Yesterday, I wrote about Troy Tulowitzki and his swinging strike percentages against fastballs and sliders. His discipline at the plate showed in the graphs, as he swung and missed no more than 15% of all fastballs and most sliders no matter where the pitch was located. The one weakness that I found was the low and outside slider from RHP, but Tulo counters this by not chasing these pitches very often.

I took the same time period (2009 and 2010 seasons) for Joey Votto and thought I’d compare his results against fastballs and sliders with Tulo’s. A word of caution: obviously, how Votto and Tulo whiff against fastballs and sliders are not the end-all, be-all in the NL MVP debate. The first thing I would preface this article with is that the two batters don’t see the same pitches. Tulowitzki has a Zone% (percentage of pitches seen inside the strikezone) of 47.5% in 2010, while Votto has seen less pitches in the zone, only 41.5% of the time. Another relevant but less significant difference is how often the hitters see fastballs and sliders. Tulo saw 55.6% fastballs and 19.0% sliders in 2010, while Votto saw 56.2% fastballs and 16.2% sliders. Differences in how pitchers approach two batters will conversely require different hitting approaches.

That being said, let’s dive right into it by first looking at the left-handed Votto and his swinging strike percentages against fastballs (pitches from 2009-2010, 1209 fastballs from RHP, 630 fastballs from LHP):

The first thing that jumps out right away is that the colors contrast greatly with Tulowitzki’s SwStr% graphs against fastballs. Despite seeing less pitches in the strikezone, Votto, a left-handed hitter, swings more (Swing% of 47.7%) than Tulowitzki (43.3%), which is represented by the larger swing zones in the above graphs. He also whiffs on over 30% of high fastballs, and up to 40% of low and inside fastballs from LHP. Let’s see if Votto fares any better against sliders (pitches from 2009-2010, 384 sliders from RHP, 349 sliders from LHP):

Again, Votto sees a lot more ‘green’ than Tulo’s ‘blue’. Votto also has larger swing zones against sliders from both RHP and LHP. I mentioned earlier that one of Tulo’s strengths was his plate discipline, very good for most NL power hitters not named Albert Pujols. Compared to Tulo, Votto makes less contact off pitches when he does swing (Contact% of 77.7% as opposed to Tulowitzki’s 85.5%) and chases pitches he whiffs against more frequently.

This leads me to a compelling thought. One of the most interesting facets of baseball is how both batters and pitchers routinely adjust to one another over the years. With plate discipline statistics, we can catch a glimpse at how pitchers change their approaches to young batters season by season. Which of these discipline stats on Tulowitzki and Votto’s player pages would you look at to determine how pitchers have adjusted to each batter over the years? In turn, how about Tulo and Votto’s responses and their adjustments in approach? Feel free to discuss.

Dave Cameron wrote on Monday about Troy Tulowitzki and his case for the NL MVP award against Joey Votto. I thought I’d take a look at how pitchers in the rest of the NL West, particularly the Giants, could cool down Tulo’s recent hot streak, especially when the two teams face off this weekend.

I will only look at fastballs and sliders instead of all major pitch types, due to small sample size. I contemplated taking all of Tulo’s pitches since 2007, but Tulowitzki was a much different hitter in 2008 (.263/.332/.401) than he is now in 2008 (.325/.390/.588).

First up, let’s look at where pitchers get Tulowitzki to swing and miss on fastballs, whether the pitcher is right-handed or left-handed (pitches from 2009-2010, 1353 fastballs from RHP, 505 fastballs from LHP):

The red circular regions are what I call 50% swing zones and represent a concept I borrowed from Jeremy Greenhouse. Essentially, Tulowitzki swings at over 50% of all fastballs thrown inside the swing zone. The heat maps in this example are of swinging strike percentages (SwStr%), which is swinging strikes per pitch (as opposed to swinging strikes per swing, which I term Whiff%). Nothing too terribly surprising here, as Tulo, like most hitters, swings and misses the most when a high fastball comes. Tulo’s swing zone from RHP fastballs is larger than the one from LHP fastballs though, and it seems right-handed pitchers should occasionally throw the high and inside fastball. Let’s look at Tulowitzki against sliders (pitches from 2009-2010, 600 sliders from RHP, 159 sliders from LHP):

Here, you see smaller swing zones from Tulo, meaning he is less likely to swing at a slider than he is at a fastball. But when he does swing, the probability of a swinging strike is higher, especially on low and away sliders from RHP or low and inside sliders from LHP. If you look at the position of the swing zones relative to SwStr% hot spots, it would seem to me that Tulo chases low and inside LHP sliders more than he does low and outside sliders from RHP. In either case, Giants pitchers should look to throw timely low sliders going toward the pitcher’s glove side.

However, for the most part, Tulowitzki is very patient at the plate, only swinging the bat 43.4% of the time this season (recall from yesterday’s post that Vladimir Guerrero swings at 60.7% of all pitches). His patience seems to pay off in terms of limiting swinging strikes, as he whiffs on only 6.2% of pitches. As a comparison with other NL MVP candidates, Joey Votto whiffed on 10.3% of pitches this season while Ryan Zimmerman whiffed on 7.3% of them. If the Giants want to shut down Tulowitzki this weekend, looking to induce swinging strikes would be one possibility, but I believe it would be better to approach Tulo by avoiding solid contact.

One of my favorite stats pages on FanGraphs is the Plate Discipline Leaderboard. In it, you can find out which hitters swing at pitches out of the strikezone (O-Swing%), make most contact when swinging (Contact%), or see the most pitches in the zone (Zone%). In particular, Swing% tells us which batters swing at the most pitches or the fewest pitches. It should not be surprising that Vladimir Guerrero is the leader in this stat this season, swinging at 60.7% of all pitches. On the other end of the leaderboard, his Rangers’ teammate Elvis Andrus is 6th this season in the least percentage of pitches swung at with 36.9%.

I was curious to see how Guerrero and Andrus differed in Swing% based on different pitch types: fastballs, sliders, curveballs, and changeups. I modeled each batter’s Swing% vs. each pitch type by handedness and plotted heat maps for each one. Turns out I came up with 16 graphs, so let’s take a look at four of them at a time. The first four are Guerrero and Andrus against RHP and LHP fastballs:

Guerrero saw 2335 RHP fastballs and 904 LHP fastballs since 2007 while Andrus saw 1522 RHP fastballs and 541 LHP fastballs since his debut. The levels on the right can be read as percentages, so 0.8 indicates swinging at 80% of pitches. Guerrero loves to swing at fastballs from both hands, swinging at 80-90% of fastballs up and in while inside the zone. The centers of these fastball hotzones are similarly located for Andrus, but he swings at far fewer fastballs, maybe topping out at 65-70% in his hottest spots. Let’s look at the next four, which are against RHP and LHP sliders:

Guerrero saw 1040 RHP sliders and 174 LHP sliders since 2007 while Andrus saw 429 RHP sliders and 88 LHP sliders since his debut. Again, Guerrero hacks at a lot of sliders, particularly low and inside sliders from LHP. It seems that Andrus is also pretty vulnerable in swinging at low LHP sliders, but many of these are low and outside instead for the young right-handed hitter. Let’s look at how the teammates swing at RHP and LHP curveballs:

Guerrero saw 441 RHP curveballs and 208 LHP curveballs since 2007 while Andrus saw 262 RHP curveballs and 105 LHP curveballs since his debut. Similarly, both Guerrero and Andrus swing more at LHP curveballs than they do against RHP curveballs. Remember, these plots are looking at Swing% and are not indicative of whether the result of the swing was a swinging strike or an extra base hit. However, you can safely assume that a low breaking ball out of the zone is not a wise pitch to swing at (well, except that Guerrero is notorious for making solid contact off pitches out of the zone, but that’s for another post). Finally, let’s look at Guerrero and Andrus swinging against RHP and LHP changeups:

Guerrero saw 313 RHP changeups and 278 LHP changeups since 2007 while Andrus saw 237 RHP changeups and 212 LHP changeups since his debut. The colors in these plots look similar to that of fastballs, except that the epicenters of the hot swing spots are lower for changeups than for the high fastballs. Again, Guerrero isn’t afraid to swing at inside RHP changeups, swinging at 90% in some areas, while Andrus lays more of these pitches off, swinging at about 50% of changeups throughout the strikezone.

A lot of interesting questions could be asked from here in terms of comparing Guerrero and Andrus. For instance, how often does Guerrero make contact off of low sliders compared to Andrus when he swings? How much damage does Guerrero make off of changeups down the middle compared to Andrus? Is Guerrero swinging at too many pitches or is Andrus swinging at too few? This season, Guerrero has made contact 80.6% of the time he swings, while Andrus, although swinging at many fewer pitches, makes contact 88.4% of the time when he does.

A quick look at pitch type values can also tell us which hitter is more successful against which pitch types. Obviously, Guerrero has much more power than Andrus does and is particularly effective at hitting curveballs and changeups, with a wCB/C of +6.85 runs and a wCH/C of +4.68 runs — good for 1st and 2nd in the majors this season. However, the one pitch that Guerrero is worse at hitting this season is the slider, with a wSL/C of -0.52 runs (he has been more successful in the past).

Much more information can be gleaned if we look at contact, batted ball, or SLG% plots. For now, it’s fun to marvel at visualizations of vastly different approaches in plate discipline.

We’re pleased to welcome Albert Lyu as the newest writer for FanGraphs. He impressed us with his submissions to the Community Blog, and so we’ve found a spot for him here on the team. We think you’ll enjoy having his work published here regularly.

Dave Allen has talked at length about Mariano Rivera’s cutters and how well he locates them, but it’s always interesting to analyze what many consider to be the greatest pitch in the game. I don’t believe that there is any other pitch in the game right now that can be used so exclusively yet so dominantly the way that Rivera uses his cutter.

We know that Rivera has pinpoint control and likes to work the outer and inner edges of the strikezone against both right-handed batters and left-handed batters. We also know that Rivera is great at working the count, rarely getting to three balls. Combining both of these ideas, can we figure out how Rivera works the count based on the locations of his cutters?

I took all of Rivera’s cutters since 2007 and split them into different count situations not including the 3-2 count: first pitch, behind in the count, ahead in the count, and with two strikes. Borrowing Dave’s terminology, I wanted to see if Rivera’s cutters exhibit a bimodal distribution consistently and how the pitches are distributed differently around the inside and outside edges of the strike zone based on the count situation. First up, let’s compare the first pitch of an at-bat Rivera throws against right-handed hitters to left-handed hitters (all plots are from the catcher’s perspective):

Keep in mind that Rivera’s cutter moves toward LHH and away from RHH. It’s clear that Rivera likes to start off an at-bat by throwing his cutter in the same location, throwing outside to RHH consistently but occasionally going inside as well. Against LHH, Rivera almost exclusively throws inside on the very first pitch. Notice also that most of these pitches are within the strikezone, again, mostly outside to RHH and inside to LHH. Let’s take a look at how Rivera locates his cutter when he is behind in the count with more balls than strikes:

In this case, Rivera forms more of a horizontal bimodal distribution than on the first pitch, locating cutters on the inside and outside edges of the strikezone against both handed batters. He also consistently hits the strikezone, but isn’t afraid to go inside on LHH and out of the zone even when he’s behind in the count. Let’s compare this with his cutters when he’s ahead in the count with more strikes than balls:

Here, we see a very clear bimodal distribution, where Rivera works both the inside and outside edges to both RHH and LHH. Against RHH, he loves to go outside again, but goes inside a lot more than he does on the first pitch. Against LHH, he goes inside more, but also goes outside a decent amount. What amazes me about this specific graphic is that the middles of each of the four hot spots of Rivera’s cutter locations are bisected by the border of the strikezone, whether it’s the inside border or the outside border. This speaks to the uncanny control that Rivera has and how he loves to attack either edge of the strikezone when he’s ahead in the count, likely inducing both called strikes and swinging strikes. Finally, let’s look at Rivera’s cutter locations when he has two strikes:

These look similar to the plots when Rivera is ahead in the count except for two significant differences. Against RHH, Rivera goes higher in the zone, especially up and inside in addition to the outside edge. Against LHH, Rivera goes outside much more than he goes inside, very different from the other count situations against LHH where Rivera goes inside more. With two strikes, both RHH and LHH should expect the outside cutter most of the time.

Just looking at traditional statistics will appropriately show how dominant Rivera has been in his career (2.21 ERA, 8.2 K/9, and 1.00 WHIP in over 1145 IP). However, the plots above tell us how he has achieved such success: by living on the black against both right-handed and left-handed hitters and being able to consistently hit his various spots so that hitters are forced to swing at difficult pitches no matter the count.