THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Scouting Mussina

By Tangotiger, 11:21 PM

Knowing that a guy’s fastball speed has dropped 4mph is an important thing to know. What you’d also like to know is if the movement on the fastball has changed to compensate. This is where PITCHf/x comes in. Similarly, a guy’s fastball could have stayed the same, but if it was accompanied with much less movement than usual, that’s also important to know. Anyway, great job, and I’m looking forward to seeing more scouting aging patterns among pitchers.

• Sabermetrics • Ball_Tracking

#1 Anthony (see all posts) 2008/05/15 (Thu) @ 23:37

I’d be interested in seeing the standard deviation of his fastball speeds. Anecdotally, it at least seems like he changes speeds a lot more than he used to. Just judging by the TV radar gun, he’ll throw his fastball anywhere from 80-89 mph.

I also see the average difference in velocity between his fastball and changeup is 15.1 mph. Looks like the next biggest difference is Vicente Padilla’s 12.4. That’s pretty cool.

#2 MGL (see all posts) 2008/05/16 (Fri) @ 02:06

I also want to know, how much on the average, a loss (or gain I guess) of 1 mph on a fastball is “worth” in terms of overall effectiveness, assuming that everything else pretty much remains the same. My guess would be around .2 runs per 9.

#3 MGL (see all posts) 2008/05/16 (Fri) @ 02:23

Are the average pitch speeds for all pitchers available on Fangraphs for this and prior years?

#4 tangotiger (see all posts) 2008/05/16 (Fri) @ 06:23

I think the speed/ERA relationship was given a first pass just a few weeks ago. I forget exactly, but it was something like 0.50 ERA for a 2mph change? Don’t quote me. But, should be easy enough to figure out.

Here’s Mussina’s page (go right to the bottom):
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=837&position=P

Data goes back to 2005. Speeds are in parens.

Fangraphs should be your new best friend, after David gave you the minor league format you wanted!

#5 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2008/05/18 (Sun) @ 16:36

Is Barry Zito really 30 years and 5 days old, or is he 45 years old?

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=944&position=P

You know how we talk about there’s no such thing as trends in data? Well, we mean that for data where there is alot of random variation. And 500 or 600 PA allows you alot of noise.

But, with 3500-4000 pitches thrown every year, of which half Zito throws for a fastball, and the standard deviation of a fastball is probably 1 SD = 1 mph, if you see a pitcher with this pattern:
87.3
85.8
84.5
83.8
you can bet your a$$ that’s a trend. And, it not something you’ll find in a 27-30 year old pitcher.

And it’s not just his fastball, but all his pitches.

So, when you look at his 2005-08 FIP: 4.34, 4.89, 4.82, 5.46, that “trend” is now more real than some other pitcher’s similar FIP changing line, but with no change in pitch speed.

I hope one of the Fangraphs boys takes a look at this: what is the biggest drop in fastball speed between 05 and 08, and what is the age of that pitcher?

Is Zito’s decline (at his age) unprecedented for a non-DLed pitcher?

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