THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

For Maddux, that should be 84, not 85.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1310&position=P

According to Fangraphs (which presents data from BIS), Loaiza was averaging 89.2 in 2006.  He is now at 84.3 just 2 years later.  His cutter also dropped down 5 mph.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=104&position=P

Greg Maddux has averaged 84.0 since 2005 (including the 83.3 this year).  His cutter has averaged 82.3 (including 81.8 this year).  He’s got very modest aging.

His K/BB ratio is 43 to 12 this year, which is insanely good.  With 341 non-IBB batters faced, his kwERA (ERA based on k’s and walks) is 5.4 - 12 * (43-12)/341 = 4.31

So, he’s figured it out that as his speed goes down, his Ks are going to go down, so make sure to improve your control enough to make those walks disappear.

Even last year, he was 105/22 ratio.

Jamie Moyer is 2 or 3 mph slower than Maddux and he’s pretty much a league average pitcher.  I’d say that Maddux could survive with a fastball at or possibly below 80mph.  Moyer is at 80.8.

Heck, I’d love for Maddux to become a knuckleballer!

Looking at his data from the whole year his fastball has been around 83-88 mph.  Last time out against the Twins on June 8, his fastball was running 79-82 and his changeup around 73-74. 

Tonight, I agree with you MGL, his fastball looks to have been around 77 mph.  He was also throwing a slider around 74-75 mph and a changeup around 72-74 mph.

Raw data (XML format) from tonight here:
http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2008/month_06/day_11/gid_2008_06_11_chamlb_detmlb_1/pbp/pitchers/117842.xml

My previous comment will presumably show up once it makes it through the spam moderation queue, but what I called a slider in it might actually be his cutter.

Here is Loaiza’s pitch speed as recorded by PITCHf/x from last year and this year.  PITCHf/x data from last year is only partial data.  This year’s data is pretty close to complete.

http://fastballs.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/loaiza_pitch_speeds.jpg

The x-axis is the sequence of pitches recorded by PITCHf/x, which roughly corresponds to time, with the offseason cut out.  You can see that Loaiza’s speed dropped off after his first two starts of the year and then took a nosedive across his last two appearances, including tonight.

I don’t think Moyer is even close to a league average pitcher, at least according to my projections.  I think he is closer to replacement than league average.  Huge difference between a lefty and a righty though as far as pitch speed and effectiveness.  I don’t know why. 

And I don’t think that Maddux could pitch if he lost another 1-2 mph on his fastball.  Again, according to my projections, Maddux is now around .2 runs worse than a league average pitcher. I am going to say that no RHP, including Maddux, can pitch at less than 83, and probably the only pitcher that can pitch at less than 84 is Maddux.  Two or three years ago, Maddux was down to 82-83 for a couple of weeks. He got raked.  I thought he was done, but then he got his fastball back up to 84-86 and was OK.  Don’t forget that Maddux does not really have any other great pitches.  He does not throw his changeup much anymore and his curveball is more of a slurve, without much bite.  It has always been his command and horizontal movement on his fastball that made him effective.  Below a certain speed, command and movement become pretty ineffective.  Imagine a pitcher throwing a fastball 65 miles per hour, about that of a decent 13 year old Little Leaguer. No matter where he throws it, it will get raked.

Getting back to Loaiza, tonight was ridiculous.  He looked like when you bring in your second baseman to pitch in a blowout.  While he is warming up and the bullpen catcher is catching him without a glove, isn’t the bullpen coach supposed to tell the manager that he can’t pitch tonight?  It was embarrassing to watch.  The commentators were saying that Loaiza was throwing offspeed and that he usually throws his fastball at 85. He wasn’t throwing his off-speed at 76-79 tonight. That was his fastball!  There was clearly something wrong with his arm. His arm slot was even kind of low.  Again, how do you let a guy pitch like that?

I am going to say that no RHP, including Maddux, can pitch at less than 83, and probably the only pitcher that can pitch at less than 84 is Maddux.

A 4.66 ERA projected by the Marcel’s for a pitcher with a BLAZING 73.6 MPH fastball. And he hasn’t had an ERA plus below 100 since the year 2000 (pitching over 150 innings each year save one).

The man in question (definitely a righty):
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=219&position=P

I know it’s a special case, but how many times will I legitimately get a chance to prove you wrong?

(just for reference, when I tried to embed HTML tags into my link, it didn’t let me preview my post. I think it got spam filtered)

#5/ Sal, without looking I’m guessing you’re talking about Wakefield, right?  I had the same thought.

Another slowpoke is Livan, who’s fasty (according to BIS) sits around 84 mph, holding steady over the last 3 years.

Oh, and now that I think for another minute, Chad Bradford’s underhanded fastball is below 80, I think.

If there’s another pitcher with a fastball under 80 that’s posting those numbers I’d be shocked. Wakefield is a real enigma. Considering his career length, it really makes me wonder how hard it could be to learn to throw a knuckleball for strikes as off as Wakefield does. It would seem to make economic sense for a borderline player in the minors.

Bradford’s fastball is at about 82 mph, Shouse throws about 80, Moyer is about 81-82, Maddux is about 84, Glavine about 83, Livan Hernandez 85-86, Zito 84-85, and Wakefield at about 74.  This from PITCHf/x.

R.A. Dickey, by the way, throws a fastball about 86-87 to go along with his knuckleball, and Charlie Haeger threw his fastball about 82-83 last year.

Shouse is a LOOGY of course.  Bradford is really just a ROOGY.  Livan is horrible - worse than replacement although there is some evidence that he has an ability to pitch better than his ERC or BaseRuns would suggest (i.e. he pitches well “to the situation").  Ditto for Glavine who is a bad pitcher now, although, as I said, a lefty can survive with a low fastball for some reason.

I’m sure there has been or will be some exceptions, but in general, no RHP can survive at less than 84 or so.  Maddux is about the best pitcher there is at having pinpoint control, and even he is teetering on ineffectiveness because of his low velocity.  What did we estimate each loss of mph cost in ERA?  Was it .25 runs?  Maddux was 87-88 in his heyday, I think, maybe 88-89.  Call it 88.  He is now 84.  A loss of 4 mph would cost 1 run in ERA.  I think that he is now around 1.25 runs worse than his heyday.  Besides a loss in velocity, I am sure with his age he has lost some other aspects of his pitching talent. Maybe some command, maybe some movement, who knows.  He is 41 or 42 years old now?  I was playing competitive baseball in my late 30’s.  In my 40’s, I could barely get out of bed.  Ever listen to Maddux talk, BTW?  For a supposedly smart guy, he sounds like an idiot.  Not all smart people sound smart though.  And you don’t have to be smart at other things to be smart at baseball.  Then again, as I have said on other threads, despite what everyone says about Maddux (being such a smart pitcher), I have never actually seen or heard any evidence whatsoever to support that notion, other than silly anecdotes about him telling his teammates that the batter is going to hit a foul ball 3.8 inches away from the Gatorade bottle sitting on the dugout bench.  I’ll grant that almost any great pitcher must have very good pitching “smarts” no matter how good their stuff is, but I don’t know that Maddux is any smarter than Clemens, Johnson, Halladay, Webb, Santanta, Peavy, and a host of other pitchers who were more or less equally great in their heydays.  Just because you don’t throw 95 does not mean that you have to be incredibly smart to be a great pitcher.  Maddux had great “stuff” if by “stuff” we can include great command.  I’m not saying that Maddux is not smarter than other pitchers, only that I have never seen or heard any evidence to indicate that he is, other than people saying that he is, which ain’t evidence obviously.  People’s reputations, among other things, often take on a mind of their own.

Sal, if a person has never been wrong in their life, would it be correct for them to proclaim that they’ve been wrong only once in their life?

Yes.

But then no.

But then yes!

Oh my brain hurts.

Here’s a table of the slowest pitches based on last year’s pitch f/x data. I forgot to include cutters and splitters (and knuckleballs), but oh well.
http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d134/ultxmxpx/?action=view&current=pfxslow.gif

Nice table!  As you can see, other than Bradford, who is basically a side-arming ROOGY, the only RH pitcher who threw less than 85 or so was Lawrence.  He used to be a good pitcher. When he lost his fastball, he was done.