6/04 Pitcher Preview: Edwin Jackson

Tonight will be Josh Beckett vs Edwin Jackson in TB.

We know Beckett is 2 seam fb, 4 seam fb, curveball and changeup. See these posts for Beckett data.

Here is Edwin Jackson:

4 pitch guy: Fastball, curveball, slider and changeup. The slider and curveball are fairly similar. Not an impressive curveball and has decent downward tilt on the slider. Here are his average speeds:

FB: 94
CB: 80
SL: 85
CH: 88

While he has 4 pitches, he really only uses three. His curveball is just for show:

Stand	FB		CB		CH		SL		Grand Total
Left	312	60.7%	32	6.2%	137	26.7%	33	6.4%	514
Right	317	61.0%	39	7.5%	21	4.0%	143	27.5%	520
Grand Total	629	60.8%	71	6.9%	158	15.3%	176	17.0%	1034

Versus LHB, he is a FB/CH guy. He could afford to throw a breaking ball more to lefties. LHB have a .789 OPS while RHB are at .648.

Here is his pitches by count, broken down by batter hand:

Looks pretty confident with that slider versus the righties. I wonder why he doesn't use it more against lefties. If he can learn to throw that slider down and in to lefties, he might be more effective against them.

5/30 Pitcher Preview: Josh Beckett

Josh Beckett will go tonight for the Sox vs the O's and Daniel Cabrera. Beckett is coming off a good performance last time out vs Oakland in which he gave up 2 runs in 7 innings.

While Beckett's season to date might look discouraging to the casual viewer with a 5-4 record and a 4.43 ERA, there are many more encouraging signs in his perphials. His 31-3 strikeout to walk ratio over his past three games along with a 65-11 K:BB rate on the year is extremely impressive. In fact, look at these numbers from Fangraphs over the past three seasons:

K/9:

2006: 6.95

2007: 8.70

2008: 9.59

BB/9:

2006: 3.25

2007: 1.79

2008: 1.62

FIP: Predicted ERA based on peripherals

2006: 5.13

2007: 3.08

2008: 3.59

So with that said, where is he struggling? Three main things are leading to "presumed" lack of success this year:

HR/9: This is increased because of his fly ball percentage

2006: 1.58

2007: 0.76

2008: 1.48

FB%:

2006: 38%

2007: 37%
2008: 40%

LOB%: Needs to do a better job of stranding runners

2006: 69%
2007: 75%
2008: 68%

Overall, Beckett is settling down nicely after a rough first week of the season. Expect his ERA to drop and Wins to pile up as we move into summer. In fact, he can hold his peripherals and move his HR/9 number down to about 1.00, we can expect another run at the Cy Young award.

Below is Beckett's pitches from his 5/24 start vs Oakland. I am going to use the pitch type from Ross Paul's algorithm. This method is used to identify pitches on a real time basis, so its job is to get the majority of the pitches right and doesn't take into account each pitchers repertoire. With that said, Josh Beckett is a fairly easy pitcher to identify. He throws a 2 seam FB, a 4 seam FB, a curveball and a changeup. These charts don't split up the fastball, but that is nitpicking for a real time pitch identification system right now.

5/24 Josh Beckett Preview

Tonight Josh Beckett starts vs the Athletics. In Beckett's last start, May 18th vs the Brewers, he got knocked around for 6 runs in 7 innings. His biggest problem in that game was the 4 home runs he gave up. Tonight, he will look to bounce back. Let us go back and take a look at his 5/18 start to see what we can find. Below is his pitch f/x data from that start:



Beckett struggled with his off speed pitches in this game. 3 of his 4 home runs came on his curveball while the other HR came off his changeup. Below is the location of all his curveballs he threw in the game as well as the changeup that Prince Fielder hit out.

As you can see, Beckett left a lot of curves in the middle of the zone. We can almost conclude from this pitch location chart that he was lucky not to get tagged for more runs. It seems that he was leaving his breaking ball over the heart of the plate.

Below is a chart showing the movement of his curveballs that got hit out.

As you can see, as the game went on, his curve lost both vertical and horizontal movement. By no means were these curves terrible, but you can see the progression as the game went on.

Look for Beckett to continue to pound the strike zone with his fastball. The key tonight will be his ability to keep the breaking ball down in the zone.