5/20 Pitcher Preview

Justin Masterson vs KC

I will break down Jon Lester's no-hitter tomorrow, but for now lets look at tomorrow's starter. Justin Masterson is a young right hander making his second career start. Masterson is a classic sinkerball pitcher who throws from a 3/4th arm slot. He features a turbo sinker, 4 seam fastball, changeup and slurve. As you will see below, he threw his sinker 40% of the time.

Below are the results from his first start.

Average Pitch Movement
Pitch Type	PFX_X	PFX_Z	SPEED
FB	-8.49	4.91	90.73
SI	-11.67	-0.70	89.18
CH	-9.58	2.70	83.10
SL	2.50	0.52	81.60

Here are Masterson's pitches by result. One area that jumps out to me is the strike percentage on his slider. With 4 called strikes, 3 foul balls,4 swinging strikes and 2 outs, he recorded strikes over 50% of the time he threw the pitch. It will be interesting to see how he uses this pitch tomorrow. If he is not able to throw it for strikes, expect him to struggle.

Result	CH	FB	SI	SL	Grand Total
Ball	2	9	18	8	37
Called Strike	2	3	6	4	15
Foul	1	6	6	3	16
Foul Bunt	1	0	0	0	1
In play, no out	0	0	1	0	1
In play, out(s)	5	3	3	2	13
In play, run(s)	0	0	0	1	1
Swinging Strike	2	0	4	4	10
Grand Total	13	21	38	22	94

This chart shows Masterson's sinker location from his first start. This graph is from the pitchers view. Notice how Masterson was not getting calls down and away to right handed hitters, or down and in to lefties. Lastly, Masterson was missing the zone to his throwing side. This is not uncommon for sinker ball pitchers. With all the movement on the sinker, it can be hard to pitch to the other side.