6/08: Pitcher Preview Justin Masterson

Justin Masterson squares off vs Seattle and Erik Bedard tonight. This is part two in the tonight's game preview. See the previous post for the Bedard analysis.

Masterson, a rookie, will be making his fourth career start in the majors. So far, he has been effective even while being wild. He sports a 2.95 ERA to go along with 14 k's in 18.1 innings. He is a sinkerballer who has a GB% of 56.3%. While all of this looks nice, he does show some disturbing numbers. His BB/9 is 4.42 and his BABIP is a measly .175. Along with an unreal 89.9 LOB%, we can't expect his success to last. As his numbers start to revert to the norm, expect his ERA to rise and his struggles to start happening. He shows a promising skill set for a rookie, but don't expect success going forward unless he is able to buck these trends.

Here is his pitch f/x data:


As you can see, that is one nasty sinker. His sinker has more downward movement than his changeup and almost as much downward movement as most pitchers curveball. That one pitch makes him a weapon every time he is on the mound.

Here is his pitch types by batter hand:

stand	CH	FB	SI	SL	Grand Total
L	23	36	58	34	151
R	0	26	67	31	124
Grand Total	23	62	125	65	275

He does not use the changeup vs right handed batters. It would be nice to see him start just to give them another look.

Here is strike % and contact % by pitch type:

LHB
	CH	FB	SI	SL	Grand Total
Strike %	78.3%	50.0%	56.9%	73.5%	62.3%
Contact %	73.3%	83.3%	86.4%	57.9%	75.0%
RHB
	CH	FB	SI	SL	Grand Total
Strike %	0.0%	57.7%	65.7%	61.3%	62.9%
Contact %	0.0%	57.1%	81.3%	61.5%	73.1%

His changeup and slider look to be very tough on lefties. He has the ability to not only throw those pitches for strikes, but also to get swings and misses. A deadly combination. One would have to think that changeup success could carry over vs the righties, even if it were to a lesser degree.

Lastly, here are his pitch results by type and batter hand:


Just for fun, take a look at the amount fouls on the sinker for right handed hitters. Of those 13 foul balls, I wonder how many were drilled off the hitters legs? Sinkers will do that to a hitter.

If you have never seen Masterson pitch, you are in for a treat. He has a very unique delivery:

Here is his delivery according to pitch f/x

Enjoy folks.

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.

6/03 Pitcher Preview: Matt Garza

Tonight the Red Sox face the first place Rays of Tampa Bay and will square off against Matt Garza.

Here is his numbers:

Nice two seamer, doesn't get much bite on the changeup, ok slider and a big 12-6 curve.

Pitch type by batter hand:

stand	2FB	CB	CH	FB	SL	Grand Total
L	70	44	48	230	27	419
R	62	8	10	165	71	316
Grand Total	132	52	58	395	98	735

Looks like Garza throws the Curve and changeup to lefties and the Slider mainly to righties.

Left
	2FB	CB	CH	FB	SL	Grand Total
BABIP	0.385	0.250	0.111	0.220	0.571	0.269
Strike %	0.56	0.61	0.50	0.66	0.67	0.62
Contact %	0.86	0.75	0.85	0.86	0.82	0.85
Right
	2FB	CB	CH	FB	SL	Grand Total
BABIP	0.077	0.500	0.000	0.316	0.571	0.328
Strike %	0.60	0.50	0.30	0.63	0.63	0.61
Contact %	0.77	0.75	1.00	0.91	0.76	0.85

Take a look at the two seam fastball. This pitch is thrown around the same amount for a right handed and a left handed hitter, but the BABIP varies greatly. That should even out as the season goes on.

Looks like his curveball is his best pitch vs the lefties. A high strike percentage and the lowest contact % of all his pitches. Note the contact % is the same on the pitch to both sides, but the strike % is much lower against RHB.

A 91% contact percentage on the fastball to RHB shows he is not missing bats with that pitch. Seems like more of a get me over pitch than an out pitch.

Lastly, here is his pitch type by count:


Incredible that he uses his off speed pitches early in the count and then completely abandons them when he falls behind. If I am a hitter, I let the first pitch go and take my chances that he falls behind. If he falls behind in the count, sit dead red because your getting the fastball. As we saw above, his fastball is not a swing and miss pitch so no worries there.

With a patient team like Boston facing Garza tonight, I expect Garza might struggle as he falls behind in the count. Should be interesting to watch the Red Sox strategy versus him.

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.

5/28 Pitcher Preview: Erik Bedard

Here is Erik Bedard according to Inside Edge and Baseball Info Solutions. Inside edge is from espn.com while BIS is from fangraphs: I am going to use 2007 data because the IE data on espn.com is for his whole career unfortunately and not just 2008

Very interesting to see just how much their numbers are off. I guess that goes to show how inaccurate it can be to chart pitches from television. The biggest concern I have with this data is how different the curveball percentages are. From my experience, curves are the easiest pitches to chart.

I will look at the pitch f/x data and update the post later tonight.

UPDATE: To see Bedard through pitch f/x, refer to this terrific article by Mike Fast from January.

To give an example of what Mike and I talked about in the comments, here is a quick look at spin angle vs speed:
Just from eyeballing that data, which is not broken down by pitch type, you can see three clear sets of data: Fastball which has the most speed, changeup which is the smallest set to the right and the curve ball to the left. If you look closely at the fastball data set, you can see the bottom left part of that is starting to break off from the rest of the points. That is the cutter Mike talks about.

Bedard is definitly not throwing a slider. The slider would show up around the 80-85 mph range with a spin angle around 150.

Hope that helps anyone who is wondering what the data looks like before it is dissected.

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.

Quick Dice-K Preview

Here is a quick look at Daisuke Matsuzaka, who is starting todays game. I am fairly certain he throws more than 4 pitches, but here is a quick look at his pitch movement. When I have time, I will try and break him down further.

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.