Iayork on Fernando

[Darnell's Son]

iayrok wrote about the left-handed pitcher the Red Sox did acquire yesterday for the .com. He throws an interesting pitch mix including a "mystery pitch".

Like the deal or hate it, there's one thing we can all agree on, he should come out to this at Fenway:

 

[simplicio]

Thanks for the write up, glad to have him replacing Layne.

Could you guys start including velocities in the pitch descriptions? It's hard to gauge from the graph alone.

Alternate song selection:

 

[CarolinaBeerGuy]

Is the mystery pitch not an eephus? I haven't seen it, but the velocity seems to fit.

 

[Darnell's Son]

The velocity is on the 3-D graph along the Y-axis.

 

[simplicio]

The velocity is on the 3-D graph along the Y-axis.

Right, but since you can't square it up against that axis you're left to estimate it against a moving target.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Gotcha, I'll pass along the request.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Is the mystery pitch not an eephus? I haven't seen it, but the velocity seems to fit.

Not sure if the break wasn't right on it for him to call it an eephus or not. He won't be around til later, but he can answer it better than me.

 

[j44thor]

He has an almost 17MPH difference between his FB and his CH. I thought anything over 10MPH was considered too much to fool a hitter but his results have been very good with the CH so perhaps he is onto something.

 

[Mighty Joe Young]

The so called mystery pitch could also be characterized as a "dead fish"

Basically a nothing pitch that fools the batter with its overall "nothingness"

 

[Mighty Joe Young]

Not sure if the break wasn't right on it for him to call it an eephus or not. He won't be around til later, but he can answer it better than me.

Usually an "eephus" pitch is a really slow looping curve .. like the one Bill
Lee used to feature

 

[StupendousMan]

Right, but since you can't square it up against that axis you're left to estimate it against a moving target.

I realize that this doesn't solve the entire problem, since the view is still from above, but perhaps it might help.

 

[simplicio]

Yeah, not so much, unless he's throwing 100mph fastballs and cutters and 90mph curves, in which case that's fabulous!

 

[StupendousMan]

Fine, fine. I'll just go to the Player Card section of brooksbaseball.net and let it do the work. That separation of the changeup from the fastball cluster is pretty darn big ...

 

[iayork]

Could you guys start including velocities in the pitch descriptions? It's hard to gauge from the graph alone.

Does this help? These are some of the charts I use to help recategorized pitches from the PITCHf/x default, for my own use but since I have them handy ...

Spoiler: For liberty, Fernando

Usually I think the 3D charts are the best compromise for showing as much as possible in as little space as possible, since the alternatives are showing 2-3 different charts, but I recognize that it's hard to read off exact numbers from them.

 

[iayork]

Usually an "eephus" pitch is a really slow looping curve .. like the one Bill
Lee used to feature

Yeah, I don't think it's an eephus. Here's a quick and dirty animation of one compared to his fastball (31.4 mph separation in velocity):

Spoiler: My friend, Fernando

He threw that one on May 6 against the White Sox, 7th inning, to Tyler Saladino, who singled on it. It doesn't have all that much loop to it, so I wouldn't call it an eephus, and it has backspin (i.e. it rises) meaning it's not a curve. In the charts I put above you can see that they form a neat little cluster that's well separated from other pitch types, so I don't think it's just natural variation on his change, I think it's something he deliberately throws. I don't know what to call it other than a "slow change", though.

 

[iayork]

In the charts I put above you can see that they form a neat little cluster that's well separated from other pitch types, so I don't think it's just natural variation on his change, I think it's something he deliberately throws. I don't know what to call it other than a "slow change", though.

I didn't hear it myself, but apparently according to Vin Scully, Abad calls his "slow change" a "super" change; he spreads his fingers wider on the grip.

Nice to get an answer on that.