PITCHf/x Flight Paths - Zack Greinke by Season
More on the great start, and recent career, of Zack Greinke.
In each and every chart below, you'll see Greinke's release point appears to have shifted. It looks like he's a little a bit more over the top, but we'll wait for more data to accumulate, and I may apply some park corrections to the data as needed, before jumping up and down about it. I'm confident that something is going on there, though, but cautiously so.
The pitch classifcations were lovingly made by yours truly, and will not match Gameday's in many cases.
Click each chart for a larger version. Take it with some grains of salt, too, since PITCHf/x data isn't perfect, especially when making comparisons over time.
Greinke, as noted earlier, as cut velocity on the change-up, which you can see by the length of the flight path, but he's also added a little bit of tail, which is usually what happens when your release point comes more towards the top: Sink becomes tail.
Greinke's curve looks snappier. It is a little flatter at release with more bite near the plate. By flatter at release, it looks like he's not putting much of an upward, hump creating, trajectory on it, relative to 2007 and 2008.
There aren't enough sinkers (two-seam fastballs) in 2007, if any, to include a path. Not much sink lost, but some tail gained. Impressive.
A little more tail on the four-seam fastball, too. Seems like 2007's version lacked some of the downward tilt he's had more recently.
Again, a velocity change. This time the slider is faster for Greinke in 2009. He does vary the speed on the slider and curve enough to make this a dicey observation, but I think it's a pretty save conclusion. And there's quite a difference between Greinke's 2007 and 2009 sliders.
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Harry, as always, great work here. Any chance you could explain how you make these flight path graphics?
/secretly hopes Harry is not putting the “formula” under lock-and-key like the KFC original recipe
by Crashburn Alley on May 8, 2009 12:40 PM EDT reply actions
sure
I’m using aggregated data, but you could do this by pitch, too.
Using the 9 initial parameters (ax,az,ay,x0,z0,y0,vy0,vx0,vz0) I calculate the values from release to plate at .025 second intervals, and simply plot a line graph. If RJ’s listening, maybe he’ll send you the template file that’s floating around. If not, I’ll dig it out later. Once you get it, feel free to use it anywhere as long as I’m credited.
by Harry Pavlidis on May 8, 2009 1:48 PM EDT up reply actions
You da bomb, Harry
My e-mail is crashburnalley [at] gmail [dot] com if you get around to finding it. If there’s a tutorial around, or once I figure out how to do it, I’ll make a tutorial video for everyone else.
by Crashburn Alley on May 8, 2009 11:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Oops
Didn’t see the posts below before I wrote my reply.
by Crashburn Alley on May 8, 2009 11:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Really great information
Like everyone else these days, I love Grienke. My question about the changes that apparently he’s made is: how often does that happen/how easy a thing is it for a pitcher to do. Even adding a new pitch that is ML quality to a repertoire seems like it would be a difficult task for a pitcher. Altering the speed of a pitch and altering a release point to be more effective- it seems like if it were easy, it would be done often, and it seems like there might be a risk in altering mechanics when altering release point.
by philadelphiacub on May 8, 2009 12:44 PM EDT reply actions
That's a good question
Wish I had a good answer. But pitchers do add pitches, that’s not too unusual. Aaron Heilman just added a splitter, for example. The White Sox taught John Danks the cutter (that’s an organizational competency, btw). That’s less of a big deal than changing the release point, IMO. Altering the release point is altering the mechanics, since, in this conversation, what we’re really talking about is arm angle.
by Harry Pavlidis on May 8, 2009 1:51 PM EDT up reply actions

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