Mark Appel pitched in a much publicized game against Arizona State and another possible 1st rounder in Trevor Williams. Since the game was on ESPN U, it had a broadcast radar gun, so I decided to "chart" his outing. I don't feel the need to write a scouting report on Appel, because that has been done by several writers who would do it better than I would. He isn't exactly an unknown commodity, but I wanted to get his velocity numbers from the outing, and then compare him to MLB pitchers using Pitch F/X data (unfortunately, we will be dealing with the MLB AM tags when looking at the MLB pitchers, which obviously isn't ideal, but for this post necessary).
Of course the broadcast gun didn't pick up all the pitches, and I just ignored the ones that it didn't since I wasn't charting location or anything. In the 6th, evidently the gun stopped working for several pitches. Overall, ESPN had him at 121 pitches, but there were velocities for 112. Classification was somewhat difficult at times, but generally, the change is the pitch that "breaks" arm side, slider breaks glove for him (for the most part, I also went on whether or not the pitch actually appeared to break like a slider does). Here is Appel's breakdown:
56 fastballs, 50 %, 93.36 MPH average
34 changeups, 30.36 %, 82.97 MPH average.
22 sliders, 19.6 %, 85.27 MPH average.
In just fastball velocity for a right-handed pitcher, Mat Latos is the closest comparison (for qualified starters in the Pitch F/X era). Armando Gallaraga provides the best comparison in slider velocity, above average, but not elite. His closest changeup comparisons are Leake, Slowey, Hunter, Danks, and Hochevar, all who have softer fastballs than he does.
I would really like to see a curveball, something that didn't appear in the outing. Only two of the qualified starters in the Pitch F/X era have no curveballs to their name, Justin Masterson and Bud Norris. If you switched the slider and the changeup percentage, his pitch selection would be very similar to Bud Norris, as Jeremy Hellickson is the only pitcher with 30% changeups. The 19.6 % slider usage is right at Masterson, Jhoulys Chacin, and Ross Ohlendorf. It is hard to find a starting pitcher that throws some kind of fastball only 50 % of the time. John Smoltz seemed to do it, Carlos Villanueva does it, Hellickson nearly does it, Paul Byrd did it, as did Tim Stauffer, Mike Mussina (remember, this is all in the Pitch F/X era only), Anibal Sanchez, James Shields, Bronson Arroyo, Freddy Garcia, Jesse Litsch, Bruce Chen, R.A. Dickey, and Tim Wakefield.
These are all soft tossers or heavy slider pitchers. That is, except James Shields. Shields has had about an average fastball (not as good as Appel's), and throws a lot of changeups. However, Shields also throws a lot of curveballs and Wakefield is the only pitcher that threw just 3 different kind of pitches. Perhaps Appel just needs to develop a cutter to go along with his fastball (he didn't show one), but a curveball would be preferable.
In the actual outing, Appel threw almost a stupid amount of strikes, showing good control, though certainly not all of them were quality strikes (perhaps not good command, but Arizona State rarely made him pay). Appel did a good job of maintaining his velocity all game.
Certainly there are some MLB tools in the Mark Appel toolbox, but there are also some things missing. The fastball velocity is obviously very good, and his changeup movement (something we can't really quantify here) is big league esque. However, the lack of other pitches make real big league comparisons difficult.
Showing posts with label Freddy Garcia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freddy Garcia. Show all posts
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Adam Plutko Pitch Data
I was able to see UCLA right-hander Adam Plutko pitch against Baylor on Friday February the 22nd.
This won't be much of a scouting report (my notes on UCLA as a team and Baylor will be up on the site later in the week), but instead I will just look at his pitch data, like I did with Jacob Stone and Tommy Burns.
I have seen the right-handed starter projected to be selected in the first round. I would have liked to have taken some video, but the lights and my crappy camera made things really blurry, so we will work basically exclusively with the pitch data.
This is according to Baylor's stadium gun, which anecdotally, seemed rather accurate. His fastball velocity range also seemed to roughly match other scouting reports I had read. I know I am missing at least 1 pitch, and maybe 2 pitches totally, and I have the results and location for 2 pitches, but not velocity (one was my fault, one was the stadium gun's fault). You will notice that I didn't do any pitch classification here. That is on purpose, and is mainly to minimize interpretation and error. Especially, as others have complained, the slider doesn't have dramatic movement.
The average MPH of all pitches thrown 86.38, which is right at what John Lackey has been since 2007, in the top 5th of starting pitchers (143 out of 544). He hit 93 MPH once, and that is where he maxed out at.
Plutko's main breaking pitches are the change and the slider. He also throws a curve according to reports, but I don't think I saw it. We have seen that pitchers with no pitch under 80 MPH on average don't seem to turn into quality starters. Obviously Plutko threw just one pitch under 80 MPH. Also, the overall velocity is less impressive when you count that out of the pitches I label as a fastball (85 MPH, which there was only one, and over), he averaged just 88.09 MPH. Freddy Garcia and Ted Lilly (two veterans who used to throw harder) provide the best comparison in 4 seam fastballs. Josh Collmenter is the best comparison when trying to get rid of the veteran bias, although he has a quirky delivery. It is hard to find normal right-handed starter comparisons for pitchers that have only thrown in the Pitch F/X era. Josh Fogg and Josh Towers both threw about half a MPH harder than Plutko, and neither were really good pitchers in the Majors.
If we assume all 23 breaking pitches are changeups, they averaged 81.61 MPH. That is a below average change in velocity compared to MLB pitchers, and closest to Justin Germano's. In both whiff/swings % and groundball swing percentage, Germano's change is below average to awful. As a slider, it would be below average as well, closest to, as far as right-hander's go, Carlos Silva. Silva's slider was not awful, even when he was as a pitcher, but his slider was below average in getting whiffs and grounders in the Pitch F/X era.
What I am classifying as the fastball he threw about 64 times, or about 73.6 % of the time. Obviously there could be some classification errors (though I doubt 85-86 MPH were hard sliders), but that is a lot of fastballs. Even if you combine all fastballs together (2-seam, 4-seamer, sinker), only 1 starter in the Majors, Justin Masterson, threw that many fastballs on average (and he throws harder than Plutko by about 3 MPH on average).
Below is his Heat Map based on the location data that I collected. Just like with the Jacob Stone post, I removed the strike/no strike bias so there is a little less interpretation and chance for error
Obviously he loved to throw the ball high middle, and apparently this is well documented.High was his favorite height location, with low being 2nd, and the middle being the least. He worked arm side a little more than glove side, but preferred throwing in the middle of the plate. If you look at the pitchers in the Majors that most liked to throw in the upper middle portion of the strike zone, you see some good names, like Clayton Kershaw and Tim Lincecum, but you notice that most of them are hard throwers. If you look at the top 10 in frequency there, you see that they had an average fastball of 92.3 MPH. Bruce Chen is in the top 20, but obviously he is left-handed. Bronson Arroyo, who was 35th, is the first right-hander that threw softer than Putko and showed up frequently in the middle high part of the strike zone. It is rare that a pitcher that doesn't throw hard to throw high up in the zone, because they usually can't live up there.
When looking at the results, the first thing you notice is the disappointing amount of whiffs, just 4 (4.5 %). Obviously Baylor is a good college team, but it is a college team. If you are a first round pick, you should get more than 4 swing and misses.Here are the results of the rest of his pitches:
15 called strikes
1 pitchout
11 ground-balls, 7 for outs, 4 for no outs.
6 fly-balls. All outs
4 bunts (1 foul)
15 fouls
33 balls
He threw strikes a little more than 61% of the time, which is a little low, but acceptable. He really struggled with command early in the game, but got much better. He proved to be a ground-ball pitcher, at least in this outing, despite working high so much. Also note that all 6 fly-balls were turned into outs. This could be partly luck, but just from a general observation standpoint, he wasn't really hit hard at all.
Honestly, I wasn't very impressed by Plutko. He didn't look like a first round pick to me. While certainly he could add velocity (if he just hit 93 MPH, it would be helpful), his fastball was unimpressive, and he didn't show great breaking pitches. He wasn't bat control wise, but I would hesitate to call him advanced. While he has had major success in college, I am not sure this combination of stuff and locations would play in an upper level of the minors, especially because he likes to throw high, but doesn't have great swing or miss stuff.
This won't be much of a scouting report (my notes on UCLA as a team and Baylor will be up on the site later in the week), but instead I will just look at his pitch data, like I did with Jacob Stone and Tommy Burns.
I have seen the right-handed starter projected to be selected in the first round. I would have liked to have taken some video, but the lights and my crappy camera made things really blurry, so we will work basically exclusively with the pitch data.
This is according to Baylor's stadium gun, which anecdotally, seemed rather accurate. His fastball velocity range also seemed to roughly match other scouting reports I had read. I know I am missing at least 1 pitch, and maybe 2 pitches totally, and I have the results and location for 2 pitches, but not velocity (one was my fault, one was the stadium gun's fault). You will notice that I didn't do any pitch classification here. That is on purpose, and is mainly to minimize interpretation and error. Especially, as others have complained, the slider doesn't have dramatic movement.
The average MPH of all pitches thrown 86.38, which is right at what John Lackey has been since 2007, in the top 5th of starting pitchers (143 out of 544). He hit 93 MPH once, and that is where he maxed out at.
Plutko's main breaking pitches are the change and the slider. He also throws a curve according to reports, but I don't think I saw it. We have seen that pitchers with no pitch under 80 MPH on average don't seem to turn into quality starters. Obviously Plutko threw just one pitch under 80 MPH. Also, the overall velocity is less impressive when you count that out of the pitches I label as a fastball (85 MPH, which there was only one, and over), he averaged just 88.09 MPH. Freddy Garcia and Ted Lilly (two veterans who used to throw harder) provide the best comparison in 4 seam fastballs. Josh Collmenter is the best comparison when trying to get rid of the veteran bias, although he has a quirky delivery. It is hard to find normal right-handed starter comparisons for pitchers that have only thrown in the Pitch F/X era. Josh Fogg and Josh Towers both threw about half a MPH harder than Plutko, and neither were really good pitchers in the Majors.
If we assume all 23 breaking pitches are changeups, they averaged 81.61 MPH. That is a below average change in velocity compared to MLB pitchers, and closest to Justin Germano's. In both whiff/swings % and groundball swing percentage, Germano's change is below average to awful. As a slider, it would be below average as well, closest to, as far as right-hander's go, Carlos Silva. Silva's slider was not awful, even when he was as a pitcher, but his slider was below average in getting whiffs and grounders in the Pitch F/X era.
What I am classifying as the fastball he threw about 64 times, or about 73.6 % of the time. Obviously there could be some classification errors (though I doubt 85-86 MPH were hard sliders), but that is a lot of fastballs. Even if you combine all fastballs together (2-seam, 4-seamer, sinker), only 1 starter in the Majors, Justin Masterson, threw that many fastballs on average (and he throws harder than Plutko by about 3 MPH on average).
Below is his Heat Map based on the location data that I collected. Just like with the Jacob Stone post, I removed the strike/no strike bias so there is a little less interpretation and chance for error
8 23 5 10 7 6 6 15 8
When looking at the results, the first thing you notice is the disappointing amount of whiffs, just 4 (4.5 %). Obviously Baylor is a good college team, but it is a college team. If you are a first round pick, you should get more than 4 swing and misses.Here are the results of the rest of his pitches:
15 called strikes
1 pitchout
11 ground-balls, 7 for outs, 4 for no outs.
6 fly-balls. All outs
4 bunts (1 foul)
15 fouls
33 balls
He threw strikes a little more than 61% of the time, which is a little low, but acceptable. He really struggled with command early in the game, but got much better. He proved to be a ground-ball pitcher, at least in this outing, despite working high so much. Also note that all 6 fly-balls were turned into outs. This could be partly luck, but just from a general observation standpoint, he wasn't really hit hard at all.
Honestly, I wasn't very impressed by Plutko. He didn't look like a first round pick to me. While certainly he could add velocity (if he just hit 93 MPH, it would be helpful), his fastball was unimpressive, and he didn't show great breaking pitches. He wasn't bat control wise, but I would hesitate to call him advanced. While he has had major success in college, I am not sure this combination of stuff and locations would play in an upper level of the minors, especially because he likes to throw high, but doesn't have great swing or miss stuff.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Free Agent Watch: Freddy Garcia
Made just 1.5 million with the Yankees last season, and at a 3.4 WAR, deserved a 10.2 million dollar deal. Shouldn't be completely surprising, registered a 2.1 WAR in 2010, making just a million dollars with the White Sox. He clearly deserved at least 6 million for that performance. That the White Sox were willing to let Garcia go in free agency for 1.5 million raises some serious questions about the White Sox front office. So are there any indications that Garcia can (or cannot) repeat his performance? Some metrics aren't all that impressive, such as PE (1.7) and TR (8.93). This would suggest that Garcia is either overrated, lucky, or due for a bad season. His FIP was over .5 higher than his ERA, and he hasn't thrown 200 innings since 2006. There should also be some concern that 2011 was pretty fluky based on that he hadn't had an ERA lower than his 2011 ERA since 2001. The counter argument would be that his FIP was 3.35 in 2009, he just didn't have anything behind him. He is 35, and tons of pitchers have pitched very well after that, and he doesn't rely on flamethrowing stuff. I would not hesitate to sign him to a 2 year $4 million deal. I wouldn't bank on him being worth $10 million next year, but there really isn't much reason to believe he can't go out there and pitch very effectively. I just think it will be hard to go under the radar in the market again, especially after doing what he did in New York. However, I doubt he will be overpaid, everyone will think it is a fluke, and a low budget team (if the Yankees really lose their brains and don't resign him) could swoop in and get a very nice year or two from him.
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