Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dice-K Pitch Cluster Update

Dice-K starts tonight in Seattle vs Miguel Batista. I have updated his pitch types.

After using a K-Means cluster, which I set at 6 pitches, here is the new pitch cluster. I believe this better represents his arsenal than the previous charts.


4FB=Blue
2FB=Purple
Cutter=Red
Slider=Light Green
Curve=Green
Changeup=Orange

Please note I believe the Blue and Purple are all one fastball. The algorithm assigned them as two separate pitches, but I'm not so sure. I would have expected there to be much more changeups/splitters, but that is all there is. Fangraphs lists Matsuzaka with throwing changeups or splitters for around 10 percent of his pitches. Josh Kalk's player card agrees with what I have for the amount of pitches thrown in that cluster: http://baseball.bornbybits.com/2008/Daisuke_Matsuzaka.html

Anyone have any other suggestions for trying to pin down what exactly he throws? Most scouting reports seem to vary on pitch type for him.

No comments: