New Arms of the Week (4/27-5/3)

by Harry Pavlidis on May 4, 2009 10:41 PM EDT Comment 6 comments

More photos » by Darren Calabrese - AP

Robert Ray wings one against the O's.

Last time the list was ten names long. This week only five pitchers debuted. Five. Pitchers. Jon Van Every goes with Cody Ross in the novelty pile (located elsewhere, somewhere around the Nick Swisher region).

Mark Melancon (NYY) - Welcome addition to the Bronx 'pen.
Ken Takahashi (NYM) - Lefty veteran pitched 14 years for the Hiroshima Carp as a swing man.
Fernando Rodriguez (LAA) - The pitching impoverished Angels got two outs and 34 pitches in this debut, against the Yankees.
Robert Ray (TOR) - The Blue Jays have some young arms behind Doc, don't they? A little wild, but worked into the sixth inning in his first start.
Arturo Lopez (SDP) - The Padres 422nd pitcher of 2009, the lefty got this call after 7pm so the Friars could use their anytime minutes.. He was an NRI and a late cut this Spring, now has a roster spot.

Lopez and Rodriguez (who is already back in Salt Lake) both stuck around through the Spring season and made exhibition appearances in their big league parks, so I've included the resulting PITCHf/x data for their profiles. Melancon has already made two appearances for the Yankees, so the data is piling up. Let's have at it.

Mark Melancon
Fastball        93mph
Sinker          93
Curveball       83

Ken Takahashi
Fastball        89
Change-up       82
Slider          77
Curveball       73

Robert Ray
Sinker          91
Splitter *      90
Fastball        92
Slider          81
Change-up       81
Cutter          89

Fernando Rodriguez
Fastball        92
Sinker           91
Curveball       76
Cutter          89
Change-up       87

Arturo Lopez
Fastball        92
Slider          83
Change-up       83
Sinker          94

*that ain't a splitter, it's a sinker thrown from a another arm angle. Maybe.

Flight paths, I'm splitting Ray into two so you can see it more easilty. Notice the "splitter" has more sink but less tail than the sinker.

I sure hope you can see the tail difference, look closely for the sink (click images to view a larger version).

Seahawks colors?

Moving on to Takahashi:

Lopez:

Rodriguez:

And Melancon to wrap it up:

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Comments

I like Takahashi's graph. It's so organized.

Looking at the bottom graph first, he has four evenly spaced vertical planes, going from top to bottom: curveball, slider, changeup (5 mph faster than his slider, interestingly), and four-seamer.

Looking at the top graph, those pitches are basically in the same order by horizontal movement. (They don’t look as pretty because he tends to aim them to different locations.) The curve moves horizontally the most followed closely by the slider (although that’s probably because it has more time to break than the slider, which might have more movement caused only by spin.) Then the changeup and fastball are similar, but tailing away instead of breaking in to righties, with the changeup moving slightly more, again perhaps only because it has more time to move. Fastballs and changeups often have the same amount of spin.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on May 5, 2009 11:36 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Me too

Notice the slider and change up top, I love how that diverge at release, converge about half-way and see ya later.

The pairs at the plate on the bottom plane are curve and slider up top, but they are opposites horizontally, which also applies to the low-plate-crossing pair, which happens to be the fastball and the change.

I also think Melancon’s is cool, since the paths look like the selective sampling of high pitches. The curve starts with the heaters and has minimal, if any, visible hump on the side view. Then it drops away. The sinker doesn’t sink, just tails like mad, since he’s coming right over the top.

by Harry Pavlidis on May 5, 2009 12:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Melancon's 83 mph curveball is pretty fast for a curve, right?

It makes sense to me that a power curve is useful more like a splitter, throw for hitters to chase it, while a slow curve is surprising and will hit the strike zone more often.

Maybe there’s a study here: fast vs. slow curveballs, and their location in the zone.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on May 5, 2009 12:20 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

that is on the faster end

and add that idea to the “list”

by Harry Pavlidis on May 5, 2009 12:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Normalize

Harry, on the top plots would it be possible to normalize the first few points from the right together to visualize the difference in horizontal movement.

For instance, on the H-mov/V-mov plots I think you show the difference between a standard pitch (with 0/0) and the actual pitch (-5/10 for instance). Could the same thing be done for these plots where you assume a standard pitch at the center of the strike zone and then show how the pitch moves from that path. What I am thinking is that the pitcher is aiming at the middle of the zone and then the ball breaks away from that location due to the spin. I think it would make it easier to compare pitchers as Sky described above.

The bottom plot is great in that it shows the difference in eye levels.

by JBrew on May 5, 2009 12:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs