An Ode to Mat Latos

Mat Latos pitched what was the Padres’ last game of the season yesterday, losing to the Giants in a game that, had the Padres won, would have forced a one game playoff against San Francisco. A triple by opposing pitcher Jonathan Sanchez led to a two-run 3rd inning, which proved to be enough to advance the Giants to the playoffs, leaving the Padres at home. For most baseball fans, the potential of a three-way tie for two playoff spots was what they were waiting for. Despite struggling in September, Latos was the best option in the Padres’ relatively unheralded starting rotation to force the crazy one-game playoff(s) scenario. Before we head into the postseason, I would like to profile just how spectacular Latos has been this season.

Latos was somewhat of a surprise young breakout pitcher, having struggled to locate the strikezone when he was first called up last season. Everyone in the National League knows his name now, as he has averaged 9.32 K/9 this season. Latos throws four distinct pitches: a mid-90s fastball, a mid-80s slider, a mid-80s changeup, and a high-70s curveball. He throws his fastball 60.1% of the time, but it’s his second most used pitch, the slider, that has been the key to his success this season, which he uses 22.8% of the time.

Of his four pitches, Latos uses the fastball, slider, and changeup the most. Let’s take a look first at his fastballs, how he locates them, where he induces swinging strikes, and where the ball is put in play:

The right-handed pitcher locates his fastball up and away to both RHH and LHH, going low and outside to LHH sometimes as well. Latos is able to get RHH to whiff more on his fastball than he is to LHH, who put the ball in play slightly more than RHH. Many of Latos’ swinging strikes are in the strike zone, but he’s able to get quite a few of them up and out of the zone. Let’s look at Latos’ slider, his second-most used pitch:

In the graphs above, we can see that Latos loves to throw the low and away slider to right-handed hitters and the low and out of the zone slider to left-handed hitters. His slider is effective against both hitters, getting 18.6% of right-handed hitters and 17.8% of left-handed hitters to whiff, as noted by the numerous red points in both graphs. Latos rarely throws an inside slider to right-handed hitters, but throws to all parts of the strike zone against left-handed hitters. What is apparent throughout all parts of the strikezone is that Latos throws sliders that are closer to the glove side to RHH than he does to LHH, whether it’s in the strikezone or low and out of the zone. Finally, let’s look at Latos’ changeup:

Latos’ changeup gets 18.2% of right-handed hitters and 12.8% of left-handed hitters to swing and miss. It’s interesting to note that Latos uses the changeup more against LHH (15.3% of all pitches) than he does against RHH (7.9% of all pitches) even though LHH put changeups in play slightly more (22.0%) than RHH do (19.1%) while whiffing less. My first thought was that maybe Latos throws the breaking ball more to LHH because he might pitch to contact in some situations. Looking at his batted ball splits by pitch type, a changeup put in play has similar batted ball outcomes for both batters, except that LHH will pop up the ball 10.6% of changeups put in play (4.55% for RHH).

The underlying reasons behind Latos’ changeup use are probably not obvious, and since he uses the pitch only 10% of the time, not much damage is done in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the pitch outcomes and batted ball results indicate that Latos should use his changeup less against LHH, but the size of the sample precludes the necessity of a change in approach. According to Latos’ pitch type values, all of his pitches have contributed to above average run values anyway, his slider being the most valuable.