Brooks Baseball, with help from The Hardball Times, has created pitch f/x player cards. If you play around with Matt Garza's card you'll see that in his career he's thrown 4-seam fastballs 41% of the time. He threw the same amount in 2011 (40%), but the big difference was in sinker frequency. It's 26% in his career, but only 15% last year. His slider frequency is 16%, but it was 23% last year. He through roughly the same amount of curve balls, but fewer changeups.
The graphics included on that page are awesome. Links to a few other Cubs pitchers are listed below.
Suburban kid wrote:
There are drugs that I don’t use anymore.
Yeah the massive classifcations of pitches that was undertaken is awesome.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/dispatch_article/yes-we-actually-classified-every-pitch/
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/complete_pitchf_x_classification/
I wonder if Garza’s breakout season is due to his ability to locate the slider better?
Marmol has a really depressing card.
@ Pezcore:
The velocity graph is interesting for Marmol. His velocity dropped off midway through 2010 and hasn’t recovered.
If only the Superfriends had been around before the Cubs extended Marmol. They could have gotten a king’s ransom for him after that 2010 season. Oh well, what’s done is done.
It looks like his slider velocity is actually up a bit. Between that and the fastball velocity coming down, I wonder if the smaller difference is part of the reason batters have been able to put his pitches in play more than in the past.
@ Aisle424:
His K% last year was 30.3% and his career is 30.2%. He struck out far fewer than he did in 2010 of course when he struckout an absurd 41.6% of the batters he faced.
What happened to Marmol was inevitable and it was something I was talking about for a long time. A lot of people said that Marmol could sustain it, but there was no reason to think he could. His BABIP in 2007 was .259 and then it was .169 and .252 in 2009. That’s when people thought he could sustain it, but he’d thrown so few innings that you had to figure he’d regress to average. He has. In 2010 it was .293 and then it was .295 last year. You expect it to be somewhere between .290 and .300.
The other thing was HR/FB. Beginning in 2007 it was 3.9%, 9.9%, 2.6%, 1.6% and then jumped up to 7.6% last year. It will probably jump up even more next year as you expect it to be somewhere around 10%. If we regressed Marmol’s numbers we’d find a true talent HR/FB rate of about 9.6% or so. That’s what we should expect moving forward.
@ Aisle424:
Yeah, I don’t think any other front office gives him that extension. Maybe they give him a 2-year extension, but not a 3-year one. No way do they buy out a free agency year. That walk rate is ridiculous.
via MLBTR:
@ mb21:
Are there many pitchers who pitch outside of the standards of 10% HR/FB and .290-.300 BABIP?
@ WaLi:
It varies of course. Groundball pitchers will have a higher babip. Extreme fly ball pitchers will have one closer to the .280 range or so. Mariano River has a 6.2% HR/FB rate and a career .262 BABIP. He’s the best relief pitcher who has ever lived.
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Jim Hendry explains social media:
[img]http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/402080_2622304685082_1479150003_32187092_1013522940_n.jpg[/img]
(dying laughing) @ G+
I uploaded a new local avatar plugin that’s a little easier to use. You can crop the image after uploading it to a certain dimension. I didn’t realize everybody would lose their current avatar. Sorry about that.
Just click on edit profile and you can figure out how to upload a new one
@ mb21:
Heads will roll for this.
Anyone watching the Super Bowl? There’s like 10 hours of pre-game show.
@ Rice Cube:
I’ll watch some of it. I don’t much care about the NFL, but it’s the Super Bowl. If it’s a good game I’ll watch all of it, but if it’s a blow out I’ll find some other crap to watch.
@ mb21:
I hope for all our sakes that it’s a good game and that the commercials at least don’t suck.
But I think Madonna’s halftime show might be put on mute.
Rice Cube wrote:
nobody watches it anymore, it’s too popular
The wife put just enough salt in the Super Bowl WAR salsa today.
@ Rice Cube:
What ingredient are you using for the defensive component?
@ ACT:
Mango. Flavors have more range.
What if the secret was Mark Riggins all along?
Mike Quade in the Sun Times.
[sic]
me: (dying laughing). Apparently Quade was serious.
I’m glad Quade is gone.
So…a safety. Is that exciting?
A touchdown is slightly more exciting than a safety.
BBC coverage is awesome. During all your bazillion commercial breaks, we get replays and analysis from local commentators in the studio.
That was a catch I recently enjoyed.
BTW:
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/02/05/2012-projections-top-10-catchers/
For SK, Soto is among the top 10 projected here.
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
The guy was trying to stop at the 1 yard line and fell over into the end zone (dying laughing)
FAIL
@ Rice Cube:
I don’t know why he didn’t just take a knee after going 3 yards. (dying laughing)
@ mb21:
I think he thought he was gonna get pummeled and then couldn’t stop his momentum. He should’ve done a QB slide though.
@ Rice Cube:
true, but why not just take a knee behind the line of scrimmage? Oh well. Doesn’t matter. They won anyway.
@ mb21:
I guess you’d rather have the sure touchdown and put the pressure on the other guys instead of having a chip shot FG blocked, but it was still really silly.
Glad it was a good game. Didn’t see many commercials but none of them really stick out.
[img]http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/418808_322412747801212_113494615359694_842411_538275251_n.jpg[/img]
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
Not as funny.
[img]http://srosegots.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/disgustingtweet.png?w=640[/img]
@ Aisle424:
Wow. That’s fucked up. Someone needs to get a little perspective
@ mb21:
She deleted her account already.
I get pissed about sports more than most anybody and I don’t understand that in the slightest. I could even get that in the heat of the moment, someone would say that Deion Branch needs to die or something because he can’t catch a damn ball, but to wish mass destruction on a city of innocents because of the score of a fucking game? That is some seriously deranged shit.
@ Aisle424:
I don’t get it either and I suppose it’s good she at least felt awful enough to delete her account. At least there’s some remorse there. Still, that’s just fucked up.
@ Aisle424:
I can kind of understand. One time my sports team didn’t win the championship for over a hundred years, and I remember thinking “Damn, I wish they’d get a new GM.”
I guess that’s different.
@ josh:
(dying laughing) (dying laughing)
I guess she didn’t delete it. I wonder if she got shut down briefly or something.
She’s doing some serious backtracking. https://twitter.com/patsrmylife
@ Aisle424:
Sorry, that page doesn’t exist.
I did see the screen captures you linked to on twitter, though.
@ josh:
I get that too.
@ Aisle424:
My favorite part was when she said that people have no idea what she’s been through. Her TEAM lost. And she BROKE A NAIL. Also, she RAN OUT OF CHEESE DIP. You fuckers have no idea.
I think she took it down again.
[img]http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-sq0YgDtgwD4/Ty9flVRvvHI/AAAAAAAAAEA/DK-yCK4VbcA/s640/patsrmylife3.JPG [/img]
[img]http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-jb1d9I1l5sk/Ty9fPBbbsqI/AAAAAAAAAD4/KgchZUfv36U/s800/patsrmylife2.JPG[/img]
[img]http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ctFxgZ2ePuE/Ty9e9BTcRPI/AAAAAAAAADw/f6zGUA3O_oA/s800/patsrmylife.JPG[/img]
She seems to be overwhelmed by First World problems.
I missed my opportunity to respond to her: Really, this was unnecessary. Don’t you have your own blog for terrorist threats?
@ Aisle424:
(dying laughing) also at Josh’s comment #43.
Here’s a funny article over at MLBTR. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/02/the-six-figure-contract-club.html
Which proves the old adage: you get what you pay for.
I’d be surprised if more than 3 of these guys is worth as much or more than they are getting paid for 2012.
@ Aisle424:
My favorite was the tweet that ended IM SORRY JESUS
I’m glad you posted what you did about addiction, mb. It’s misunderstood by so many people. I’ll just say I understand addiction and leave it at that.
One thing you guys might not know about the Hamilton story, is that apparently the bar he went to that night was walking distance from the hotel he was staying at. Why was he staying at a hotel 20 miles from his house? Couple that with the news about his father in law turning down the “babysitter” job he took a few weeks ago, and the thinking is that Hamilton is having trouble at home.
When you’re in danger of losing your main support system, it’s really easy to spiral downward. I think the fact that Hamilton didn’t go out and get some crack and ONLY had a few drinks is laudable.
Dr. Aneus Taint wrote:
Yeah, I agree. I’m curious. You’ve probably paid more attention to his addiction than I have. When I was searching for that article he wrote in 2007 I saw some articles that talked about him and heroin. Is that people just jumping to conclusions or something? He smoked crack so he must have used heroin. It’s clear from his own words that he abused crack and alcohol.
@ mb21:
I’d heard he used heroin before, and there are online articles that claim he did.
@ Dr. Aneus Taint:
It appears that way based on a quick google search.
New day:
http://www.obstructedview.net/facepalm/daily-facepalm-ii-vi-mmxii.html
@ Dr. Aneus Taint:
I think they ruled “forward progress” prior to the strip but I still thought it could have gone either way.
Well Bye bye Blake Dewitt hello adrian cardenas
The other thread die?