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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Greinke, Pitch by Pitch
I love this stuff:
http://minorleagueball.com/story/2006/8/21/104540/892
Sickels puts alot of work, presents his data well, and gives it to us. If only there were more Sickels. Anyway, let’s take a quick look here…
The standard deviation of Greinke’s Curveball, Fastball are all around 2.0, and Sliders was 1.5 The mean of these pitches were 76, 89, 83.
If we know the mean of his pitches, then we can take a great stab at what kind of pitches he threw, without knowing what he threw! Let’s look at 86MPH. That is about 1.5 SD from the fastball mean, and 1.5 SD from the slider mean.
So, 87MPH+ is a fastball, 81-85 is a slider, and 79 or less is a curve. 86 and 80 are the tough ones to call. And in the sample recorded by Sickels? Every 87+ pitch was a fastball, every 81-85 was a slider, and every 79 or less was a curve.
Now, he also had a few “indeterminate”. Two were at 86, so it’s a tough call whether it was a fastball or slider. Three were between 81 and 83, so those look like sliders. He also has two pitches marked as Changeup (80 MPH), which makes this little exercise a bit more difficult.
Next, how did he hold up during the game? If we take a 5-pitch moving average, his fastball started low, at 88, and while he was bouncing around, it was getting slower as the game went on. Near the end, he had a sequence of 5 pitches, with 4 at 86 MPH. His sliders showed no decline, but he also stopped throwing to the first batter it in the fifth inning. His curve showed no decline. Of his last 16 pitches, 14 were fastballs.
Not being there, but it looks like he thought he could only throw his fastball and curve after the fourth, and mostly just his fastball at the end, and in the end, he was throwing his slowest fastballs of the night. The way the events were laid out (1-2-3 sixth), it seems like he was doing fine. But, if we were to talk to Greinke, would he say that he felt he was done for the night?