first sheet, the one with the list of names.

Shunsuke Watanabe Scouting Report

According to recent media reports out of Japan, Shunsuke Watanabe of the Chiba Lotte Marines in the NPB will be headed to the United States to try to make it in the Majors. Watanabe is a 37 year old (turning 38 next August) right-handed pitcher listed at just 5-10 155, very small for a professional pitcher.

Watanabe is a strange candidate for the Majors because of his lack of any kind of recent success. He has had an ERA of over 4 in the NPB in 5 of the last 6 seasons, with 2011 being the exception, with a 3.68 ERA when league average ERA was just under 3. In 2013, he made a grand total of 6 appearances, all starts, in the Ichi-gun, striking out as many batters as he walked. Watanabe hasn't had a season of at least a 2 to 1 K/BB since 2008.

Furthermore, Watanabe is known for his Submarine delivery, something that rules him out as a starter in the Majors. Yet, that is what he has been his entire NPB career (240 of his 255 Ichi-Gun appearances have been as a starter, no relief appearances since 2010). So statistically, he isn't even very interesting , but as I mentioned the delivery, let's take more of a look of it below (you can see his delivery and the rest of the deliveries of the 2013 Chiba Lotte Marines here).

Here is a GIF of Watanabe's delivery from behind:

As you can see, it is a clear and classic submarine delivery. He really starts with a pause, coming down very slowly before coming forward very quickly. This is show even better from the side in this look:

  There is no real jerk or violent movement in his delivery, and his head seems to stay very straight. His leg movement provides a little more deception and a little less continuity, but his landing point seems to be very calm. Here is a look from the top/front

The glove hides slighty behind his leg as he prevents the hitter from seeing where his arm comes from. If you are a hitter, you really don't see the ball until he is about to release it, and he seems to get the arm out (perhaps what you might call "extension") further than you would expect.

While this pitching motion is rare, it isn't exactly unique, as there have been American pitchers with similar motions. Below, look for comparisons to the two right-handed pitchers with the lowest release points in the Pitch F/X era (per my leaderboards, which need to be updated).

In Chad Bradford, we see the same sort of pause, leg kick, and ability to hide the ball. At least in the look below, Watanabe might actually be a tad lower when he releases the ball. Watanabe might have a little bit better landing point as well.

Brad Ziegler releases the ball higher, and has a lot more jerking motion in his delivery, with a much higher leg kick and while the actual landing point seems fine, he has a lot of momentum throwing him forward. Bradford is a closer comparison.

Of course, this doesn't include stuff, and pitch selection. Watanabe does not throw hard, even compared to other submarine pitchers, averaging less than 75 MPH on his fastball and sinker since 2010, and under 74 MPH in 2012.

Watanabe's most used pitch is the sinker, like most sidearmers or submarine pitchers.

This is a pitch that can break back armside and get low in the zone, getting him the grounders that most submarine/sidearm pitchers covet

He will throw what looks like a 4-seam fastball at times, usually more straight and higher in the zone

The velocity makes the term "fastball" lose all meaning, but he has to change the eye level of hitters at least occasionally.

The curve is where Watanabe gets really slow, but also a little tricky, as it can be hard to differentiate when it is a curve and when it is a slider. We are talking about pitches getting down below 60 MPH now

This slider is a little easier to pick out thanks to its horizontal movement, really fading away from the hitter. The break is so slow, that it is hard to see the pitch itself actually fooling a hitter, though perhaps it works with his deception, as hitters don't pick up the ball as early as they normally do, and the ball breaks away by the time they do.

For Watanabe, the main question when it comes to whether or not he can pitch in the Majors is: Can the method of slow, slow, and slower work in the Majors, even in a heavily specialized and platooned role?  We''ve seen one Japanese Sidearm/Submarine pitcher have success in the Majors (against right-handers that is) and dominate AAA in Yoshinori Tateyama. However, Tateyama throws quite a bit harder, and wasn't valued highly by the Texas Rangers after coming over, spending a lot of time in AAA before he was let go. Despite dominating AAA, the Yankees never decided to bring him up. We've seen guys like Pat Neshek and Cody Eppley bounce around, not really valued highly by most teams, even with the good numbers against righties and good AAA numbers. So it is really hard to see Watanabe get any kind of guaranteed deal at the Major League level. Most likely, I think he is a guy that is brought to spring training on a minor league deal, so a team can get a look at how his stuff plays against MLB hitters, and most likely stashed in AAA where he will have to prove himself until there is an opening in the bullpen. When given the chance, it is impossible for me to say whether or not he will actually have MLB success, because we just don't have a lot of comparable data to go on for guys that throw this slow.