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New Arms of the Weekend: Tuesday Night Starters


Since the most recent edition of New Arms covered a good chunk of last week already, I'm left with what amounts to a preview of two of Tuesday's starters.

After being thrown to the wolves in the Bronx, Junichi Tazawa draws the start for Boston, while Doug Fister gets the call for Seattle. Fister will be at home, where he made his debut, against John Danks and the White Sox. Tazawa will make his Fenway debut against Rick Porcello, who debuted before our New Arms series started (I did cover him elsewhere).

Combined, we have 53 pitches from Tazawa and Fister, 2/3 of which belong to the Red Sox rookie. So, some of these classifications are subject to change, they may not have shown all their stuff, and I had to adjust for Yankee Stadium (still off a couple inches laterally).

Fister:

  • Four-seam fastball - 89 mph
  • Change-up - 80 mph (average gap: 8.5 mph and 6 inches of "rise")
  • Curveball - 75 mph (8 inches drop beyond the force of gravity)

Fister only threw a pair of each off-speed pitch, so the book is wide open there.

Tazawa:

  • Two-seam fastball - 93 mph (threw 17 of them)
  • Four-seam fastball - 93 mph (7 thrown, with more inches of "rise" but three less of "tail")
  • Curveball - 78 mph (5 thrown, also with 8 inches of drop from top-spin)
  • Splitter - 83 mph (5 thrown, all or some could be sliders, really unsure of these)
  • Slider - 84 mph (1 thrown, or six)

Don't worry, I'll show you a picture ....

Star-divide

Click for huge versions, Tazawa first:

Tazawa01_medium

and Fister:

Fister01_medium

These will change a bunch by the end of their games on Tuesday, but it is a bit of stake in the ground for the next set of pitch classifications. I suspect there will be a lot of modifications to our picture of Tazawa after he deals with the South Siders.

I'm going to go short on the stats, but Izawa couldn't find the zone with the sinker (.235) but was solid with everything else. Fister threw 12 of his 18 chucks in the wide zone (two feet).  Against the Yankees, Tazawa didn't give up a single ground ball (unless something's awry or missing from the PITCHf/x data). Of all his batted balls against, one was a Fly Ball and the rest Line Drives. Including A-Rod's blast against his curveball.

0 recs  |  Comment 7 comments |

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Also, FYI

Rockies’ top prospect Jhoulys Chacin will be starting his first MLB game tonight vs the Pirates in place of the injured Aaron Cook. He’ll be limited to 70 pitches, as he’s been utilized out of the bullpen for the last few weeks. For other readers, Harry mentioned Jhoulys a couple weeks ago.

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein

by Poseidon's Fist on Aug 11, 2009 10:27 AM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Tazawa

Harry, my guess was that those were all sliders, but I don’t really know. They could well be splitters.

There’s a neat pic of Tazawa’s splitter grip from spring training here:
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0alM2gEab40gt/610×.jpg

by Mike Fast on Aug 11, 2009 1:59 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Yes, I actually saw that

I saw that you had zig’d, so I zag’d :-)

by Harry Pavlidis on Aug 11, 2009 7:11 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Strange Pitch Calls

Would seem to be amiss here regarding what Tazawa threw in Yankee Stadium, as his splitter’s generally known as his best pitch, or ‘out’ pitch. Either that, or those sliders are Mr. Splitties after all.

Ha! Mr. Splitty

by ProustianDisplay on Aug 11, 2009 7:29 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

It looks like you were right, Harry

I’d call those all splitters now in retrospect after his start tonight. And it looks like he throws two speeds of breaking ball—a faster one, I’ll call it “Slider”, around 75-79 mph, and a slower one, I’ll call it “Curveball”, around 70 mph.

Slightly screwy Yankee Stadium data biting us again, I guess. I’d say that his data from last Friday night has the splitters at 81-83 mph, the sliders at 77-78 mph, and what is probably a curveball at 74 mph.

by Mike Fast on Aug 11, 2009 10:30 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

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