Archive for April, 2009

Jay Bruce and his hit streak

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Its been a while since I made a post on here…. been sick and busy but I finally decided to look at something today. So I took a quick look at what Jay Bruce has done since he has come back from a few days off after being hit in the hand by a pitch.

The first thing I wanted to make a note of, is the patience that Jay has shown during the last week. I broke it down by pitch.

Jay has always been an aggressive hitter, but he is at his best when he waits for his pitch rather than going after the pitchers pitch. Since coming back he has taken more pitches overall than he has swung at. If he can keep that approach up, expect him to continue to hit the cover off of the ball.

Here is what its looked like from the catchers perspective over his current hit streak.

Not a lot of swings out of the zone and most of his hits have come on pitches in the middle or outer half of the plate. Granted there haven’t been a lot of pitches thrown inside to him over the time either.

Lets hope Jay can keep it up because if you can combine him and Joey Votto in the middle of the lineup, our offense might just have enough to get us over that 81 win mark to ensure a winning season.

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Micah Owings debut

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Micah Owings made his pitching debut for the Reds last night against the Brewers. Here is what it looked like:

One thing to note right away is that Owings has a very straight fastball and his change up isn’t moving much more. That usually isn’t a very good thing. Its worth noting that Owings was throwing a ‘cut fastball’ , which is all of the ones that are barely moving, and a 4 seam fastball that makes up most of the ones with 5 or more inches of movement. Here is how his velocity looked:

Owings topped out at 88.7 MPH last night and worked for the most part in the 86-88 MPH range. Given the lack of movement his fastball gets and the mid to upper 80’s velocity, I am a little worried about what may happen moving forward if one or both don’t improve. Here is the pitch selection:

Owings worked off of his fastball for the most part, throwing a cutter, 4 and 2 seam fastball. One other things that must improve is his ability to throw all of his pitches for strikes more often. Last night, it didn’t look all that good.

As you can see, Owings really struggled to throw his pitches for strikes all night and it didn’t really matter what he was going to throw, the odds weren’t good that it was going to find the strikezone. Check out the pitch location’s for the different pitches:

His fastball was in the upper part of the zone for the most part on the night, while his off speed pitches were down in the zone. Here is what the results looked like on those pitches:

The end results looked fine in the box score, but by looking through all of this data, I have some concerns going forward with Owings.

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Edwin Encarnacion's early discipline

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Through the first week of the season Edwin Encarnacion is second in the NL in walks behind some guy named Adam Dunn. Encarnacion’s 8 walks and 4 strikeouts are potentially a sign of things to come for the young right hander heading into his ‘prime’ years at the plate. The old theory goes, the more pitches you see, the more likely it is that you see a mistake pitch and one that you can do some serious damage on. While Edwin is hit 4 for 16 at this point in the season, he is getting on base over 50% of the time he steps to the plate at this point in the season due to his walks. I thought I would just go ahead and make a quick post showing the pitches Edwin has swung at versus the pitches he has looked at so far this year (minus opening day which had tons of missing data).

Really, there are only 5 swings that are more than 2 inches outside of the zone that Edwin has swung at this season. If he can keep up this kind of selectivity we may see the culmination of the past two seasons for Edwin Encarnation where he hit .289 in 2007 and then hit 26 HR’s in 2008. If he can put those two things together in one season it will go a long way toward helping this Reds offense have another run producer to go along with Joey Votto.

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Aaron Harang's Easter Special

Sunday, April 12th, 2009
  • IP -9
  • H – 3
  • ER – 0
  • BB – 0
  • K – 9

Thats the line that Aaron Harang put up on Easter Sunday as the Reds beat the Pirates 2-0. I figured this would be the perfect time to break down his game.

First lets look at his selection of pitches.

Harang mixed up his pitches very well. These pitch labels are using the MLB pitch types, so they might not be 100% accurate, but they are pretty close. Either way, there was a good mixture of pitches. Lets look at how hard he was throwing each pitch.

Harangs fastball wasn’t going to blow anyone away as it averaged just over 88 MPH and topped out at 91.6 MPH. His change up wasn’t much slower, averaging 85 MPH. This next chart is the key to why Harang was able to be so dominant on Sunday.

In total Harang was able to throw strikes 75% of the time and he was also able to throw every pitch for strikes at a high rate. The hitters couldn’t sit on any pitch and Harang was able to keep them guessing wrong. Here is what he looked like to all of the batters.

Posted in 2009 Season, Aaron Harang | 6 Comments »

Edinson Volquez – Apri 8th Start

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Volquez struggled and didn’t make it through the 5th inning before leaving in favor of a reliever. Lets take a look at his pitch selection first.

Like usual its fastball and change up with a little extra thrown in, but really relying on those two pitches almost 90% of the time. Thats not really out of the ordinary with what he has done in the past.

Here is what the velocity looked like with the different pitches.

The fastball speed looks fine as he averaged 94 MPH and topped out at 96 MPH several times. His change up and slider were just about the same in terms of speed, while his curveball was a little bit slower than those two. Nothing really out of whack here though.

So lets take a look at the pitches vs the strikezone for Volquez.

Simple to see by looking at the chart… Volquez just couldn’t find the strikezone Wednesday. One thing to note, he only had 8 swings and misses on the day where he threw over 105 pitches. Volquez has always been a ‘wild but effective’ kind of guy. He needs to be less wild though, because its not always conducive to being effective.

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