Tuesday, January 19, 2010
TSBG and Major League Pitches
A few days back, Chad Jennings had a post about TSBG (The Speedy Brett Gardner) which touched on how he was preparing for the upcoming season. One thing that stuck out was this quote."Hitting ninth, the very last thing they're going to do is walk me," Gardner said. "So they're going to throw me a lot of fastballs, which I saw a lot last year...It's one of those things that I've got to get over the hump. I've got to get more aggressive. I can't fall behind.":So I was thinking it might be interesting to look at the Pitch F/X data against Gardner and see how he performed against different types of pitching. I'll present the same type of data that I presented when looking at Javier Vazquez's pitch selection, instead in this instance it'll be what the pitchers threw to Gardner.
| Type | # | max | min | avg | ball % | stkS% | foul% | stkC% | In play, out(s)% | In play, no out % | HBP % |
| Fastball + Four-seam | 1118 | 97.6 | 78.7 | 91.1 | 33.5% | 1.9% | 14.2% | 30.1% | 13.2% | 4.6% | 0.1% |
| Sinker | 31 | 95.4 | 80.9 | 89.9 | 29.0% | 3.2% | 12.9% | 38.7% | 9.7% | 6.5% | 0.0% |
| Change-up | 157 | 88.9 | 72.0 | 82.5 | 44.6% | 8.3% | 12.1% | 17.2% | 11.5% | 1.9% | 0.0% |
| Slider | 170 | 91.8 | 73.9 | 82.8 | 37.1% | 9.4% | 11.8% | 21.2% | 12.4% | 2.4% | 0.6% |
| Curveball | 150 | 86.0 | 63.0 | 76.9 | 44.0% | 6.7% | 8.0% | 24.0% | 8.0% | 4.7% | 1.3% |
| Cut fastball | 31 | 91.8 | 77.1 | 87.7 | 32.3% | 3.2% | 16.1% | 29.0% | 16.1% | 3.2% | 0.0% |
| Split-finger fastball | 2 | 85.8 | 84.9 | 85.4 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 50.0% | 0.0% |
| Knuckleball | 26 | 75.9 | 60.4 | 66.2 | 23.1% | 3.8% | 15.4% | 34.6% | 15.4% | 3.8% | 3.8% |
| Total | 1685 | 97.6 | 60.4 | 83.7 | 35.5% | 3.7% | 13.2% | 27.7% | 12.5% | 4.2% | 0.3% |
#: number of times pitch was thrown as recorded in Pitch F/X
max: highest recorded starting velocity
min: lowest recorded starting velocity
avg: average recorded starting velocity
ball %: percentage of time pitch was taken for a ball
stkS%: percentage of time pitch was swung on and missed
foul%: percentage of time pitch was fouled off
stkC%: percentage of time pitch was taken for a called strike
In play, out(s)%: percentage of time pitch was hit into play for an out(s)
In play, no out%: percentage of time pitch was hit into play and not converted into an out
HBP%: percentage of time batter was hit by pitch
He does seem to see a lot of fastball, somewhere in the area of 66% so far in his career.. Focusing on that fastball row, it looks like Gardner has taken those fastballs 63.6% of the time. When he's swung, he's almost always made contact, although I guess if he is being a little too passive that would be expected. I'm not sure how that compares to a typical hitter.
Here's what Gardner's done with the identified pitch types when they've been the decisive pitch of a plate appearance.
| Type | wOBA | AVG/SLG | +/- | BABIP |
| Fastball + Four-seam | .327 | .257/.340 | .004 | .328 |
| Sinker | .385 | .286/.464 | .061 | .400 |
| Change-up | .306 | .248/.358 | -.018 | .327 |
| Slider | .370 | .289/.456 | .047 | .375 |
| Curveball | .279 | .213/.272 | -.045 | .333 |
| Cut fastball | .226 | .077/.154 | -.097 | .091 |
| Split-finger fastball | .900 | 1.000/1.000 | .577 | 1.000 |
| Knuckleball | .198 | .182/.182 | -.126 | .211 |
| Total | .323 | .252/.345 | .329 |
wOBA: Weighted on-base average
AVG/SLG: Batting and slugging average
+/-: Difference between wOBA against this pitch vs. overall
BABIP: Batting average on balls in play
Obviously we are dealing with sample size issues here, but it looks like Gardner's performance against fastballs so far has been in line with the rest of his performance. He has a wOBA of .323 against non-fastballs, and a BABIP of .330 compared to his overall wOBA of .323 and BABIP of .329.
So then the question becomes, can swingng at a higher percentage of fastballs improve those numbers?
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