Bullpen Pitch Selections

For those unaware, David revamped the team pages today to provide some incredibly useful information for readers and researchers. Now, by clicking the link at the top of the page, you can sort the same statistics found on the league leaderboards for individual teams, as well as sort the overall team totals in several different categories. With the dominant bullpens of the Phillies and Rays, on display in Game One of the World Series last night, in mind, I decided to take a look at the pitch repertoires and frequencies for the bullpens of each team to see how they stacked up.

The Phillies bullpen threw an aggregate 52.5% fastballs, the lowest amount of any bullpen. Their relief corps of Brad Lidge, Ryan Madson, JC Romero, Scott Eyre, Clay Condrey, and Chad Durbin, rely moreso on offspeed pitches than all others. On the flipside, the Texas Rangers throw 69.5% fastballs, by far the most. As Dave noted earlier, perhaps a lower percentage of fastballs could help their 5.51 bullpen ERA moving forward.

The Padres bullpen threw the slowest fastball, on average, at 89.9 mph, with the White Sox leading the league at 92.5 mph. The White Sox led very narrowly over the Red Sox and Diamondbacks, both at 92.4 mph, and the Tigers at 92.3 mph. Matt Thornton is the only White Sox reliever in the top ten in the junior circuit, though Bobby Jenks does join him in the top thirty. The Red Sox, however, have Jonathan Papelbon, Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, and David Aardsma in the top thirty.

The Cubs threw sliders most often, at 33.1%, while the Orioles threw 11.6% curveballs, the highest frequency of any team. Moving to changeups, the Cardinals ‘pen threw them just 3.1% of the time, while the Royals threw at a percentage over five times higher, at 16%. And, lastly, the Angels and Royals led in splitter frequency, both chiming in under 5%.

No team threw 10%+ for four different pitchers, with the Rays and Rangers coming closest. The Rays threw 66.4% fastballs, 14.8% sliders, 8.6% curveballs, and 9.1% changeups. The Rangers threw 69.5% fastballs, 11.9% sliders, 7.5% curveballs, and 8.0% changeups. Both teams rely moreso on the fastball than anything else, but they did come closest to throwing four pitches ten percent or more of the time. This is just one of the neat things we are now able to do with the updated team pages.