As the regular season winds down thoughts turn towards two thing: the post season and the regular season awards. Marc filled us in on the Rookie of the Year candidates and I wanted to follow up on a particular one I find particularly interesting. Andrew Bailey was handed the A’s closing responsibility early in the season–a very Oakland-like-move of trusting projectable talent in spite of lack of veteran-closing-ability.

Bailey has rewarded that choice. By any conceivable metric he has done very well, with an ERA, FIP and tRA all under 3, over a strikeout per inning and a very good walk rate. For the most part he throws three pitches: an electric 94-mph four-seam fastball, a 90-mph cutter and a curve.

He throws all three pitches to both lefties and righties, but throws the cutter more often to righties and the curve to lefties.

His fastball is really really nasty. It averages 94 mph, over 10 inches of ‘rise’ and has a 31% whiff rate (misses per swings). That is the highest whiff rate of any fastball in the game this year (recently profiled Robinson Tejeda‘s is second at 28% and then also recently profiled David Aardsma’s third at 25%). In addition the fastball is in the zone over 57% of the time. So it gives him a whiff-inducing pitch that he is still able to throw for strikes.

His curveball is one of the best from a reliever, worth almost half a win on its own. As I said he uses it very often against LHBs, against whom it moves in. Even with this inward movement to them he locates the pitch away in the zone. Here are the pitch locations with those swung at darkened and those whiffed encircled.

He gets lots of whiffs below the zone, and on contacted pitches he gets lots of grounders (over 60% per ball in play).

Bailey has been one of game’s best relievers and a legitimate Rookie of the Year choice, although I would prefer someone like Elvis Andrus who provided more value as a starting position player.

When the Giants announced they would skip Tim Lincecum start, the disappointment of not getting to see a potential back-to-back Cy Young pitcher in the heat of a Wild Card race, was tempered by the excitement of seeing his replacement, Madison Bumgarner, get the first Major League start of his career.

Coming into the season Bumgarner was widely consider one of the top ten prospects in the game. Since then no one can argue with the results, as he has gone 9-1 with a 1.93 ERA 19 year old in AA. But the way he got there has been a little disappointing, his strikeout rate has fallen to 5.8 per 9 and his walk rate risen to a still good 2.52 per 9 . So a tiniest bit of the top-prospect sheen has probably come off, still he was young for that level and no one disputes his enormous potential.

His start against the Padres went pretty well, 5.1 innings, four strikeouts, one walk and two runs given up on solo homers to Kevin Kouzmanoff and Chase Headley. It looks to me like Bumgarner threw 51 fastballs, six changeups and 19 of the breaking pitch he has been working on improving this year, which looks like a slider.

The pitchf/x system had his fastball in the high 80s and only breaking 90 mph twice. I think the system might have been a little ‘cold’ (there is some game to game variation in the pitch/fx readings), since he is reported to work in the low 90s and Kevin Correia’s fastballs were clocked about one mph slower than his average.

Here are the locations of this his pitches to RHBs, with swung at pitches darkened, whiffs outlined in black and the two home runs outlined in red.

He kept the off-speed and breaking pitches down or away and got some whiffs on them. The fastball was in and around the zone, he has great control, and got a fair number of called strikes.

Over all an exciting and encouraging outing for a talented pitcher getting his first start in the majors just a month after his 20th birthday.

Last night Ted Lilly won a meaningless game for the Cubs. I like looking at players who succeed in an extreme or abnormal manner and Lilly is such a player. If you think the three things a pitcher has most control over are walks, strikeouts and batted ball type (grounders being good since they cannot be HRs), then Lilly succeeds by getting an above average number of strikeouts and doing a great job preventing walks, in spite of his huge number of flyballs. Over the last three years Lilly is second to only Jered Weaver with the highest FB% (48%) and the lowest GB% percentage (33%).

He has always gotten a good number of strikeouts and given up lots of fly balls, but since 2007 (his time as a Cub) he has drastically cut down on his walks making him a quite valuable pitcher over that time.

Lilly throws a four-seam fastball, a slider/cutter, a big breaking curve and a changeup. He throws the fastball about 50% of the time and the slider/cutter over 25%. He locates both in the zone very often (59% of the time for the fastball and 62% for the slider/cutter), which explains his very good walk numbers. The location of his fastball is way up in the zone.

Only 25% of the balls in play from his fastball are grounders, the overwhelming culprit for his tiny overall ground ball percentage.

Lilly is going to give up lots of HRs, but he can make it work by limiting baserunners with lots strikeouts and few walks. Long-term free agent contracts for pitchers can often be bad news, and the disastrous ones are the most publicized. Lilly represents a successful signing. In the 2007 off-season he signed a four year (2007 to 2010) 40 million dollars contact with the Cubs. He has already provided those 40 million dollars worth of value, making the rest of this year and all of next gravy.

Although his ERA is higher than last Jon Lester is a substantially better pitcher. Last year he had very good walk (2.82 per 9) and ground ball (47.5%) rates but a slightly below average strikeout (6.5 per 9) rate. This year his walk (2.84) and ground ball (47.7%) numbers are just as good, but his strikeouts are way up (10.16 per 9 second only to Lincecum). He has gone from solidly above average performance last year to elite this year.

He throws all of his pitches about 1.5 mph faster than last year and, probably as a result, the contact rate on all his pitches is way down. This is most likely a big part of the reason for his jump in strikeouts.

Here are Lester’s pitches and a breakdown of how often he throws them.

+--------------------+-------+-------+
|                    |  vRHB |  vLHB |
+--------------------+-------+-------+
| Four-Seam Fastball |  0.34 |  0.38 | 
| Two-Seam Fastball  |  0.15 |  0.28 |
| Cut Fastball       |  0.26 |  0.14 |
| Curve              |  0.18 |  0.19 |
| Changeup           |  0.07 |  0.01 |
+--------------------+-------+-------+

The cutter-sinker (two-seam fastball)-curve combination is like that of Roy Halladay. Although Halladay does not throw a four-seam fastball. Lester throws his two-seam fastball more to lefties, against whom it moves in. And he throws his cutter more to righties, against whom it moves in. This allows him to pitch inside to both lefties and righties.

This confirms what Tony Massarotti wrote in a very good piece about how Boston pitchers work the strike zone when he noted Lester’s ability to control both sides of the plate.

Lester’s emergence as an elite pitcher combined with Josh Beckett’s continued high-level performance gives Boston a top of the rotation as strong as any other playoff contender’s.

As the Tigers continue to move towards their probable playoff birth they have to start thinking about their playoff rotation. Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson form a strong top two. After that Jarrod Washburn has, not unexpectedly, seen his performance come back to earth and will have his next start skipped in hopes of alleviating some knee pain. Still you have to pencil him in to the rotation. In a four-man playoff rotation they have little choice but to go with Rick Porcello as the fourth pitcher. The alternatives, Nate Robertson and Armando Galarraga, just inspire too little confidence.

Porcello is having a circa-2007 Chien-Ming Wang type season. Very poor K/9, mediocre K/BB but lots of grounders. The end result is an ok performance, no doubt aided by Detroit’s excellent infield defense. The problem is that Porcello is just 20 and has already thrown ten more innings than last year, if he takes 4 or 5 more turns through the rotation in the regular season he would be up to at least 30 innings more than last year. The Verducci effect suggests that pitching 30 or more innings more than the year before drastically increases the chance of injury to a young pitcher. The Tigers would, of course, ease those guidelines for playoff innings, but it would be nice if they could limit Porcello’s regular season innings, as the Yankees are doing with Joba Chamberlain.

Unfortunately the Tigers’s rotation is not healthy, or deep, enough to do that in the thick of a still not totally settled AL Central race. Nate Robertson came off a AAA rehab stint to enter the rotation in place of Armando Galarraga who was out with elbow inflammation. Now Galarraga has to come straight back to the majors rather than make a scheduled start in AAA to take Washburn’s spot. So there is not much opportunity to skip Porcello’s starts at the moment.

Hopefully the Tigers can wrap up the division soon or get Robertson, Galarraga and Washburn simultaneously healthy, so they can limit Porcello’s innings down the stretch. If not they could, if they go on a deep playoff run, put a dangerous number of innings on Procello’s young arm.

By now everyone knows that Neftali Feliz is having an incredible run as a reliever for the Rangers. After last night’s two inning four strikeout performance he has racked up 26 strikeouts to just one walk over 19 and two thirds innings.

For Feliz it starts with his blazing fastball that averages over 96 mph and is regularly in triple digits. But unlike another triple digit flame thrower he can locate the pitch in the strike zone. He throws it early in the count, when he is behind (which is rare), and at times with two strikes up in the zone as a strike out pitch. Here I plot the fastballs with the swinging strikes outlined in black and called strikes opaque.

Again he is always around the zone (amazing for how hard he is throwing the ball). If he misses it is rarely by much, expect for up (and those are mostly when he is ahead in the count). The swinging strikes are, as expected, mostly on pitches up in the zone. While the called strikes are for the the most part on the outer half of the plate.

Feliz also throws a changeup and curve. He uses both generally later in the count, the curve more to RHBs and change more to LHBs.

You can see that curve has been death to righties. Tons of called strikes in the down-and-away corner of the zone, and tons of swing strikes outside of the zone. To lefties he has kept the change either far away or very low in the zone.

Just an incredible month-long dominance, striking out 26 and only walking one batter.

As Dave reported earlier on the cusp of last night’s waiver trade deadline the Rockies acquired Jose Contreras from the White Sox. As Dave noted this is a marginal move, sort of a tit to the Giants’s Penny addition’s tat, but, it does allow the Rockies to keep Josh Fogg out of the starting rotation in spite of Aaron Cook’s trip to the DL.

Contreras typically works from multiple arm angles. Dropping down to deliver some of his pitches. The pitchf/x data picks up release point and from it we can see an interesting trend.

These are the release points for Contreras this season. I split them by his August 19th start, because starting then he largely abandoned his lower delivery slot. The colors a little confusing, but the main point is that he throws all four pitches from his main arm slot and his slider and two-seam fastball from the second slot.

Here is what the movement of his four pitches looks like with the pitches from the lower arm slot semi-transparent.

The slider from the lower slot has less, and even negative, horizontal movement (negative movement is in to RHBs and away from LHBs). That means while his normal slider moves away from RHBs his dropped down slider moves in to RHBs. Hid dropped down two-seam fastball also moves in more to RHBs, and has less vertical movement, more ‘sink’.

I am not sure why he gave up pitching as much from the second arm slot. According to my numbers both the slider and two-seam fastball actually do better from the dropped down delivery (better run values). Among other differences the slider generates more whiffs from the dropped down delivery (30% versus 16% misses per swings) and the two-seam fastball way more grounders (56% versus 43% GBs per BIP). If I were Colorado I would look into having him bring back the second arm angle.

Yesterday Adam Wainwright won his league leading 16th game, strengthening his Cy Young case. Of course readers here know how dubious it is to look at wins as a measure of pitching talent. But, without a doubt, Wainwright has been one of the top pitchers this year, with a FIP of 3.33 and a tRA of 3.71.

Interestingly Wainwright’s fastball has been pretty poor this year, and he has succeed on the strength of his very good slider and curve. Those two pitches have saved over 32 runs, the next best breaking pitch combo belongs to teammate Chris Carpenter whose slider and curve have saved 21.8. As a result Wainwright throws his fastball only 50% of the time, which seems to be about the floor for how infrequently a pitcher can throw a fastball (if you consider a cutter a fastball and exclude knuckleball pitchers).

He throws his slider mostly to RHBs, from whom it moves away. Here are the locations of these pitches this year.

Perfectly clustered on the outside of the plate. It is not a huge-whiff inducing slider, only 27% misses per swing, compared to the top sliders which get in the in the over 40%. Instead it gets value from of out of zone swings (35%) and weak contact that results in lots of grounders (49%).

As I wrote about earlier his curveball was one of the best in the game. It still is, ranking second. It gets lots of out of zone swings (40%), while only getting 55% in zone swings. That means hitters are only slightly more likely to swing at it in the zone than out. Showing how deceiving it is and resulting in called strikes and swinging at balls. On top of that it gets lots of whiffs (33%) and grounders (59%). An incredible pitch.

Wainwright has below average fastball. It generates few whiffs and few out of zone swings (although it does get a good number of grounders). So he throws it just enough to get ahead in the count and throw his devastating break stuff.

Last night Ryan Zimmerman hit his 27th HR, already a career high with over a month to go in the season. After a disappointing season last year, in which he spent over a month and a half on the DL, Zimmerman is back to the level of play we saw in his excellent 2006 and 2007 season. Even better, actually, already worth over 6 wins and posting the best wOBA in baseball during the month of August.

Offensively he is getting on base more and hitting for more power than ever before. His walk rate is over 10%, and probably the result of a much lower O-swing rate without a decrease in Z-swings. His ISO is also at a career high, thanks to hitting more balls in the air (his GB% is at a career low) and more of those going over the fence (his HR/FB jumped up to 16% after being 11% in 2006 through 2008). No doubted aided by playing his first full healthy year away from the cavernous RFK stadium.

Defensively he is no slouch. For the past three years he has played better third base than anyone (although that time period conveniently excludes Evan Longoria). Going forward we can fully expect him to be a +10 run third baseman and one of the top handful of defensive third basemen in the game.

The Nationals have had a disastrous season on and off the field. On field their offense has acutally been fairly good, in no small part because of Zimmerman. But their run prevention horrid. The off field issues have begun to turn around with the signing of Strasburg and hiring of Rizzo. So maybe Zimmerman will play behind some guys who can pitch and with some other players who can field in his time as a Nat.

Every year a number of relievers come, seemingly, out of no where to save a tons of games or post tiny ERAs. This year’s prime example is David Aardsma. He has kicked around for a couple of years throwing a really hard fastball, striking out a fair number of guys, but walking to many. This year he has all but given up throwing anything but his fastball, and is getting even more strikeouts with, slightly, fewer walks.

Aardsma throws his fastball 87% of the time (and 92% of the time to lefties). Even so it is a wildly successful pitch, saving more runs than any reliever’s fastball and more than all but ten starters’. It is the archetype four-seam fastball, very fast and lots of ‘rise’.

With four-seam fastballs there is a general relationship in which the higher in the zone pitch is the greater the whiff rate (the probability the batter misses if he swings) and the lower the ground ball rate. So a pitcher who throws his fastball up in the zone will, generally, have more whiffs, and thus strikeouts, and fewer grounders. Vice versa for a pitcher who throws his fastballs down in the zone. Aardsma is firmly on the whiff-side of this tradeoff, and even more so this year.

As a result he has a tiny 23% GB rate, but his fastball has one of the highest whiff rates in the game and he strikes out a ton of batters with just the fastball.

An even bigger change has been has been the horizontal location of his fastball. Here is a histogram of the horizontal location of his fastball to LHBs in 2009, in 2007 and 2008 and for the league average four-seam fastball to left-handed batters. Zero is the center of the plate, with -1 and 1 the horizontal edges of the strike zone. LHBs stand to the right of the plate in the positive numbers.

He was surprisingly close to average before this year, but now is much better at locating the pitch on the outer half, and even the outer fourth of the place. He is in the zone more and never misses inside. This cuts down on his walks and keeps the ball away, where most hitters have less power.

Aardsma fully embraces the ‘throw a very hard fastball up in the zone and hope the batter swings and misses’ ethos. This year he has embraced it further, throwing more fastballs higher up in the zone, and also seems to have better horizontal command. It has worked out well for him and for the Mariners.