Today I wanted to just break down a little bit of Edinson Volquez when he threw his curveball last year. He only threw 70 of them that registered with the Pitch F/X system, but they are all charted below.
It looks like he was squeezed a little bit at the bottom of the strikezone on his curve a few times, but like most pitches the hitters did their damage on the curve when it was in the middle of the zone.
To go with this chart, here is the breakdown of the pitches
Volquez had a high number of balls with his curve, but it is his worst pitch by far of his three pitches. He threw it for strikes that weren’t put into fair territory just about as much as he threw it for a ball (37% to 39%). He had it put in play the other 24% of the time.
I am not sure what I am going to do for tomorrow, maybe take a look at Joey Votto in September or take a look at Jared Burton in the second half of the year.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Grande Donkey // Mar 30, 2008 at 12:26 am
This is pretty cool stuff Doug. Keep up the good work.
2 Doug Gray // Mar 30, 2008 at 12:43 am
Thanks, its always fun to look at this kind of stuff.
3 Ken // Mar 30, 2008 at 11:56 am
How does his curve compare to others by break and speed? His player card lists a vertical drop of -3.21″ for the curve, but knowing the context of the numbers is my biggest challenge in looking at f/x data.
4 Doug Gray // Mar 30, 2008 at 6:32 pm
That number isn’t exactly the ‘break’ that it has. I can’t think of a better way to explain this than by taking what the blog ‘Fast Balls’ used to describe it. Here is what Mike says about the elements that actually tell us what the break on pitches is:
#break_y: I think this is the distance in feet from home plate to the point in the pitch trajectory where the pitch achieved its greatest deviation from the straight line path between the release point and the front of home plate.
Edinson’s average was 23.8
break_angle: the angle, in degrees, from vertical to the straight line path from the release point to where the pitch crossed the front of home plate, as seen from the catcher’s/umpire’s perspective.
Edinson’s average was -10.61
break_length: the measurement of the greatest distance, in inches, between the trajectory of the pitch at any point between the release point and the front of home plate, and the straight line path from the release point and the front of home plate, per the MLB Gameday team. John Walsh’s article “In Search of the Sinker” has a good illustration of this parameter.
Edinson’s average was 11.35
Now how that compares to other players around baseball, I couldn’t tell you as I only have a database on the several guys from 2007 and will only be doing databases for the guys on the Reds this year.
In Kalk’s player cards though his top two comparables are Lincecum and Verlander.
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