AFL Pitch F/X Data: Sequencing

Taking a break from looking at batting results, I wanted to take a quick look at another subject that has been very important in recent Pitch F/X research, pitch sequencing.

I think a good way to start is to approach sequencing the same way I did, looking to at-bats that contained both a whiff and a home run, meaning that the pitcher was able to make the batter swing and miss on one pitch, only to give up a home run later in the at-bat. There were 6 such at-bats in the AFL Pitch F/X games:

4 of the 6 at-bats that had swinging strikes and home runs ended with batters getting a different pitch than the ones that he swung and missed at. As far as general location goes, we see the same ratio, two of the six got pitches in the same area. Japhet Amador got the same pitch in a similar area and hit it for a homer, but the difference was that the first one was out of the strike zone. O'Brien got the same pitch in the same area against Pete Ruiz, both in the strike zone, and he didn't miss the second one. 

The Peter O'Brien/Dominic Leone at-bat is fascinating because Leone managed to get O'Brien to swing and miss at two different pitches, one out of the zone and one in the zone, and then threw a third separate pitch in the strike zone, in a different part of the strike zone, and it was hit for a homer. Here is a location graph showing the three pitches:

As the first chart shows, the cutter high and in the middle of the strike zone was the ball hit for a homer. The fastball thrown slightly away was missed at, and the slider was low away, not technically in the strike zone, but close. 

Of course, the at-bat actually lasted 8 pitches, so the three pitches above were just a small, though dramatic part, of the battle at the plate. Here are where all 8 pitches were located, labelled with the MLBAM tags of the pitches, along with the amount of strikes there were at the time the pitch was thrown:

Leone threw fastballs early in the count, both away, one high and one low. After getting a strike on O'Brien, Leone threw the slider that got him a whiff to get the count to two strikes. O'Brien then bore down and fouled off four pitches, a slider and cutter away (perhaps both sliders), and a fastball and cutter high and slightly inside. This is when Leone kept the ball over the plate and O'Brien hit it for a homer.

Of course, we want to look at larger sample sizes, and look at more results than just home run at-bats that also contained whiffs. So here we will take a look at strikeout at-bats, breaking them down by what pitches were thrown by the amount of strikes in the count.

Here are all the pitches in Arizona Fall League Pitch F/X games in 2013 that were either called a strike or swung and missed at in at-bats that ended with a strikeout. First, here are the pitches that were thrown with no strikes:

To spoil the two below graphs, while there are some sliders on the fringe here, we are mainly looking at pitches in the zone, with a stronger concentration. Pitchers are using their fastballs to get ahead in counts fro the most part. 

With 1 strike:

Here we see a lot more curves, with some more changes and sliders as well, we also see a lot more pitches off the plate horizontally, especially on the left side. Middle of the plate and high out of the zone seems to have a higher glut of pitches as well. 

With 2 strikes:

There are more pitches everywhere, whether buried in the dirt, extremely high in the zone, or to the left (still not a great glut of pitches to the right, which is where you should throw your pitches to a right-handed hitter, but again, this could be youthful pitchers). There are also more changeups in the zone.

In case the graphs do not show it, here are the average locations in strikeout at-bats, broken down by how many strikes there were at the time the pitch was thrown:

Not surprisingly, when pitchers in the AFL got to two strikes, they tended to throw more breaking balls, which are lower in the zone on average. Surprisingly, there isn't much of a difference in horizontal location.

Can Wladimir Balentien Successfully Return to the Majors?

Wladimir Balentien has become one of the biggest baseball stories around the world as he shattered the NPB home run record despite missing the first couple weeks of the season, doing it in a less hitter friendly run environment than the previous record holders of Oh, Cabrera, and Rhodes (league average home run rate in the NPB Central League is 2.195 % this season, Wladimir Balentien is hitting home runs 11.3 % of his plate appearances, or a HR % + of 516. That puts, relative to league, Barry Bonds' 2001 of 371 HR % + and Chris Davis' 2013 of 264 HR % + to shame, though it isn't quite as impressive as Babe Ruth's 1927, where he had a 951 HR% +). However, Wladimir isn't just hitting home runs. The hitter that was once considered undisciplined and struck out in 26.7 % of Major League at-bats (though he showed some plate discipline at AAA, walking 9.75 % of the time and striking out less than 19 % of the time) has walked nearly exactly as many times as he struck out in the NPB this year. No doubt some of this is a function of being pitched around, but even when you take out his intentional walks, he is still walking 17.8 % of the time, or about 9.25 % better than league average. Tony Blanco, second in league slugging, is walking 11 % of the time, while the best native NPB power hitter, Shinnosuke Abe, has walked 15.8 % of the time, so even compared to the best power hitters in the league, Balentien is walking a lot.

It was an adjustment fellow former-MLB/AAAA power hitter Wily Mo Pena never made. Pena burst onto the NPB scene with long home runs to start the 2011 season, but slowed down significantly, only hitting 21 homers and walking just 6.9 % of the time. This year, he has been nothing short of a disaster, spending a lot of time in the Ni-Gun (the Japanese minor leagues) and just hitting his first Ichi-gun home run in the last couple of weeks. Pena's AAA power numbers were significantly better than Wladimir's as well (though he didn't have the K/BB of Balentien). Despite the time wasted on articles about a "juiced" ball in the NPB, Wladimir's season is nothing short of special statistically, with a 215 SLG + and 182 OPS + relative to 2013 averages. This is an improvement over his 2011 and 2012 seasons, where he had a SLG + of 138 and 169 respectively.

Reports of whether or not Wladimir is interested in coming back to the Majors, are as always, mixed. Sources say that he wants to come back, while Wladimir is still under contract for the next few seasons, and insists that he wants to not only stay a Yakult Swallow until the contract runs out, but play for the team until he retires. If a MLB team does make a serious run at Wladimir, and he is interested, then the actual mechanics of him coming back to the MLB might be a little complicated, with some kind of buyout needing to take place. The point is, if a MLB team does acquire Wladimir Balentien, it won't be for cheap. He is making real guaranteed money in Japan, and not only would the MLB team have to dish out the money for him to be interested, they are probably going to have to pay the Swallows as well. Considering that Balentien slugged .374 in 559 big league plate appearances, hitting at a below replacement level, scouts and executives are going to need to see the tangible evidence that he has changed as a hitter, and isn't just a hitter whose game translated to Japan better than expected. That is, figuring out which hitters will translate from Japan to the Majors, or vise versa, is hard work (pitchers, as fickle as they are, are obviously easier, as both MLB and NPB teams successfully acquire quality "foreign" pitchers much more often than hitters). Balentien obviously translated from somewhat of a AAAA player to a great NPB hitter. The question for MLB teams watching Balentien put together one of the best power hitting seasons ever seen is this: Is he still the hitter that struggled to have his raw power come out in games in 2008 or 2009, or has his time in Japan allowed him to become a different and objectively better hitter that would succeed against MLB pitching if given another chance? Notice I am not asking: "Is Wladimir Balentien's home run title legitimate?" or "Is the power Wladimir has shown this year "real"?" The answer to those questions is yes, of course. The statistics don't lie. Wladimir went to one of the best leagues in the world and has outhit players that actually had success in the Majors, such as Casey McGehee, Lastings Milledge, and Andruw Jones. We aren't asking if he is statistically interesting as a "MLB prospect". He is. This post is just an attempt at doing the work to see, from a somewhat advanced scouting perspective, whether or not the incredible statistics would translate to the Major Leagues.

First, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at his swing, comparing his current swing with the Yakult Swallows to the swing he used while in the Majors. By doing so, perhaps we can spot any major mechanical differences that may be helping him, if they exist. So with the caveat that I think trying to find little things in swing mechanics often come with confirmation biases (my favorite example is Ike Davis. When he is struggling, everyone talks about where his hands are, despite the fact that he has had quite a bit of MLB success with his hands in the same spot), let's take a look at a few GIFs.

Here is Wladimir pulling a home run for the Seattle Mariners:

Here is Wladimir's last MLB home run, a pulled shot with the Reds:

The swing looks the same in both of the MLB GIFs to me. It is a hard violent rip with a violent twisting of the body to pull the ball and almost sling the bat along with him. The head looks fine, and he seems to be under relative control with a firm foot. It is a hard swing, and I can't speak to bat speed, but he isn't completely wild.

This groundball single from the WBC demonstrates how well he stays in I believe:

Here is his 56th homer of the year in 2013:

If anything, he seems to come out of his stance a little more, "swinging from the heels" more than he did in the above GIFs. There is more motion in his overall swing, but there seems to be a little more reach, a little more plate coverage. If you are desperately trying to prove that Balentien has improved, you could argue that his swinging motion is less binary, and that he is adjusting to balls better. Whether or not the bat seems faster is impossible for me to tell, I don't see a difference at least. So other than maybe more plate coverage, I don't think swing mechanics are very helpful in the case that Wladimir will adjust to MLB pitching better if given another chance. Looking at the data below will be much more helpful.

One of the first questions, whether rightly or wrongly, risen about hitters playing in Japan is whether or not they can handle elite fastballs, something that they don't see often in the NPB. We can look back at Wladimir's time in the Majors and see that he saw 112 pitches above 95 MPH. He swung at missed at 20 of them and made contact (balls put in play) with 9 of them. So despite only seeing a few pitches about 99 MPH and none above 100, he swing and missed at 95 MPH + fastballs like they were at least 99 MPH according to our fastball velocity breakdowns.

So it does seem like this was a problem for Wladimir, whether he was slow to recognize pitches, or his swing was long enough that he couldn't catch up to them. Of course, hitting elite fastballs isn't the only thing MLB hitters have to do to be successful, so let's take a look at his overall Pitch F/X data while he was in the Majors, starting with his average result locations:

While most MLB hitters are more likely to hit homers on balls closer to them and higher in the zone, swinging and missing at pitches lower and away, Balentien was pretty extreme. He did like faster and straighter pitches, making contact with pitches about the same velocity as the average pitch, but hitting homers on pitches more likely to be fastballs. Perhaps one of the reasons his power didn't play in the Majors was because he relied on getting pitches in zones that pitchers wouldn't throw many pitches. He would look for high and in fastballs, and pitchers knew it, so they wouldn't give it to him.

He clearly had a plan as the difference between the pitches Balentien swung at and the ones he took shows:

Though he didn't have a great walk rate, he was a pretty selective hitter. He got a lot of pitches low and away, and he didn't swing at many of them because he knew that he would just swing and miss. He would make pitchers come up in the strike zone to him. I think this helps show that he had his zone and a plan at the plate, but it was so binary that pitchers knew it and knew how to attack him.

Here are the locations and velocities of all of Wladimir's homers:

Notice that the vast majority of them are in the 85-91 MPH range. The only really good fastball he hit for a home was away, giving him more time to catch up, and he only had one homer on really slow pitch.

Of course, with him in the NPB now, we do have some version of pitch data, and for the purposes of this post, I will use the Gen's breakdown at yakyubaka.com on Balentien's strike zone and homers this season. Out of respect for one of my favorite sites to read about NPB baseball, I won't republish any of his graphs (only commenting on them in general terms) and encourage readers to read that post as well (it has more graphs and less words than this post).

Here is Balentien's heat maps as a MLBer (via Brooks Baseball). I don't love using batting average, but that is what Gen used (if you do follow the link and look at his graphs, remember that Pitch F/X graphs, such as the ones above and the one below, are from the catcher's perspective, while the Yahoo! NPB graphs Gen used are from the pitcher's perspective. So they are basically flipped), so this way we can compare them better.

Balentien couldn't do anything with balls up and in for the most part, but did really well on balls down and in. In the NPB, it appears that his best zones have been up, mainly up and away, a below average spot for him in the Majors. Down and away in the zone seems to be a weakness for Balentien in the NPB, while he was good on those pitches in the Majors. He isn't as strong on inside pitches in the NPB as well. It seems that the best way for NPB pitchers to pitch to him is to keep the ball low. Anything high or over the middle of the plate gets destroyed. He will swing and miss at fastballs high, but his real swing and miss spots are on breaking balls thrown low and away, according to the graphs on Yakyubaka. However, when breaking balls are kept in the middle of the zone, that is "hung", Wladimir takes advantage of them.

Just two of his first 50 home runs of the season came on pitches thrown middle in or up and in, so it doesn't appear that he has fixed that part of his swing, which makes his particularness in the MLB (where he wanted pitchers to throw up and in on him) a little strange. It seems that he wanted pitches up and in (more likely, up and in the middle of the plate), though he actually struggles on these kinds of pitches, especially if they have plus velocity.

After looking at Wladimir's mechanics and the pitches he likes to swing at or struggles with, the next logical step seems to be to take a look at where the ball goes when Wladimir hits it. In Japan so far, the answer seems to be "far" or "over the fence", but we can start by looking at his spray chart as a MLBer spray chart as a MLBer (via Texas Leaguers):

There is some opposite field power there, but the vast majority of his home runs and batted balls (especially when you look at all the outs in the infield) come on pulled balls. For perspective, as a MLBer, Wladimir pulled the ball 31.1 % of the time. MLB average for right-handed batters (at least in 2013) is 26.7 %. 50.05 % of homers by right-handed batters are pulled, while 9 of Wladimir's homers (60 %) came on pulled balls. As I think you could have guessed from the GIFs above, he was a pretty heavy pull hitter.

To test if this was still the case, I watched Wladimir's first 55 home runs of the year (from Yakyubaka's video) and labelled them by what field they were hit to:
37 pulled
9 center
9 opposite

So he is still a pull hitter, and perhaps even more aggressively so. I think him being a pull hitter that doesn't handle up and in pitches well is pretty concerning from a Major League perspective. One could speculate all day on what goes on in someone else's mind and not get very far, but perhaps Wladimir feels that while a pull happy approach in the Majors didn't exactly work for him, he can pull everything in Japan, that he can just wait for the mistake with the breaking ball, or wait for the pitcher to finally throw a fastball, and pull it with authority. We know that the average fastball for a starter in Japan is about 5 MPH off the average fastball for a MLB pitcher. This makes it somewhat hard to evaluate hitters coming from Japan (or Cuba or Korea, or even AAA) to the Majors, though at least you can quantify the fastball difference. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to quantify the breaking ball difference. Not only are breaking balls different in the NPB (some examples include more slow curves and less hard curves, sliders thrown for strikes to hitters on both sides of the plate, and less changeups and more splitters), but they are also hard to grade by quality. Are the breaking balls Wladimir is seeing in the NPB worse than the ones he would see in the MLB? And by how much? How can we even estimate it, much less know the difference?

He has gotten better on balls away, but not on balls in. There are still holes in his offensive game that you can point to and lead you to believe that he would not be a successful NPB hitter. However, to use a name I mentioned above, there are still a lot of holes in Chris Davis' game. He still strikes out nearly 30 % of the time. However, he seems to have harnessed his raw power enough to bring it into games consistently (we will see if it is something he can do over multiple seasons, but I would say that a 50 + home run season means he has done pretty well) by improving his plate discipline, getting his walk rate from below 7 % to above 10 %. So even with the apparent flaws in his game, Wladimir's extreme power with improved plate discipline, with less swings on breaking balls out of the zone leading to more walks, he could still be a potent force in any lineup in the world. Perhaps he is already there, as a Yomiuri Giants coach argues:

"His eye has improved a lot...Compared to last year, he is swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone"

Fastball Effectiveness by Velocity

While we have established that velocity is very important to success several times on this blog, it seemed like it would be helpful to look at some probabilities of fastballs broken down by velocity. In other words, I wanted to see if we could look at individual fastballs, and just based on velocity (there are things like movement that we can look at in the future if need be) see how likely it is for the fastball to be a positive or negative result for the pitcher. This is what I will try to do in this post.

First, the effectiveness of four seam fastballs (MLBAM tags) are broken down by month, separated by fastballs throw in the zone and outside of the zone (based just on the traditional Pitch F/X strike zone). To measure effectiveness, rather than trying to measure by average or OPS, I broke it down by three numbers that were easy to calculate, and at the same time, in my opinion, very predictive, swinging strike percentage, contact percentage (contact % is just balls put in play, the "in play" tags on GameDay/Pitch F/X), and home run percentage. I broke it down by month because it gives us both a league average rate, along with a glimpse at the changes of fastball effectiveness as the season goes on.

After breaking it down by month, I broke it down the fastball effectiveness by MPH, starting with all pitches tagged as four seam fastballs below 85 MPH (it is admittedly a random starting point). I then went up 1 MPH each until I reached 100 MPH (100 MPH + pitches were all lumped together because there aren't a lot over 100, so it makes sense to lump them all together).

Obviously, when evaluating individual pitchers' fastballs, things like deception, sequencing and the quality of the other pitches' affect on the fastball have to be taken into consideration (not to mention that I only looked at pitches inside the strike zone and outside the strike zone, not where the pitch was in the strike zone. All strikes are not created equally). However, this does give us a general idea of how well an average 97 MPH fastball has been hit in the strike zone this year, or a 86 MPH fastball thrown outside of the strike zone. Velocity does matter, and I think this can help project pitchers that we have velocity data for, but not a large enough sample size to see how his fastball will actually play. It is also a starting point to see which pitchers are over achieving or under achieving when it comes to their fastball's velocity and their fastball's success.

An example of how this might work as a projection, we can look at the Sunday starts of two well known NPB pitchers and use the Yahoo data to project how the fastballs they showed would work in the Majors, assuming average deception, etc. Based on the velocities of his fastballs and the amount of fastballs thrown in and out of the zone, Shohei Otani's fastball would have a 6.84 whiff %, 19.28 contact %, and .78 HR %. Kenta Maeda's fastball, based on the data just from his last start, would have a 6.77 whiff %, 18.81 contact %, and .74 HR %, meaning that at least the way in which they pitched in their last start, Otani is a little more likely to get whiffs, but Maeda is a little less likely to give up contact or home runs, which I think makes some sense.

Na Sung-Bum Scouting Report

Na Sung-Bum, a centerfielder for the NC Dinos, is one of the better rookie of the year candidates in the Korea Baseball Organization. About to turn 24, he was drafted by the Dinos 10th overall in the 2012 draft and brought up to the KBO team in May. The left-handed thrower and batter has basically been a league average hitter by hitting for more power than average/on base skills (95 OBP +, 107 SLG + according to non park adjusted league averages). His 7.9 walk rate isn't bad, but the strikeout rate is higher than you would want. Still, he has a .304 BABIP, which is lower than the league average of .320, meaning that the OBP could come up, especially since he is a good runner. Na is 11 for 12 in stolen bases with three triples so far this season.

13.2 % of Na's hits are home runs, nearly twice as high as the KBO league average of 7.4 % (MLB Average is 11.1 % this season, Carlos Gomez is a decent comparable in this regard, not to mention he also plays centerfield, with a 13.3 % ratio. Gomez is a much better runner than Na, not to mention Gomez is clearly playing at a higher level than the KBO). So he seems to be somewhat of an all or nothing hitter, especially since he only has 14 doubles. Here is a GIF of what I believe is his most recent homer:

 The pitch is basically in the middle of the plate, and Na uses a pretty awkward looking uppercut to get to the ball. He is looking to pull the ball, and obviously he did effectively, with a hard lined shot over the fence. 

 Here is a screenshot view of his first career KBO homer:

 His set up as the pitch is coming to him is pretty standard, with a slight crouch and lean that reminds me of Joey Votto (that is all that Na reminds of Joey Votto)

 At the point of contact, you see the same thing that we saw in the recent homer GIF. He dips his left shoulder down and drops his bat plane. This is a swing of a low ball hitter that is going to hit more fly-balls than ground-balls. Listed at about 6 feet tall and 211 pounds, Na has the frame to do this, and as the numbers show, he can pack a punch.

 This part of the swing, the follow through, seems the most awkward. He seems to pull off the ball a little, and the top of his body is at a different angle than his legs. They seem to be going to opposite directions. Since I brought up Joey Votto earlier, it might be helpful to look at a couple screenshots of the best left-handed hitter in baseball statistically over the past several seasons.

Votto pulls the ball to right-center field in this at-bat. Notice how his body stays more upright in his follow through, despite a somewhat uppercut swing path. Of course, Votto goes the other way more than he pulls the ball (at least when he hits for power), as this heat map from MLBfarm shows:

The following screenshot shows Votto hitting a homer the other way:

Notice that he does lean in on a pitch low and away, which you have to do to hit a pitch low away, but he doesn't go the other way with his legs. Unlike Na, who seems to twist his body, having his legs go the opposite of his body, Votto is on a solid front foot, which helps him keep his power going that way.

Of course, to compare Na to Votto is not fair to Na, but I think it serves the purpose to show what a great pure hitter does with his hitting mechanics and compare it with what Na is doing. The above screenshots of Na were partially blocked by the opposing pitcher, so here is an angle of Na that avoids the pitcher. This is about as high as his leg kick gets, as he avoids the large leg kick, opting for a more traditional small leg kick as a timing mechanism.

I do like how Na keeps his head in his swing, not causing even more body parts to be misaligned.

Here is a non home run GIF look at his swing, and a bit of a look at his speed

His size seems to help him make large strides and run what appears to be very smoothly and in control. The swing there was obviously an over swing, getting too long on an inside pitch, making it impossible for him to pull it with authority.

Even though he is mainly a pull hitter, he can go the other way as well

He can have great bat control at times, this is a really good piece of hitting. He doesn't have the power the other way, but he can poke an outside pitch the other way, which should help his average and prevent him from getting shifted on too heavily. I certainly don't want to paint the picture that he can't hit because he has some of what looks like mechanical flaws. He can hit. He has good bat speed and control, so I think his average and OBP should come up in the future.

Defensively, here is a look at his arm strength. He is a converted pitcher that could evidently throw up to 93 MPH and had some success in international play.

There have been some drops on more than one occasion, as he has shown his inexperience:

I think Na has a unique set of skills that make him a very interesting player. The traditional tools are all there, he can run, he can throw, and he can hit the ball with authority. So for that reason, he is interesting. However, it isn't like he is extremely young. He is going to be 24 next year with only a couple of seasons as a full time position player and less than a year of KBO experience. For that reason, I think their should be some serious brake tapping before calling him the next KBO superstar. He has to make significant strides both defensively and with the bat before I would be comfortable with that assertion. I think he is a nice player with quite a bit of talent, but he just isn't as advanced as he needs to be at this age to be someone who is on serious international radars or considered the KBO's next elite position player.


Thanks as always to Danny K for the help in gathering information and video for the post. All GIFs and screenshots came from videos from SPOTV's YouTube channel.

George Springer Scouting Report

George Springer has emerged as one of the best prospects in baseball this season, making a run at 40 steals (which he already has) and 40 homers (which he was three away from when I wrote this post) for the season. The 23 year old was drafted by the Houston Astros 11th overall out of the University of Connecticut in 2011 and was rated as the 37th best prospect in baseball to start the 2013 season by Baseball America. This year, he has been destroying both AA and AAA, with a wRC + of at least 175 at both levels.

First, here is some video of a Springer at-bat from my vantage point at a game Oklahoma City played against Round Rock.

He was pitched inside pretty effectively in the game. Even though he didn't see premium velocity, pitchers were able to get in on him. Springer also had some horrible whiffs where he came completely out of his swing on breaking balls. I thought he looked pretty flawed and even bad in all of his plate appearances but one.

His one good at-bat was his homer, where he used a hard quick upper cut swing and drove a low pitch, the only pitch in the at-bat, over the wall:

He would get under the ball and did hit an infield flyball (though infield pop-ups do not seem to be a problem for him this year, he is a pure fly-ball hitter, which makes a lot of sense considering his swing path). As his heat map shows (courtesy of MLBfarm), Springer is pretty much a dead pull hitter:

So you can see why he hits for power. He uses a combination of raw strength with an uppercut swing and a pull heavy approach. So the fact that he didn't always handle fastballs well and was pitched inside effectively in my short look at him is somewhat concerning. However, he has a much higher than league average P/PA, meaning he has been working the count this season, and if you trust GameDay stringers, has been swinging at less pitches than league average outside of the strike zone.

Springer really doesn't have home/road splits (and Oklahoma City is actually slightly pitcher friendly), so it is not as if he is doing all his damage in one park. He also doesn't have real platoon splits for his career, and they are non-existent in AAA this season. The power numbers he is putting up in the highest levels of minor league baseball are real, and it is coming with walks and a high average (though he does have a high strikeout rate). 

The numbers are impressive, and I don't think you can poke holes in them in any way statistically. He is a very very good minor league player. He is also very athletic (as shown by the stolen bases), so he should be able to play the outfield well, even if he doesn't stick in center, where he has played the majority of games in his big leauge career. However, he isn't without his flaws at the plate. Because of this, I think he is less of a sure thing than his numbers suggest. The power/speed combo may be blinding enough to cause suspicions about how he looks at the plate to go away, but in the Majors, every mistake and flaw is magnified. Whether or not the rest of his game overcomes these flaws (or he fixes the flaws or the flaws happen to be exaggerated on my part because of a one game look) will determine whether or not he turns into a good Major League player.

Pecos League Pitching Leaderboard

The Pecos League is perhaps the least known independent league, and at the same time, my favorite independent league because of the offensive environment. In 2013, the average Pecos League team averaged just short of 8 runs a game. Before last season, I can recall at least two pitchers (and there were probably more) signed out of the league into the minors last year. While scouting will always trump statistics in situations like this, I thought it would be helpful to add a little context to the league when looking at individual players (for this post, it will be pitchers). The 2013 season is already over, about a 66 game season.

To do this, I will use kwERA, which I think is helpful when looking at extreme offensive environments (which is why I use it to look at NPB pitchers, especially 2011 and 2012, when the league was extremely pitcher friendly). League average kwERA in the Pecos League is 4.68, higher than any league I have ever seen, but a much more manageable and believable number.

Park factors are impossible to do with the information we have, since there are not enough seasons to have a good sample size, teams have changed, and it doesn't appear that there are home/road splits available. Luckily, kwERA shouldn't be affected in a large way by park, so I just won't do any kind of park or team adjustments. However, league and team constants may be useful, so below I looked at the league average home run and BABIP numbers for each year from 2011 to 2013 in the Pecos League. Below that is the home run percentages for each team in the Pecos League (remember that some teams have not played all 3 years in the league, either being added later, or folding), with their pitching and batting numbers combined. This isn't good enough to use for anything other to provide a little possible context, as it is perfectly believable that a team, even with the massive turnover in the Independent Leagues, could have good pitchers and bad hitters all three years.

So their has actually been huge HR % swings from season to season, but the BABIP has stayed roughly the same when it comes to league average. The BABIP is a really high number, suggesting that, especially with the 2011 and 2013 home run rates, that most of the runs are coming from balls that stay in play but are not turned into outs.

About 25 percent of the runs in the Pecos League are unearned (in 2013), compared to about 8 percent of runs in the Majors this year and about 10 percent of runs in the Pacific League in the NPB. Whether this is just because of terrible defense or aggressive score keeping would be impossible to prove. However, it is something you have to consider when looking at the league statistically. So in the list of pitchers below, I included runs allowed per inning (instead of per 9) along with ERA and kwERA. I also kept the pitchers' seasonal ages according to Baseball Reference because that is relevant when looking at pitchers. I only looked at pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched, and I didn't distinguish starters from relievers and I also included their HR % allowed (to compare to league average and team rates). When looking at the home run rates above, it isn't surprising that the city of the largest home run rate has an elevation of about two thousand feet higher than the city with the lowest home run rate. So here are the numbers for the qualified Pecos League pitchers, sorted by kwERA:

The top three guys are all pretty young, at 22 to 23 years old. Austin Carden was not drafted, pitching out of Rhodes college. I believe he was a senior in 2012, as the school only has stats for 2013 available and he wasn't on there. He also pitched in the American Assossation for El Paso and struggled in 6 games. Eric Lambe was also not drafted, pitching for LeMoyne College. The college site has him as Erik Lambe, and evidently he didn't pitch much and wasn't very good. Nick Mutz story is different, as he was drafted by the Angels in the 9th round in 2011. He pitched well for Orem in the Pioneer League after being drafted, but was a disaster in 2012, with ERAs over 10 in both A-ball and the Arizona Rookie League. He only made 8 starts in 2013, all in the Pecos League, but maybe it is a sign he has things back on track. Unlike the previous two, there are a couple of videos of him available online, including one from him in college, and another from this year in the Pecos League.

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.

Arlington Martin High School Scouting Report

I was able to watch Arlington Martin High School, one of the best high school baseball teams in the country according to Perfect Game, and the highest rated out of teams in the Metroplex.

Tyler Kendrick is a small senior who looked quick, but ran a 3.82 on a bunt and a 4.34 on a traditional swing/ground-ball as a left-handed hitter. The bat looks pretty quick, and he occasionally breaks out the jail break swing, but it came with swings and misses.

Joshua Watson is stout already as a sophomore, is pretty short, and is not a great looking runner. He pulled a pitch that was left up in the zone for a homer. It was a really bad mistake, but you see that there is some pop there.

Matthew Waller has pretty good size as a senior, and as a catcher he is not much of a runner. His arm behind the plate is legit and he looked athletic behind the plate, and seems like a good receiver/framer. At the plate, he was clearly cheating for power.

Andrew Dowdy seemed pretty solid in centerfield, but he wasn't really tested. The senior has a very slappy swing, is a contact premium guy. He showed good, though I would hesitate to call it plus speed, and ran about a 7.4 on a double. He will chase, but he pulled a ball better than I expected he would.

Anthony Lyons has very good size, and will probably fill out, even though he is a senior. The left-handed hitter played right-field and his arm looked very weak out there. His actions in the field were awkward and not very good, but he may just have not grown into his body yet, though his routes were just awful. At the plate, he showed plate discipline but had some really poor swings. Lyons has some real raw strength and ran a 3.84 on a bunt. Here is a video of him at the plate (you can watch another shorter video of him here):

Turner Larkins played 1st base, has good size, though he may be a little short, so there may be concerns that he has filled out already as a junior. He ran a 4.53 to first, and has a little bit of pop and got under the ball.

Daniel Lingua has solid size as a junior, along with some good running strides, but it was not showing up in speed, and he ran 4.19 on a bunt and 4.47 on a "dig". The swing can get long and upper cut happy, but he showed good range at 2nd base and the arm seems fine.

Landon Sackett has an easy plus arm at 3rd as a junior, and while his range and athleticism looks solid, he is really slow, running a 4.63 to first and a 8.79 on a double. He has a dip in his swing, but some good bat control.

Colton Hoisager is a junior who DH'ed, even though he doesn't look big. It is hard to trust high school managers' decisions when assessing players, but he may just be a bad defender. He is slow and not much of a runner, and his swing looked pretty slow as well, with a big uppercut.

Nathan Soraka was the starter, and the sophomore (actually only listed on the JV roster) showed what I thought was an advanced feel for pitching. He looked like he had decent size on the mound, and his delivery was relatively easy, especially his body. He brings his arm way back, not quite like Brian Fuentes, but it sort of reminds me of it (and obviously he is right-handed)

He threw just 78-80 MPH, sometimes dropping into the mid 70s. He showed a lot of curves that had 2 way break that is impressive at times. It broke, just like his fastball did a lot, glove side, but he had problems getting it down. He threw it for strikes and the fastball isn't straight. However, he was not really athletic off the mound. While it is certainly too early to tell what Soraka will do, he looks like a college reliever to me, how big the college probably depends on how his fastball develops.

Cole Dobbs is a senior right-hand pitcher that is 5-10 and already filled out. He was throwing 78-81 MPH and the same kind of curve as Soranka that was 62-64 MPH with 2 plane break.

Shoki Kasahara Scouting Report

Shoki Kasahara is a 21 year old pitcher in the NPB that is currently pitching in the Puerto Rican Winer League. He has pitched in just 4 games in the actual NPB, so there isn't a lot of data on him.

Fangraphs had him at a Scout - of 89 (100 is average, lower is better, just like FIP -) in the Puerto Rican Winter League through 5 starts. In 6 starts, he has a 4.736 FIP, with a 4/1 K/BB and 1.08 GO/AO but a high home run rate. Against right-handers, he has a 16/1 K/BB, but 4 homers in 15.2 innings. From what I can see, league average HR/9IP is just .61. Obviously small sample size applies and Kasahara is younger than his competition, but he is still struggling with homers nonetheless. 

The right-handed pitcher has good size at 6-3 210 with a high leg kick and quite a dramatic pause in his delivery. He has a strange leg drag in his delivery where his body is almost already lunged forward before his leg actually strides. Eventually, this causes his body to get pretty low before delivery the ball (something I have seen in a few Dominican native pitchers, though the pause and leg kick is Asian baseball in nature).

According to his NPB tracker data, he has 7 different pitches, but his fastball is just 86 MPH (according to this video, he has hit nearly 90 MPH). He throws a "shutto" (2-seamer basically) and a sinker, along with a slow 70 MPH curve, very soft slider (74 MPH), a change and forkball. 

I had a hard time telling the difference between the moving fastball, the 4-seamer, and the sinker. Velocity and placement is mainly what I would go on, because I didn't see a big difference in movement.  He would throw some down in the zone with a little bit of movement with the velocity of a 4-seamer. 

In video I saw of him, he seemed to like his slider, but he couldn't really get it down. It broke like what is usually described as sort of a "baby slider". His curve breaks the same way, vertically not horizontally, but is more dramatic, and obviously, slower. The pitch gets down to 67.5 MPH.

Despite his great selection of pitches, his favorite pitch still seems to be the high fastball. Kasahara seems to work high then low (or vise versa) about as well as you are going to see any pitcher. He seems to be able to run his fastball into lefties (it doesn't move quite like a cutter, though perhaps you could call it one just on movement).

Obviously the fastball velocity limits what Kasahara can be, but the selection of pitches is, at the very least, interesting. You always wonder about pitchers with this many pitches, as to whether or not they have too many "tools in the toolbox". If he can use them right and limit walks (and repeat his delivery, which is a feat in itself), he won't be overpowering, but he may develop into a decent NPB pitcher by keeping hitters off balance. Because even the breaking pitches aren't spectacular, I don't think he is a guy who could come to the MLB and have real success. 

Jang or Knight? My take on the Golden Glove Controversy

In the KBO, Jang Won-Sam was awarded a "Golden Glove" over Brandon Knight.
Golden Gloves have nothing to do with defense in the KBO, it is more like the NPB's "best nine" or like an All-Pro team. This caused some controversy on the English speaking versions of the internet, with accusations of anything between an over reliance on pitcher wins to borderline racism. I find it hard to care about awards and the hall of fame when it comes to the Majors. I have mostly stayed out of that realm of baseball writing because I find prospects and play evaluations more interesting. However, Dan (of mykbo.net) somewhat suggested this idea and it sounded fun.

Knight had a 2.20 ERA in 208.2 innings in 2012, which is good for a stunning 3.67 ERA WAA and 10.62 ERA WAR (according to the metric I set up). Jang Won-Sam had an ERA of 3.55 in just 157 innings, good for just a .4 eWAA and 2.6 eWAR. Of course, ERA is not the best way to evaluate pitchers, and that is why I put more weight into FIP WAR:

Jang Won-Sam: 1.9 FIP WAA, 3.47 FIP WAR

Brandon Knight: .98 FIP WAA, 3.9 FIP WAR

Knight regresses to the mean in a hurry when DIPs is introduced, and FIP insists that Jang Won-sam is a better pitcher, but Knight just threw more innings (thus the higher WAR). So which is more valuable? While I usually prefer WAA when comparing everyday players or pitchers (the replacement level to me seems to me to be best when comparing marginal players such as utility players or bullpen pitchers, though leverage problems develop in the latter), there is something to be said for throwing more innings, especially when it is nearly 50 innings of difference. To use a perhaps flawed American example, Joe Blanton and Brandon McCarthy received basically the same contract this off-season. Even with home/road splits concerns, McCarthy is clearly the better pitcher. Blanton is a below average starter while McCarthy is an above average starter. However, Blanton has been healthy basically his whole career, while McCarthy has had major injury issues, especially with his shoulder. While free agent contract money does not necessarily equal true worth (sometimes teams are just wrong), it does give us a window into the two front offices and how the pitchers are basically viewed as the same. The Angels took a safer bet with Blanton while the Diamondbacks took the riskier player with the higher ceiling in McCarthy. So even though FIP says Jang Won-sam is a better pitcher than Knight, Knight's durability perhaps makes him more valuable.

One could argue that we shouldn't use things like FIP and BABIP when looking at leagues like the NPB and KBO (along with independent leagues, college baseball, and lower minor league levels) because the diverse pools of talent do not exactly create a controlled environment (or at least not as much as we are able to break down environments in the MLB). I somewhat disagree with this, as I think that dominance would show up at least as much in K/BB/HR as it would in BABIP. In other words, when I see a low BABIP in other levels, I am most likely to only conclude that it is just dominance or some kind of BABIP control if the pitcher also has dominant K/BB/HR (that is, if a pitcher keeps putting up 1.50 ERAs while his FIPs come out to be in the 2.00s, one could easily say that he is closer to the 1.50 ERA in true talent in that league). The other exception (and there are many in DIPs) would be if a pitcher had shown a track record of low BABIPs. Knight only got 31.1 innings in the Majors, but his BABIP was a high .353. In his last shot in AAA (89 innings), his BABIP was .347. So it is certainly not a skill set he had shown before going to Korea. Even in the KBO, he hasn't shown this before 2012, as his ERAs were well over 4 in both 2010 and 2011. Knight's ground-ball rate (at least GO/FO, which does lend itself to some variance as perhaps a pitcher has more ground-balls turned into outs than another one for a reason he doesn't controlled) is much better than Jang's, but it is hard to get over the fact that he struck out less than a batter every two innings and has less than 2 strikeouts per walk. One could argue that you shouldn't base awards off of advanced metrics like FIP, but since this article is more interested in which pitcher is/was better, it doesn't matter for our purposes.

I am doubting the KBO used any kind of advanced metrics when awarding the gold gloves, so we will look at the two pitchers from a scouting perspective.

The first thing I look at when scouting pitchers is obviously fastball velocity. According to KBO Data's scouting reports, Knight's fastball averages between 86.18 MPH to 93.62 MPH. Jang's is a little slower, sitting between 84.94 MPH to 90.52 MPH. Of course, Knight is right-handed, while Jang is left-handed. You usually expect slightly lower velocity from left-handers, but the 3 MPH difference is pretty big. Jang has the slower curve and goes to his changeup more often. Surprisingly, Jang's slider is a little harder than Knight's. Here is some video of Jang pitching against Ryu Hyun-Jin a couple of years ago.

To me, it looks like he does a pretty good job of cutting his fastball and showing good command of his slider. On the other hand, Knight (video below) seems to have some very good movement on all of his pitches:

For a ground-ball guy, Knight doesn't seem to keep the ball especially low, at least according to his heat map:

Jang clearly pitches more up in the zone, which makes more sense considering his higher strikeout rate and lower ground-ball rate:

I think you can make a legitimate argument that Jang is the better pitcher and perhaps even had a better year. Especially if you just look at strikeouts and walks. Jang had more strikeouts and less walks than Knight did, which is simply, but perhaps predictive.

Shun Yamaguchi Scouting Report

According to Gen Sueyoshi, Yokohama Bay Stars closer Shun Yamaguchi would like to come to the United States and pitch eventually. Yamaguchi is a 25 year old (will turn 26 in the middle of the season) 6-2 right-handed reliever that has had quite a bit of success in the NPB. He has struck out 24.71 % of batters faced in his career (24.03 % in 2012) with a 8.955 % (8.527 % in 2012) walk rate. He has a career FIP of 3.34 (2.63 ERA), but it dropped down to 2.47 (1.74 ERA) in 2012. As shown above, his K/BB was virtually the same, it was a drop in home runs (.7 to .1, as he only gave up 1 homer in his 62 innings in 2012). As far as I can tell, there are 3 different explanations (one quick alternative would be just the general decline of homers and offense after the change in ball. However, his 2010 and 2011's were virtually the same, so this seems unlikely to me) for this: A) It is an unsustainable HR/FB % drop, B) It is just small sample size noise that we see in relief seasons, and C) He is just pitching better.

A: Of course his HR/FB % dropped, but by how much we don't really know because of a lack of GB/FB data. I have always prefered FIP to xFIP because I do believe that preventing the amount of fly-balls that turn into homers is some kind of skill (rather than believing that almost all pitchers will give up a HR in a neutral setting for every 10 fly-balls). To see if I could demonstrate this (or prove the opposite or just muddy the water completely), I looked at the 10 qualified relievers with the best HR/9IP (we don't have HR/FB % for Yamaguchi so no need to use it here) in the Major Leagues in 2012. I then looked at how they performed in that one category in 2011, which should also get us an opportunity to make an educated judgment on explanation B. The 10 pitchers gave up 20 homers in 392.1 innings, or .46 HR/9IP. That would have been in the top 30 out of 134 qualified relievers in 2011, so there seems to be some correlation at least in that example. When you look at the NPB, the Central League in particular, the best 5 pitchers in HR/9IP in 2011 threw 137.2 innings in 2012 and gave up just 4 homers. So, I think there is good reason to dismiss explanations A and B, but is there enough evidence to believe in explanation C?

He is just 25, it is perfectly legitimate to believe he is getting better as a pitcher.
Let's look at his pitch data:

As you can tell, Yamaguchi has a legitimate back of the bullpen fastball, getting up to 95 and sitting at 92 MPH. You can see that his velocity is better in 2012 and 2010 than it was in 2011. This could be why he didn't see an improvement in basic performance despite the ball change from 2010-2011. He had a temporary velocity dip despite throwing his fastball more. In 2012, he ditched the curve and went with more sliders and forkballs.
 We can compare Yamaguchi to Kyuji Fujikawa, who just signed with the Cubs.
First off, Yamaguchi throws harder, and is younger. However, statistically, they don't compare very well as Fujikawa has much better numbers, especially when it comes to K/BB. Yamaguchi is pretty similar when it comes to HR/9IP and he does play in a more hitter friendly park. I am not a big fan of Fujikawa when it came to scouting him.

Yamguchi's pitches, especially his slider, have some pretty unique movement. One of my complaints about Fujikawa was that his fastball was somewhat straight and mediocre in velocity. There are no such concerns with Yamguchi. His forkball basically falls off a table and should be an extremely effective pitch against left-handed hitters.

He has good size, less of a concern for a reliever, and has a pretty repeatable delivery. I like Yamaguchi a lot, and if he comes over to the MLB, I think he would have a lot of success in a late inning bullpen role. If Fujikawa was worth 2 years 9.5 million (roughly the same as a recovering Joaquin Soria), then Yamguchi is worth more (at least a 3rd year, maybe a 4th, I don't necessarily mind giving relievers long term deals, as long as they are good and young).

Jose Flores (Indians) Scouting Report

Right-handed reliever Jose Flores has re-signed with the Indians. While it turns out Jose Flores is a common name in professional baseball, this Flores has spent his entire professional career with the Indians. Flores was taken in the Rule 5 draft by the Mariners in 2011, but was returned at the end of spring training. This was sort of a weird selection (and a predictable send back) considering that he had never made it out of A-ball at the time. He ended up spending the entire year in A + and had a good DIPs year (though his ERA was a shocking 6.02 ERA in 55.1 innings) with a 2.93 FIP, matching solid strikeout and walk ratios with an excellent home run rate. The Kinston (Cleveland's A + affiliate in 2011) ballpark had a 95 park factor in an already somewhat pitcher friendly Carolina League, but Flores' home run rate was basically equal at home and on the road. Despite this, he spent most of 2012 in A + again as a 23 year old. Not to be outdone, he didn't give up a single home run in 38 innings (and in the 6.2 innings in AA). He had a similar 2.54 FIP (in a more hitter friendly park with a 3.67 SIERA because of the no home runs) and was promoted to AA at the end of the year.

If the Mariners got nothing from Flores, we at least got 2 games of Pitch F/X from his spring training outings. The scouting report (according to Ben Badler and USS Mariner) was that he had a "decent fastball but no secondary stuff". We only have 41 pitches of data on Flores (obviously not enough to get tendencies or anything) and 33 of them are fastballs. The one changeup he threw was 83.06 MPH and the 7 sliders he threw averaged 82.22 MPH. His fastball was 91.79 MPH on average (getting up to 93.2 MPH), which is below average for a reliever.

One interesting thing about him statistically is his consistently high BABIPs. When he first came to the States and pitched in the Arizona Summer League in 2009, he had a .348 BABIP in 27.2 innings. In 2010, in A-ball, he had a .327 BABIP in 42 innings. In 2011, he had a BABIP of .376 and a .313 in 2012. Is this because of his batted ball rates, bad defenses in the Indians system, small sample sizes, or other variables? Over the last two years (100 innings), Flores' ground-ball rate has not been bad at all (44.3 %) and there are no absurdities in his line drive rate. The only thing you can really point to is a lack of infield fly-balls.

For defense, I decided to look at the main (most games) shortstops of the clubs he has played for since '09:

Casey Frawley A+ 2011: -13.00 FRAA, 3.34 RF/G (4.36 is average for SS RF/G)

Ronny Rodriguez A + 2012: 8.8 FRAA, 4.24 RF/G

Casey Frawley A 2010: -4.5 FRAA, 3.78 RF/G

Jose Camargo AZL 2009: 3.92 RF/G (FRAA unavailable)

It does seem that Flores hasn't had the benefit of good shortstops (but we only looked at shortstops), but we would expect a high BABIP to run through the Indians system if the culprit is bad defense. So I went to those 4 specific teams listed above, sorted by innings pitched (to get the best sample sizes), took the top 5, and counted the pitchers that had ERAs above and below their FIPs.

2012 A +: 4 had ERAs higher than their FIPs, one had a ERA lower.

2011 A +: 3 had ERAs higher than their FIPs, 2 had ERAs lower

2010 A: 2 had ERAs higher than their FIPs, 3 had ERAs lower

2009 AZL: 3 had ERAs higher than their FIPs, 2 had ERAs lower.

So it does seem that the Indians' defense in the lower minor leagues are costing their pitchers. We should also note that Flores' minor league career is not exactly a large sample size. This can be a problem when evaluating relievers in general, especially in the minor leagues. Flores has only thrown 169.2 innings since coming to the States (there isn't a real reason to include the Dominican Summer League statistics). If we were wanting to identify him as someone who gives up a naturally high BABIP, we would certainly want more innings than that. It seems that we can attribute these numbers to both bad defenses and statistical randomness over small sample sizes.

As you would expect, Flores is more effective against right-handed batters, but he hasn't given up a homer against a lefty over the last two seasons. While his K/BB is very mediocre against lefties (it is a somewhat dominant 21.5 K % to 5.2 BB % against righties), he gets stellar 55.3 GB % against them (just 38.3 %). This is either, again, small sample size, or signals a different approach to lefties. Considering he is so fastball heavy, it would seem to be the former.

Flores has a pretty bizarre delivery that really lacks any kind of fluid motion. It does not seem violent, there just seems to be a lot of moving parts. He must control it well considering his lack of walks in the minors. As we saw above, the velocity is not impressive, but the fastball does seem to get on hitters quickly, perhaps because of the release point. To give you an idea of his release point, look at this chart from Brooks Baseball:

He is 6-3, but he is really releasing the ball at about 6 feet, and he is doing it without coming "out" like you would usually see if he was dropping his release point or coming sidearm. Compare this to Max Scherzer, who basically is throwing sidearm:

Scherzer gets even lower and obviously much more "out". Compare this to the more "normal" delivery of James McDonald:

He obviously uses his height much more and releases the ball higher. However, he is more "out" that Flores, showing that Flores is basically coming straight over the top. This delivery may help Flores keep down the platoon splits as lefties don't have a real advantage (unlike with Scherzer who has huge splits) in seeing the ball sooner and from a different angle. This could explain how Flores is getting all the grounders from lefties (so perhaps it isn't just small sample size!).

His slider looks pretty unimpressive, lacking the big break (though it certainly isn't "soft" velocity wise) desired. He is mainly going to have to pitch off his fastball (some versions of Pitch F/X had him throwing a cutter and two seamer as well) and just hope to fool or surprise hitters with an occasional breaking pitch. I think he is sort of an interesting bullpen piece going forward. He may not get his shot in 2013, but he has pretty solid control and may have just enough deception to get out MLB hitters.

NPB Pitching Scouting Reports: Takada and Kishi

Here are scouting reports on 3 pitchers from the NPB (Japan) play-offs:

Shota Takada is just 19 years old and his debut season in the NPB was brilliant, as he struck out a batter an inning in 11 starts and gave up just 1 home run (and threw a complete game shutout. He has a slow loopy curve that was around 71- 76 that he can bury and throw for strikes. He had some control issues, but that is expected with his age (as someone who has been blogging a lot about college/minor league pitchers, it is easy to see that he is very advanced). He likes to throw the curve in what looks like any count to RHB and occasionally to LHB. Here is his pitch data courtesy of NPB tracker:

The fastball sat around 89 MPH when I saw him (perhaps he was a little tired at the end of the season, as I never saw him go much higher than that. He averages about 89-90 MPH, but throws up to 94 to 95 according to the data) and it was pretty straight other than some occasional drift to his arm side (e may have just been missing arm side as NPB Tracker's heat maps show that he likes to go glove side a little more than arm side usually. He did get it to tail a little bit but it stayed high). His overall command needs a bit of work and he has complicated mechanics that really affect his release point. He brings the ball below his knee (after he brings up his leg) before bringing it back up to throw. The 82 MPH slider actually looked more like a change to me (perhaps a baby slider) and it didn't have a ton of movement. Overall, he has pretty good pitchability with average to decent stuff if he can maintain his mechanics.

Takehito Kanzawa is a good sized (6-2 but 183) right-handed reliever for Softbank. The veteran (33 years old) has a pretty clean delivery with an impressive 77-78 MPH slider. It breaks mainly down (and is sharp), but also breaks to the left when thrown well. At least when I saw him, it was his favorite pitch. His problem is when it stays up too much. His fastball sits just 87-88 and he doesn't get many strikeouts at all. It is pretty straight, and he tries to jam right-handed batters with it. He has had success in the NPB, and it seems to be because of an ability to get weak contact and grounders.

Takayuki Kishi of Seibu sits about 87-88 MPH with his fastball. He really likes to keep the ball and work corner to corner. He doesn't throw many pitches high and stays out of the middle of the plate.

Kishi had his lowest walk rate of his career, which helped him have a career year ERA wise. He doesn't get a lot of strikeouts, but the 27 year old right-hander was still above league average in that department and did a slightly better than league average job of keeping the ball in the ballpark.