AFL Pitch F/X Data: Individual Batting Results

In the previous post, I looked at general batting results and locations. In this post, I wanted to look at more individualized results, seeing if the data will tell us something about each individual batter.

First, let's look at how each batter was pitched by average locations:

I am surprised at the concentration of pitches and where they are located. Right-handers were pitched inside on average, which is surprising. However, this matches the average location data we saw with the pitchers, so this could just be right-handers struggling to get the ball glove side. This seems to a mark of a struggling or young pitcher, at least that is what other cases suggest. The White Sox' Micah Johnson, and Alex Dickerson, just acquired by the Padres were pitched extremely low, while Tyler Austin, a top prospect with the Yankees, was pitched extremely inside.

Now that we have seen where the batters were pitched, let's look at the average locations of their whiffs:

As you can see, the graph has shifted to the middle of the plate on a whole. This suggests that the batters were pitched inside on average, but were more likely to swing and miss at pitches away, something we saw in the previous post. Nick Ahmed, the dazzling defensive shortstop with the Diamondbacks, swung at missed at a lot of pitches away, while Johnson and the Phillies' minor leaguer Cameron Perkins struggled with balls low. Wes Darvill of the Cubs is a left-handed hitter, so he also struggled with pitches low and away. The Angels' Jett Bandy bucked the trend by struggling with high pitches.

With this in mind, I wanted to look at the worst pitches that batters swung at, that is, the pitches furthest out of the zone, starting with the highest pitch swung at:

This is not quite a full foot out of the zone. Lamb was a 6th round pick by the Diamondbacks in 2012 out of the University of Washington. He is a 3B/DH that has only played in the lower minors so far, but he has a manageable K/BB and has hit for a high slash line all the way around. AA may be a test for him, especially if he is consistently this impatient, but the numbers are good so far.

Lowest:

Alfaro is one of the Rangers' best prospects, and he has a reputation for being quite the free swinger, here swinging at a pitch that bounced before it reached the plate.

Furthest to the Right (catcher's perspective):

Parker has posted good numbers throughout the minors, including AA, since being drafted out of the first round by the Rockies after a football career. However, there does seem to be some concern about swing and miss, and here the right-hander swung at a pitch a foot out of the zone away.

Furthest to the Left:

 Gift is interesting because he was signed out of South Africa, but the numbers haven't been very good, and he really struggled in AA in 2012. Here, the switch hitter swung at a pitch that was a foot off the plate, and in the dirt, which I think is indisputably the worst swing of the AFL Pitch F/X games.

Of course, looking at some positive things can be helpful as well, and we looked at homers in the previous post, so let's look at the other two extra base hits, starting with all the doubles in Pitch F/X games in the AFL, marked by location and labelled with the hitter of the double:

Cristhian Adames, a 22 year old with the Rockies who struggled in 2013, hit the highest double, while Robby Hefflinger, a former 7th round pick by the Braves, hit a double on the lowest pitch. Japhet Amador and 2012 Cubs 1st round pick Albert Almora hit doubles on pitches that were up and in and balls. Kyle Parker swung at a bad ball in an above graph, but he also hit a double on a borderline strike on this graph.

Triples are much more rare, so this graph is much cleaner, but there are no repeats, so it is difficult to guage any kind of predictability:

Other than Spangenberg, who hit a low and in pitch for a triple, the triples came on pitches in the middle part of the plate or high. It is interesting to see Alfaro here, hitting a high ball for a triple despite being a catcher. Austin Hedges is also a catcher, and Kris Bryant is hardly known for his speed, making triples as "doubles with speed" a misnomer.

Corey Dickerson's Cup of Coffee

The Rockies sent Corey Dickerson back to the minors after a short stint with the club. Dickerson was the hottest hitter in the PCL prior to his callup, but struggled in his short stint with the Rockies. Dickerson had always put up good numbers, but was never rated as a high prospect (he didn't even appear in Baseball America's top 30 after 2011, 12th best in the system that seemed somewhat barren after 2012).

What I find fascinating about Dickerson's time in the Majors is how many pitches he saw per plate appearance, 4.59, an absurd number. Even though he struck out in 12 of his 39 plate appearances, it didn't seem to be because of a lack of patience, as he walked 5 times as well and saw that many pitches. However, he did swing through too many pitches and swung at more pitches out of the zone. Clearly there is a lot of small sample size noise, but the past couple of years in the minors he has been mostly a low walk and low strikeout guy. This data made me really interested in his plate discipline, so first I took a look at the pitches Dickerson saw but didn't swing at:

Dickerson is a left-handed hitter, so we saw a congregation of pitches high in the zone, along with the biggest group of pitches outside off the plate. By contrast, here are the pitches Dickerson swung at in the Majors:

Obviously a lot more pitches in the zone, getting some in and low, but most of them coming on the outside of the plate (which, when we look at his average locations below, I think we will see why). It does look like he will chase some high fastballs, especially if you get them in. For a more clear look, here are the average locations of his swings and takes, along with his contact and whiffs (and the average location he has been pitched at on a whole)

Dickerson appears to be one of the more absurd low ball hitters I have ever seen. Perhaps this is why he didn't hit a homer despite playing at Coors, but he had a decent home run rate in the minors (4.7 %, though Colorado's system is flooded with hitter friendly parks), and did hit 4 doubles. His whiffs were a little lower than his average pitch seen, but it, along with all the swings at fastballs high out of the zone, made me wonder if he was having some problems with fastballs or velocity in general.

He has swung and missed at a lot of these pitches (10 out of 64), mainly missing away, low and in, or up and in. He really struggled to put these pitches in play.

The approach does seem good however, as he seems to like the low ball, so he swung at pitches that were generally lower, and made pitchers come inside on him so he could get pitches he could reach.

Here are the pitches Dickerson made contact with, labelled with what position he hit the ball to:

Not a lot of data, but he went up the middle with a lot of pitches low and away. He pulled most of the balls in, but had some problems pulling some of the pitches outside.

Overall, I think he has the approach to succeed in the Majors, but I wonder if he has the bat speed and the talent. The struggles against fastballs are really bothersome. There is probably a reason scouting sites didn't rate him highly despite the good numbers, as perhaps he has a good plan, just not the tools to execute it.

Free Agent Fantasy Team Update: Jason Grilli's Dominance

This time's Free Agent Fantasy Team Update contains a lot of roster moves, yet again.

I released J.C. Romero, who was on the MiLB DL and signed Randy Ruiz to take his place on the MiLB roster. I change Kevin Slowey's designation from SP to RP, as the Marlins have moved him to the bullpen. Roy Oswalt and Brian Bogusevic were promoted to the big league team, both get paid 234,240 dollars, unless something else is announced. Travis Ishikawa was promoted by the Orioles, but didn't play well and was quickly designated, so I just released him and won't take his numbers. Eric Chavez also goes to the big league team, coming off the DL. David Ross to the 7 day DL then the 60 day DL, so he goes to the inactive part of team and is a release candidate. Thomas Neal was optioned to minors so goes to minor league team, as does Melky Cabrera, who was placed on the 15 day DL. MLB team should be at 24. Hisanori Takahashi was traded from the Cubs to the Rockies, but will remain in AAA. It doesn't change his status on my team. I also signed Ben Francisco to fill out my minor league/inactive roster.

Since most teams have played about 81 games:

13.8 fWAR, 37.614 wins, 43.39 losses

14.2 bWAR, 38.014 wins, 42.99 losses

12.2 WARP, 38.12 wins, 42.88 losses

-.5 WAA, 40 wins, 41 losses

Yet again, WAA likes me the best, but I have now fallen below .500 according to all 4 metrics. WARP actually likes me more than the baseball reference WAR, which is a little strange considering WAA also comes from Baseball Reference (but I think comes from one of the biggest flaws in positional player WAR, as fielding and baserunning are weighed by average and the batting is weighed by replacement).

Jason Grilli was somewhat of an after thought signing for my team, just an attempt to use some extra money I had as a late signing and to make sure I had guaranteed bullpen depth. He has clearly been worth the money and has been one of the league's elite bullpen pitchers, proving that the good 2010-2011 seasons were no fluke. Grilli was a top prospect at the turn of the century, but he bounced around the league, with large inconsistencies.

For sake of comparison, let's look at Grilli's 2009 with the Rockies, where he was missing bats, but walking way too many hitters and had an ERA over 6, which even after a good 2008, ended his time as a member of the Rockies, as he was moved to the Rangers.

Here is Grilli so far in 2013:

He is a pure 2 pitch pitcher, and unless you believe the occasional changeup tag, this seems to be what he has been for virtually the whole Pitch F/X era (it seems that he used to throw a curve). This is a pretty dramatic change for their to be no real pitch usage changes. He has went from an arm side pitcher to a glove side pitcher, and is actually throwing the ball higher than he was before. Strangely, his average velocity of all pitches has stayed the same because he is throwing his fastball harder, yet his slider has lost velocity. Your guess is as good as mine as to how that it is possible.

There isn't a major release point change other than he is releasing the ball a little lower now, something that doesn't see to be unusual as a pitcher gets older. The location change, along with the fastball velocity uptick, seems to be why Grilli has improved. He isn't afraid to go high with the plus fastball and work on the other side of the plate.

Thad Weber's Curveball

Thad Weber made his Padres' debut on Saturday, when he had to eat up innings after a poor Edinson Volquez start. Weber was optioned after the game.

While I was watching him, I was really impressed with the vertical depth he got on his curveball. It was also strange to me how hard he threw it considering his fastball velocity, which was usually around 90-91 MPH.

He really struggled to locate the curveball though, and several of them were hit because they were left up in the zone:

This may be because he had some problems repeating his delivery:

As you can see, this is also quite a bit far out horizontally as well, making it very easy for lefties to see.

Weber threw his curveball 20 times out of 65 pitches in his game against the Rockies, which is 30.8 % of the time. Since the Pitch F/X era began, there have been just 6 qualified relief pitchers that have thrown a curve ball that much. Mike Lincoln, Jason Bulger, Taylor Buchholz, and Jose Veras are the lefties.

If we don't look at the spring training outings because a) we don't have park factors for those parks and the movement data is kinda weird there sometimes and b) because I have heard pitchers complain that their curveballs don't always break right there, and we add the park effects of the each curveball thrown in MLB parks, we get a vertical movement of -9.655 and horizontal movement of 2.09. Not surprisingly, this vertical movement is elite. However, the horizontal movement is no where near the horizontal movement of the other elite vertical right-handed curves:

It is clearly a straight drop down curve, not moving or sweeping much horizontally. However, it is a hard curveball as I mentioned above.

Like I did with the movement data, I also added the velocity to Weber's pitches for his Padres' outing that Petco Park seems to take away according to the park effects (the Tigers' park evidently doesn't have an extreme effect on right-handed pitcher velocity). This changes his fastball velocity to 90.78 MPH and his curveball to 81.54 MPH. Only 11 right-handed relief pitchers in the Pitch F/X era (out of the 45 that have thrown at least 500) have had a faster curve than that, and they have an average whiff/swing percentage on their curves of 39.05 % (the median is about 33 %). These pitchers all, without exception, throw much harder than Weber, and averaged 94.51 MPH on their fastballs. This makes Weber's curve even weirder. It is a curveball, both the visual test and the Pitch F/X movement data assert this, so this isn't a classification issue.

This velocity data, along with the vertical movement we saw above, makes Weber's an elite curveball. He knows it is his best pitch, at least that is what his usage indicates, but how rare is his combination of velocity and movement, I think this stacked chart of the 46 right-handed curves (putting Weber with the 45) gives us a view (I changed the vertical movement, which is the red color at the top, to positive just so it would stack).

The only right-handed relief curveball that has more velocity plus vertical movement is Craig Kimbrel, who is the best reliever in baseball. Clearly, Weber doesn't have the fastball Kimbrel has, and will never be in the same league as Kimbrel. He also is already 28, so not a prospect by any means. We don't know how his command will be, and the release point data suggests not good, and he probably won't be very good against lefties, but we have seen late developing strange one pitch relievers have success before in the Majors, and Weber's curve may just be good enough to get MLB hitters out and give him a MLB career.

Rockies Prospects: Tom Murphy and Shane Broyles

Tom Murphy was a 3rd round pick by the Colorado Rockies in 2012. The 21 year old catcher (from Buffalo University, signed for $454,000) spent the year in the Northwest League, where he had a 129 wRC +, 113 wOBA +, and 134 OPS + and was ranked as the 5th best prospect in the league by Baseball America.

The first thing you notice when you see him is that he is tall. You can really see the size. One wonders if he is actually too big to stick behind the plate. Obviously he isn't much of a runner, being a catcher. Murphy seems to have a pretty solid arm, with plenty of strength and accuracy that is workable at this moment. He didn't show the blocking skills you would expect from a good catching prospect. He had general receiving problems that make you question whether or not he sticks behind the plate.
At the plate, he doesn't have the best swing ever to put it mildly. He had a couple of ugly looking swings even against left-handed pitching. He looks like he has good plate discipline (even though he walked just 6 % of the time) though and there is clearly a little power in his bat. He can go the other way with some authority.
A lot of his value will be tied up in whether or not he sticks behind the plate. He may be stuck in right-field.

Shane Broyles has about the simplest delivery you will ever see. He does bring his leg up pretty high and his finishing point isn't all that great or consistent though. This seemed to cause some release point problems and him missing glove side.

The velocity looked pretty good, though the fastball can be pretty straight, and he likes to throw it high where it was sometimes too hittable. Broyles will get in trouble without a quality breaking pitch if he does this.

It does look like he can sink it. He also has some tail on a few of them.

His approach is one of a strike thrower, giving up a lot of contact when I saw him.

He doesn't have much feel for his  change. He isn't afraid to throw it, but he couldn't really get it down or have any idea where it was going. When he got it down, it had some nice movement but is not some elite strikeout pitch.

Broyles also has a slider. The command of that was poor, especially early on. After he started working it in more, I got a better look at it. It breaks slightly both horizontally and vertically and will tail away from right-handed hitters. I actually really like the break on it as sometimes it would dive straight into the dirt.

His hard curve isn't overly impressive, but he had pretty good command of that. It breaks straight down and is at least another pitch he can work in.

I am shocked at how good his ground-ball rate was this year after watching him. I could see that perhaps when he controls his slider, he is able to make hitters chase and tap it weakly. Overall I doubt the groundballs and strikeouts keep coming at the rates they did in the NWL in 2012. His K/BB was awesome and he isn't going to walk many batters.
When he has control, you are really looking at 3 pitches that are MLB caliber. He has a delivery and all the measurables (other than he is a couple inches short for a RHP) that lead you to believe that he will gain control of his pitches. Broyles looks like a MLB potential pitcher to me, as look as his fastball isn't too hittable.

The Transformation of Matt Lindstrom

Matt Lindstrom, currently a reliever for the Colorado Rockies, had a profoundly mediocre year for the Houston Astros last year. His ERA was 4.39 and his WAR was .3, which gave him a WASP of 5416.7. It was no surprise at all that the Astros didn't bring him back. For the Rockies this year, he has been much better, a 3.06 ERA with a 1.2 WAR. Even after the bad year of last year, the Rockies still paid Lindstrom more than he made in 2010. In fact, he is making nearly twice as much. However, his WASP is still a decent 2750. What are the reasons for this change? Well, there could be several. For one, he appears to be more healthy this year, he spent some time on the DL last year for the Astros, and didn't appear to be the same pitcher down the stretch and was yanked from the closer position. Statistically, Lindstrom was more of a strikeout pitcher last year, with 7.26 K's per 9 innings (5.94 K's per innings this year). He has walked less people though (2.52bb per 9 innings this year, and 3.38bb per 9 innings last year), and when people put the ball in play, they have done a lot less damage this year (.358 Batting Average on Balls in Play last year and a BABIP of .283 this year). The Astros sure could have used this year's Matt Lindstrom last year or this year.

Jason Giambi, and the big veteran pitch hitter.

Every National League team needs (and every American League team could use) someone like Jason Giambi. Giambi, 40 years old, once the top slugger in baseball (and an admitted steroid user), is no longer a player that can play 150 games a year, or hit 50 homers and drive in 100. However, he isn't making 20 million dollars a year anymore. He can still hit too, and hit it hard. In 123 At-Bats, he has 13 homers, meaning he homers every 9.5 At-Bats. Albert Pujols homers once in about every 15 At-Bats (this season). His OBP is a very respectable .368, an OPS at 1.022 (!), and he has driven in 32. This is a guy that the Rockies can bring off the bench to hit for the pitcher (or in a key situation) and expect real results. Not to mention that he gives the Rockies a formidable DH in interleague play, something many NL teams simply do not have. He has a WAR (wins above replacement player) of 1.2 and an 13 RAR (runs above replacement player). Making a million dollars, his WASP (Wins above Replacement player and Salary Per) a very nice 833. He has also shown that he can play the occasional first base, as he did last night, with a .1 WAR on defense.