"He doesn't have to get real fancy with a whole lot of things and can just throw his fastball. And for short periods of time, I think he can keep his delivery intact."
- Dave Trembley on Radhames Liz's transition to reliever
I wholeheartedly agree with the Dave Mc's assertion over at Weaver's Tantrum that calling up Radhames Liz after only a couple weeks in the minors (between camp and play at Norfolk) to work on his transition to the bullpen makes very little sense.
He was down to work on two things: a repeatable delivery and better control (for Liz, these are closely related).
So how did he do? Lets look. This great tool over at BrooksBaseball.net is great and gives me a way to display this data when I don't have the time to make the graphs myself.
Liz's pitches in relation to the strikezone:
Note the fastball way up next to the title of the graph. This also doesn't show two pitches that ended up in the dirt.
Liz really didn't know where the ball was going Wednesday night. Even when he got the ball in the strikezone, it was up and not fooling anybody.
Liz's release points against the Rangers:
That doesn't look too bad until you compare it with Jeremy Guthrie's release points from Sunday's game:
Guthrie's release points are much more tightly grouped. It doesn't look like much but that's the difference between a guy with repeatable delivery and one without one. It's a cliche but it is a game of inches.
Early returns are that Liz still isn't ready and calling him up does a disservice to Liz and the club. Liz has the stuff to be an elite reliever and I'm not sure this helps his development. Chris Waters, Alberto Castillo, Jim Miller or even Bob McCrory would have been better choices for an injury callup.
Hopefully, Liz learns to swim in the deep end...and fast.
I wouldn't dig in there if I were you. I don't know where it's going. I swear to God.
- Crash Davis
I don't think all these PITCHfx posts will have the the same title but the title certainly fits for Danny.
Two things are immediately noticeable. First, the fact that he threw almost nothing but fastballs his second time seeing the Rays lineup (which we already knew). Second, his fastball was much more lively during the second game. The horizontal break on 4/12 is nearly five inches more severe. And while his slider was quite lively during his first start is was nearly straight in the second. (Those blue plots on the lower right on the second chart can't possibly be changeups. I'm assuming they are curveballs mislabeled by the PITCHfx system.
Now the placement of Cabrera's pitches. I've added a very rough estimation of the strike zone to these plots.
Obviously, his pitch location is a little more focused during the second game. Yes, he's throwing more strikes but when he misses it's not by as much or it seems to be with purpose as he misses to particular spots.
Tampa's lineup is very lefty heavy so he's missing away or up and away from Carl Crawford and the like. But he's not afraid to come inside with that fastball against righties either which has to be pretty intimidating.
Is this why he's had some of his best performances against lineups loaded with lefties? When he's on that 94 mph fastball breaks with some significance away from lefties inducing weak waves, foul balls and weak grounders to short. If it breaks inside on righties, better hitters can still turn on those pitches or more easily identify it as a ball.
So is this the new (old) formula for Danny? Even in the second game he couldn't place his changeup for strikes at all. With very limited use he was able to get his slider over but his fastball, even with nothing else contrasting it, is nearly unhittable.
The Tampa Bay announcers observed (correctly) that Cabrera is a horrible fielder and they didn't know why more teams didn't bunt on him to put more pressure on his defense skills. The problem is, that fastball is so lethal and lively that it's hard to even bunt the ball! The Rays tried that night and couldn't lay down a single successful bunt in fair territory, not even for a sacrifice.
Rick Kranitz has a reputation for focusing on what his pitchers do best and not trying to make them do things they aren't good at. With a fastball so wicked, maybe he's letting Daniel throw his best pitch almost exclusively and just trying to tweak the accuracy. It makes sense. If a guy hasn't mastered control of his best pitch, what are the odds he's going to be able to learn a new one?
And some wildness helps Cabrera. He got a ton of strikes on balls he threw out of the strike zone.
This is all probably much ado about nothing (with Cabrera it usually is) but I'd be curious to see what strategy he takes against another lefty heavy lineup...the Yankees...on Friday.
"The ball was getting away from me, and I couldn't figure out my release point. ... "
- Adam Loewen
Release point of fastballs thrown by Jeremy Guthrie on Sunday and Adam Loewen yesterday:
Pretty easy to quantify. Guthrie's release point is fairly clustered while Loewen's looks like a Rorschach Test. Repeatability is so important in pitching. At least Loewen is cognizant enough to know exactly what he's doing wrong.
This is my first attempt at doing some analysis using the PITCHfx data that can be found on MLB.com. What is PITCHfx? These are systems that have been installed at all ballparks in MLB that give deeper information on pitching. More on that over here if you care how the data is acquired.
What can this tell data tell us? I don't know but I have some and I'm going to find out using Jeremy Guthrie as a Guinea Pig since his first two starts were at home and they were very different in their results. As you can see (and as you probably remember), his first start was pretty bad and his second start was pretty good.
So here's Jeremy Guthrie, first the data from his Opening Day start where he struggled and the data from last Sunday's game where he pitched quite well.
These charts show his pitch movement. The first one is from Opening Day (Bad Guthrie) the one below it is the game on April 6th (Good Guthrie). Measurements are in inches.
Even though I don't have these charts on the exact same scale (got to do that next time) you can clearly see that Guthrie's fastball was not nearly as lively on Opening Day as it was last Sunday. His changeup and slider had comparable movement in both outings which explains why he threw a whole lot of sliders on Opening Day; his fastball was relatively straight. (On a side note, look at how Guthrie's fastball breaks up and in against righthanded batters when it's got good movement. Probably one reason righties only OPS'ed .666 against him last year. Also, look at how his changeup breaks; it's almost exactly like his fastball, just a little less "up" break on it. He doesn't throw it much but that's got to be a tough pitch for batters to adjust to since it must look just like his fastball out of his hand.)
Now a look at the pitch placement. Again, Opening Day on top. This time measurements are in feet.
Again, the first thing you notice is the differences in the fastballs. Guthrie's placement of his fastball is pretty erratic in the first game. Fastball were missing inside and outside, sometimes more than a foot off the plate. In the second game that fastball is being thrown for strikes.
Also, while his slider was live in both games, he had trouble getting it over for strikes. Lots of sliders went too far outside in that first game.
So, when Guthrie was more successful, he had:
A) a livelier fastball, not in terms of speed but in movement.
B) better control of his fastball and secondarily, his slider.
I thought the problems with his fastball might be related to the weather but the weather was equally bad in both games. (55 degrees, drizzle vs. 52 degrees, rain). His release points were fairly consistent. It appears he was just a little off but maybe more data in upcoming starts will point to something.
Here's hoping he has that fastball working for him on Friday in Tampa!
