A Different Slant to Pitch F/x

Well, a dude has to start somewhere. First, I have to say thank you to Josh Kalk because I am using his data cards from his website, er, it's also one of the links to the right, directly for the averages and percentages of each pitcher. I do not know how to download the data because my software skills are non-existent other than Excel. I am also using his league averages from his pitches from his work at The Hard Times.

Second, so I have seen a lot of analysis that is well beyond my capabilities in regards to Pitch F/x, but I have not found what I consider basic, yet very interesting. What I have been looking for is to see why a pitcher's pitch is effective and can it be sourced via Pitch F/x. Primarily, this post is going to look at a select set of pitchers based off of two things: 1) Baseball Prospectus' (and Nate Silver's) 2008 Pecota WXRL Values and 2) a few select outliers due to my interest in they for the purpose of this post. What I am specifically going to be looking at here is the second highest, according to percentage, pitched pitch for this set of pitchers and compare this value to the league average, their own Fastball, and then the difference between the league average Fastball and that particular primary non-Fastball pitch. I will be looking at the speed of the pitch, the movement in the x and z coordinates.

My biggest limitation in all of this (besides my poor mathematical skills) is that I am primarily using the Fastball as my reference for effective pitching, but in that I am using data that does not differentiate between a two-seamer and a four-seamer. Also, I have eliminated Cutters and Sinkers as the primary reference source... sorry about all of that, but like I said, a dude has to start somewhere because the averages indicate Fastball first. So, I am in the validation business and I am not involved in any thing statistic heavy so to speak, but I like looking at least a 30 sample size when I do look at things, which is the preference for batching so and so forth.

In that, I am actually looking at 33 SP because 3 of them do not pitch a "fastball," but I did want to include them in the second part of what I was looking at, which was the primary non-Fastball pitch they throw (versus the league average). (FYI, the 3 pitchers I have referenced are Greg Maddux, AJ Burnett, and Roy Halladay.) I have also included 9 LHP of which I have similarly 'normalized' their x movement (in italics). Anyway, here are a list of the players that I included and what their 1st secondary pitch is according to their percent thrown:

List of Players	First 2˚ Pitches	Age (by 10/1/08)
Beckett, Josh	Curve	28
Bedard, Erik	Curve	29
Blanton, Joe	Sinker (Slider)	27
Bonderman, Jeremy	Slider	25
Burnett, A.J.	Sinker (Curve)	31
Carmona, Fausto	Sinker (Change)	24
Francis, Jeff	Change	27
Halladay, Roy	Sinker (Cutter)	31
Hamels, Cole	Change	24
Harang, Aaron	Slider	30
Haren, Dan	Curve + Change	28
Hernandez, Felix	Slider	22
Hill, Rich	Curve	28
Kazmir, Scott	Slider	24
Lackey, John	Curve	29
Maddux, Greg	Sinker (Change)	42
Matsuzaka, Daisuke	Slider	28
Oswalt, Roy	Slider + Curve	31
Peavy, Jake	Slider	27
Penny, Brad	Change	30
Pettite, Andy	Cutter	36
Sabathia, C.C.	Slider	28
Santana, Johan	Change	29
Sheets, Ben	Curve	30
Shields, James	Change	26
Smoltz, John	Slider	41
Vazquez, Javier	Slider	32
Verlander, Justin	Curve + Change	25
Wang, Chien-Ming	Slider	28
Webb, Brandon	Sinker (Slider)	29
Young, Chris R	Slider	29
Zambrano, Carlos	Cutter	27
Zito, Barry	Change	30
24 RHP, 9 LHP	14 SL, 10 Ch, 9 Cur, 3 Cut	28.9

As mentioned, I am not including sinkers in this snapshot, but they really should be considered going forward. I just have to gain the ability to do so. However, in terms of a quick breakdown of these pitchers, here they are (with some having virtually identical first secondary pitches):

14 Sliders	38.9%
10 Changes	27.8%
9 Curves	25.0%
3 Cutters	8.3%

Now, Sliders are the prevalent first secondary pitch. I really did not think of the age of the pitchers when I selected these players, other than Greg Maddux, which was more of an interest because of his control of pitch locations; however, between these three major secondary pitches, there is no average age difference (Average Slider age: 28.6, Average Change age: 28.5, Average Curve age: 28.8). I should say that 4 of the 9 LHP first secondary pitch were a change, 2 were a Curve, 2 were a Slider, and the other was a Cutter. This leaves the breakdown of the RHP being 12 Sliders, 7 Curves, 6 Changes, and 2 Cutters.

So for both LHP and RHP, the primary pitch to complement their Fastball is the Slider.

1st 2˚ Pitches	Type	Movement in x (in.)
Averages	Fastball	-5.61
	vs. Lg	-0.15
	Slider (14)	2.56
	vs. Lg	0.26
	vs. Fb	8.08
	vs. LgFb	0.66
	Change (10)	-5.79
	vs. Lg	0.71
(Minus Maddux)	vs. Fb	-0.49
	vs. LgFb	0.55
	Curve (9)	5.30
	vs. Lg	0.60
(Minus Burnett)	vs. Fb	10.79
	vs. LgFb	0.63

1st 2˚ Pitches	Type	Movement in z (in.)
Averages	Fastball	10.78
	vs. Lg	1.00
	Slider (14)	2.98
	vs. Lg	0.48
	vs. Fb	-7.45
	vs. LgFb	-0.60
	Change (10)	6.06
	vs. Lg	0.26
(Minus Maddux)	vs. Fb	-5.57
	vs. LgFb	-1.59
	Curve (9)	-3.89
	vs. Lg	0.51
(Minus Burnett)	vs. Fb	-14.12
	vs. LgFb	0.06

1st 2˚ Pitches	Type	Initial Speed (MPH)
Averages	Fastball	92.76
	vs. Lg	0.96
	Slider (14)	83.84
	vs. Lg	0.54
	vs. Fb	-9.41
	vs. LgFb	-1.24
	Change (10)	82.45
	vs. Lg	-0.05
(Minus Maddux)	vs. Fb	-9.07
	vs. LgFb	0.23
	Curve (9)	78.78
	vs. Lg	1.48
(Minus Burnett)	vs. Fb	-15.09
	vs. LgFb	-0.59

I guess my comments would be the following:

• The ~1 mph faster fastball allows for all other pitches to be more effective so long as the secondary pitches are at least league average because their difference is greater by default of a faster fastball.
  
• A league average slider by default becomes more effective for this set likely because of the greater speed of this set's Fastball. In addition, it is possible that the movement difference down and in to the hitter is significant further adding to this set's effectiveness.
• In regards to this set's Changes, there is a significant downward difference in movement when compared to their fastball, when compared to the league average difference. This would seem to be the primary source of effectiveness, but more investigation is clearly needed.
  
• Finally, when looking at this set's Curves, well, it is not very clear. Maybe the difference in speed and movement towards the hitter is relative, but it may not be. As is obvious, more investigation would be needed.

I hope at least some of this makes sense. The data clearly is biased, so I do know if this can even be taken with a grain of salt, nonetheless it would be interesting if it is poignant. And again, my exclusion of sinkers could really be throwing all of this data off in addition to not having definitive 2-seam and 4-seam differentiations...

I know one of the things that I should do is look at correlations between these differences and a pitcher's effectiveness, but I haven't gotten that far and I haven't really thought which stat I wanted to use for this basis. And I know some other people have looked at pitching sequences, but I think that is skipping a step... anyway... thanks for humoring me in my first real post... I think...