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 ....

Click for huge versions, Tazawa first:

and Fister:

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.