How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Here's a sweet little animated movie examining Mariano Rivera's cutter. It features an digitalized version of his throwing motion, plus some sweet pitch f/x-based visuals. And those pitch f/x-based visuals were made possible by 3D trajectories contributed by Harry's pitch f/x company, Complete Game Consulting. Watch it, it's cool.

almost 2 years ago Sky Kalkman 8 comments 0 recs |

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Holy crap

That was absolutely wonderful. The pitch spin depictions were gorgeous. Really like the look at trajectories at different times during the flight of the ball too. I’m showing this to my baseball class next year.
-j

I write at:
Beyond the Boxscore | Red Reporter | Basement-Dwellers.com | Twitter: @jinazreds

by JinAZ on Jul 2, 2010 12:06 PM EDT reply actions

Seriously, that was cool..

I like baseball.
I write for Beyond the Box Score and The Hardball Times Fantasy

by Satchel Price on Jul 2, 2010 12:45 PM EDT reply actions

I think I like when he throws 1300 pitches at once most of all.

"These are thin mints. I put them in the freezer. My favorites. So good."
--Reds outfielder Adam Dunn, on the girl scout cookies he keeps in his locker

by Resolution on Jul 2, 2010 2:35 PM EDT reply actions

I like it when 1300

Pitches come flying at you.

WTY's ERA+ = 152 : - ) -- Kevin Frandsen > Brandon Wood??????

by Figgi4life on Jul 8, 2010 11:11 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions

Also,

is it just me, or are his pitchtype numbers on fangraphs a little weird?

According to this hes gone from throwing his fastball 90% of the time to throwing his cutter 90% of the time. He didn’t throw cutters at all in ’02 and ’03, and has completely stopped using his slider.

"These are thin mints. I put them in the freezer. My favorites. So good."
--Reds outfielder Adam Dunn, on the girl scout cookies he keeps in his locker

by Resolution on Jul 2, 2010 2:42 PM EDT reply actions

It's not just you

Those numbers come from BIS video scouts. They didn’t assign a cutter designation to any pitches from any pitcher in the early years, and 2002-3 sounds about right to me for that.

Furthermore, cutters and fastballs are hard to tell apart on video, such that I wouldn’t trust their classification between those two very strongly in any case. Though 13% fastballs and 87% cutters for this year sounds pretty close. I also have him with 88%, 89%, and 92% cutters in 2007, 2008, and 2009, respectively.

Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009

by Mike Fast on Jul 2, 2010 3:02 PM EDT up reply actions

Yea,

I figured their similarity was messing things up. Thanks for the info.

"These are thin mints. I put them in the freezer. My favorites. So good."
--Reds outfielder Adam Dunn, on the girl scout cookies he keeps in his locker

by Resolution on Jul 2, 2010 3:17 PM EDT up reply actions