Effective Velocity
- Thread starter barbed wire Bob
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Maybe I'm being slightly obtuse here, but I don't quite understand what his point is, or rather, what the author thinks about this is new information.
edit: This is the problem with 90 percent of the analytics crowd. They do all this research but shed minimal light about what is actually meaningful.
edit: This is the problem with 90 percent of the analytics crowd. They do all this research but shed minimal light about what is actually meaningful.
TheGoldenGreek33 said:
His point is that even though a pitcher might only throw, say 90 mph, if he locates it consistently on the inside corner, the batter has a lot less time to react to that pitch than if it was 90 but over the plate.
It may speak to why some guys can get swings and misses on what seem to be average fastballs, while others get pounded.
Maybe you can find guys with subpar heaters, and work with them on location, location, location.
I recommend that everyone actually read the full article, if nothing more than food for thought. While the notion of location is one of the points made in the article, the other (which is definitely the more interesting) is the sequencing portion. There is an anecdote in the middle about Kelvim Escobar, who possessed a 97 MPH 4-seamer and 92 MPH 2-seamer, very good raw stuff by any objective measure. However, because of the manner and location in which he used those two pitches, rather than the pitches complementing each other and leading to a large delta effective velocity, he threw them with a canceling effect, where the actual delta effective velocity was minimal, leading to very good offensive production against what is in theory very good raw stuff.
The real primary tenant of effective velocity doesn't seem to be to simply throw pitches only in certain portions of the plate. It's to use the sequencing and location of your different pitches to maximize the delta effective velocity within an AB. A large difference in effective velocity from pitch to pitch makes it extremely difficult for the hitter to adjust, leading to poor offensive performance.
The real primary tenant of effective velocity doesn't seem to be to simply throw pitches only in certain portions of the plate. It's to use the sequencing and location of your different pitches to maximize the delta effective velocity within an AB. A large difference in effective velocity from pitch to pitch makes it extremely difficult for the hitter to adjust, leading to poor offensive performance.
seageral said:
The information is available on BrooksBaseball.net which is an excellent resource for questions like this (thanks jnai). Here is Koji's pitching card If I'm reading the zone profiles right he seems to prefer throwing more outside than in.
I can barely remember him throwing it inside to a leftie. He'll throw it outside to most batters, often enough he'll throw it low, every so often he'll throw it well above the letters, but inside hardly ever...seageral said:
I understood that, but again, what new information is he uncovering here? Yes, pitching inside is important. Yes, location is the most important part for any pitcher.DrewDawg said:
Whatever.
TheGoldenGreek33 said:
The point is that the "gun speed" of a pitch shouldn't be considered in a vacuum, even as a raw ability. It's analogous to the "discovery" of how much difference the distance of the release point of the pitcher makes for understanding how nasty a pitch will be for a given speed.
The insight in that stuff is that the point isn't what we have so long obsessed over, speed, but rather, the key is time. So while we've always known location is, obviously, important, we have a new additional reason and aspect of location to think about, specifically, for a given measured velocity, how does location affect the time to the theoretical point of contact? That's actually a really big deal.
It's not necessarily a new concept as I've heard this from different coaches we've come across over the years. I'm not particularly impressed with it. It's one thing to say you have to move the bat farther to hit an inside pitch, but is that really true? You stay tight, keep your hands in, rotate your hips and when you're on the ball you release your hands. The outside pitch you have to quiet the rotation a bit, take your hands to the ball, and release the hips almost simultaneous to contact (or slightly before). A swing isn't linear, which is where this analysis goes south for me.
The ball path is linear, the swing is rotational, and you use a different type of swing to hit an inside pitch versus an outside pitch. I don't think going and getting an inside pitch is particularly difficult, and if you ask a good hitter where he'd rather see a fastball, inside black or outside black, the answer is going to be overwelmingly "inside". The sequencing information is somewhat interesting, but again, I don't put much stock in it. A swing on an inside pitch isn't 3 feet longer than a swing on an outside pitch.
The ball path is linear, the swing is rotational, and you use a different type of swing to hit an inside pitch versus an outside pitch. I don't think going and getting an inside pitch is particularly difficult, and if you ask a good hitter where he'd rather see a fastball, inside black or outside black, the answer is going to be overwelmingly "inside". The sequencing information is somewhat interesting, but again, I don't put much stock in it. A swing on an inside pitch isn't 3 feet longer than a swing on an outside pitch.
PaulinMyrBch said:
It could begin to matter more at the MLB level in the future, though, since they now are tracking swing types of players. So you can consider effective speed variation of inside versus outside pitches (or high v. low X inside v. outside) based on if, say, the guy has an inside-out swing or types of cut and such.
...not in how fast a given pitch travels, but how fast it appears to a hitter...many milliseconds it can shave off the time a hitter has to react to it.
It hinges on response time.....a batter can hit an outside fastball as it crosses the plate, but to make solid contact with an inside fastball, he must reach it much sooner — up to 2 feet in front of the plate — which requires the hitter to move the bat a greater distance in less time.
Doesn't this depend on whether the batter is trying to pull the ball? A right-handed batting trying to hit to right field can wait longer on a pitch than if he is trying to pull it down the left-field line. However, two feet in front of the plate sounds like a bit much to me given that almost all batters stand quite deep in the batter's box. They'll be pulling things foul.
In reality, couldn't batters compensate for this timing by going with the pitch?
To me, what makes a good pitcher is control, including the ability to spot his pitches in any part of the strike zone; the ability to throw every one of his pitches from the exact same release point with the same arm speed, relying on his grip to get a change in velocity; and the ability to put enough spin on certain types of pitches so that apparent strikes actually dive out of the strike zone (or throw 120 mph).
I think the article was a bit vague to actually evaluate the thinking process behind it.
It hinges on response time.....a batter can hit an outside fastball as it crosses the plate, but to make solid contact with an inside fastball, he must reach it much sooner — up to 2 feet in front of the plate — which requires the hitter to move the bat a greater distance in less time.
Doesn't this depend on whether the batter is trying to pull the ball? A right-handed batting trying to hit to right field can wait longer on a pitch than if he is trying to pull it down the left-field line. However, two feet in front of the plate sounds like a bit much to me given that almost all batters stand quite deep in the batter's box. They'll be pulling things foul.
In reality, couldn't batters compensate for this timing by going with the pitch?
To me, what makes a good pitcher is control, including the ability to spot his pitches in any part of the strike zone; the ability to throw every one of his pitches from the exact same release point with the same arm speed, relying on his grip to get a change in velocity; and the ability to put enough spin on certain types of pitches so that apparent strikes actually dive out of the strike zone (or throw 120 mph).
I think the article was a bit vague to actually evaluate the thinking process behind it.
OttoC said:
FWIW, here is the actual patent Husband filed . He's also pushing this as a method that would also help hitters. from the patent:
To me the theory is interesting and could explain why pitchers like Jamie Moyer were reasonably successful However, as far as I can tell, Koji Uehara pitches completely opposite of what this guy recommends.