Masahiro Tanaka: Start Eight

Masahiro Tanaka's eighth start of his MLB career proved to be his best so far, as he went all nine innings, didn't give up any runs, and gave up just four hits. He also struck out eight and didn't walk any.

Here is his spin and speed chart:

 

To give a cleaner view, here are his average spins and speeds for each pitch type:

 His splitter had by far the most spin, while his sinker was usually slightly slower, but spun more. Here is where he usually located those pitches:

 His slider was only slightly more glove side than arm side, though he got his curve to be lower than it normally is, even though it stayed arm side. His sinker also stayed a little lower than his fastball. If you wanted to see all of his pitch locations, they are below. Notice the cluster glove side and in the middle of the plate and high.

 Here are his result locations on average:

 When he threw high and glove side, he gave up hits, while low and glove side got him whiffs, just like it has all season. When he threw balls, it was usually because he couldn't get it glove side enough. Here are the release points of all his pitches:

 Going back to location, here is where he located his pitches by strikes in the count:

 As usual, he continued throwing lower and more glove side as he got more strikes on the hitter, going for that location where he was getting the whiffs.

 When he got three balls in the count, he threw his four seam fastball, or at least this is what the graphs show. Otherwise, there wasn't much of a difference between no balls and two balls in the count. Here is his movement chart:

 Here is his movement data by average pitch type:

All of his pitches, even the ones you think would be similar to each other, have vastly different movement.