Daily Notes: A Brief Review of Brandon Beachy’s Season Debut

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. A Brief Review of Brandon Beachy’s Season Debut
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Brief Review of Brandon Beachy’s Season Debut
Introduction
Undrafted out of Indiana Wesleyan University in 2008 following his junior year there, but subsequently signed that summer by Atlanta for $20 thousand out of a collegeiate wood-bat league in Virginia, right-hander Brandon Beachy proceeded to move rapidly through the Braves system. After recording strikeout and walk rates of 26.5% and 5.7%, respectively, in 208.0 innings in the minors, Beachy made his major-league debut in 2010. The following season, he was excellent, posting an 82 xFIP- and 2.8 WAR in 141.2 innings. After 13 starts in 2012, he was forced to undergo Tommy John surgery. His start last (Monday) night against Colorado at home was his first in the majors since June of last year.

What follows is a brief review of same.

Beachy’s Results
Beachy’s defense-independent performance on Monday varied considerably from his actual, real-live one. The 26-year-old recorded a 5:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 20 batters over 3.2 innings, producing an entirely reasonable 3.41 xFIP. Simultaneous to that, however, Beachy allowed two home runs and conceded hits on half the balls in play against him, ultimately making him responsible for eight runs (box).

Beachy’s Repertoire
As the PITCHf/x chart below (featuring speed and horizontal movement) reveals, Beachy threw four or five different pitches on Monday — a fastball at about 89-93 mph; a changeup at 81-84 mph; a slider at 80-84 mph; and a slow curve, at 70-74 mph. He also appears maybe to have thrown a lone two-seamer (see below).

Beachy’s Repertoire, Relative to 2011
As the following comparative charts suggest, Beachy exhibited more or less the same collection of pitches on Monday as he did during his very successful 2011 season — with the difference being possibly that his fastball was a little slower on Monday and his changeup faster but with less arm-side movement.

Action Footage: Beachy’s Fastball
Here’s footage from Monday — with Jorge de la Rosa batting — of Beachy’s fastball, which pitch has historically produced a higher swinging-strike rate than other pitchers’ fastballs:

Action Footage: Beachy’s Two-Seamer, Maybe
Here’s footage — also, again, to de la Rosa — of what was classified as a two-seamer and certainly which features more arm-side run than Beachy’s fastball, generally:

Action Footage: Beachy’s Fastball, Again
Finally, here’s footage of Beachy conceding a double to Dexter Fowler to begin the game — also on the fastball, but less well located than the two above:

Credit to Brooks Baseball for some of the PITCHf/x data here.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Arizona at Tampa Bay | 19:10 ET
Ian Kennedy (119.0 IP, 116 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR) faces Roberto Hernandez (113.1 IP, 89 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR). As noted yesterday, Tampa Bay has recorded a uncharacteristically high park-adjusted home-run rate for a team whose identity has generally been defined, in recent years, by a combination of plate-discipline (on offense), excellent pitching, and excellent defense.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.1.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	4	5	4	4	3	CHN	Carlos Villanueva	14:20
Lance Lynn	STL	6	3	6	7	7	PIT	A.J. Burnett	16:05
Tyler Lyons*	STL	6	3	5	7	5	PIT	Undecided	TBD
Jake Peavy	CHA	7	1	6	7	6	CLE	Scott Kazmir	19:05
Bud Norris	HOU	3	3	3	8	2	BAL	Wei-Yin Chen	19:05
Barry Zito	SF	1	5	3	0	4	PHI	John Lannan	19:05
Ste. Strasburg	WAS	10	2	9	7	10	DET	Anibal Sanchez	19:08
Ian Kennedy	AZ	3	2	5	10	6	TB	Rob. Hernandez	19:10
Juan Nicasio	COL	4	8	6	7	8	ATL	Alex Wood*	19:10
Zack Wheeler	NYN	3	6	4	1	6	MIA	Nathan Eovaldi	19:10
Joe Saunders	SEA	3	5	5	7	7	BOS	Bra. Workman*	19:10
C.J. Wilson	LAA	4	7	6	3	8	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Tyler Thornburg*	MIL	6	5	4	4	2	CHN	Jake Arrieta	20:05
Ervin Santana	KC	7	7	4	2	1	MIN	Mike Pelfrey	20:10
Mark Buehrle	TOR	5	7	6	6	6	OAK	Dan Straily	22:05
Mat Latos	CIN	9	3	6	6	3	SD	Edinson Volquez	22:10
Andy Pettitte	NYA	5	3	4	3	4	LAN	Zack Greinke	22:10

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.