Big Z’s Big Day
23,441 people showed up in Milwaukee to watch the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros play last night. Those fans who showed up to watch two out of market clubs battle were rewarded by a gem of a performance from Carlos Zambrano, who tossed the second no hitter of the season and the first by a Cubs pitcher in 36 years.
He faced one batter more than the minimum, walking Michael Bourn – one of the worst hitters in the game – and hitting Hunter Pence with a pitch. But beyond those short command lapses, he was dominating. He stuck out 10 Houston batters and, more impressively, only let two balls out of the infield – Migeul Tejada flew out to right fielder Mark DeRosa to end the first inning and Geoff Blum flew out to DeRosa to start the eighth. He got 13 groundball outs and an infield fly, so even when the Astros were making contact, they weren’t doing much with it.
The results are obvious, but for fun, let’s take a look at the process. Here’s a graph of each of Big Z’s pitches with velocity on the vertical axis and the pitch count on the horizontal axis.
One thing should really stand out – he threw fastballs on nearly every pitch. Look at all those dots up around the 95 marker, and how few there are below 90, especially at the start of the game. It was just one fastball after another, overpowering Houston with heat.
All told, of the 110 pitches Zambrano threw, Pitch F/x classified 86 of them as fastballs, plus another three sinkers and four cutters, which are basically just variances of the fastball. If you include those, he threw 93 fastballs, nine change-ups, and eight sliders.
85 percent of his pitches were fastballs of some sort, and just 15 percent could be called an off-speed pitch. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the advantage a pitcher can get from mixing his pitches and keeping hitters off balance, but Zambrano took the exact opposite approach, throwing an overpowering fastball and not backing off of his best pitch. It obviously worked.
Congratulations to Zambrano on his first career no hitter, and to the 23,441 who had the good sense to drive to the park.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The walk to Bourn – Zambrano was openly doubting the umpiring. There were some close pitches in that AB that didn’t go Zambrano’s way, so it’s not like his command was really ‘lapsing.’ However, other than that AB, he had a number of full counts in the game and all but Bourn’s ended up in his favor. On Gameday his PFX numbers shows some pretty amazing movement on his fastball today. I guess that kind of movement is what helps him outperform his FIP so often.
It sure looks like he was firing yesterday. Throwing more fastballs than usual (already he’s a pretty fastball-heavy guy) and throwing them harder than usual. With his recently reportedly sore shoulder, this seems strange (and strained). Recently Brandon Morrow made his MLB debut and seemed to really be amped, throwing nearly harder than he had averaged as a reliever. He came back, predictably, in his second start and brought it down a couple notches. Has anyone looked at velocity spikes (statistically significant ones, that is) from start to start and if they have any predictive value relating to velocity in the following start/starts? I wonder if Big Z will be back down to 90/91 in his next start.
Listening to len and Bob talk about his velocity in the late innings, it seems as if they were a bit skeptical of the radar gun readings in Milwaukee. Zambrano hasn’t thrown in the upper nineties in three or four years. Let that sink in. His fastball didn’t look all that much stronger than usual. Are these FX speed numbers based off of the gun numbers in Milwaukee? If they are, they might be a bit off. What made him so tough was the movement. Look no further than the final pitch of the game. That pitch to Erstad was as nasty as it gets for Z. I’m happy for the Z. He’s a real nice guy and a funnyman.
Right? That’s why I wonder if there hasn’t been or should be a little study in comparing F/X readings/data from park to park, day-to-day, etc. I was a bit skeptical of Morrow’s first start speeds and this Zambrano data seems weird (seeing eye, all of these statements, obviously– that’s why I’m wondering about an inquiry).
Speaking of Bourn, I wonder what impact the decision to give him almost 500 PAs has had on the Astros playoff hopes.