FG on Fox: What Makes a Good Curveball?
There are all sorts of prescriptions for a good changeup. We talk about things like ‘velocity gap’ and ’tilt’ and ‘fade’ when we talk about how good a changeup will be. But what about the curveball? Can we spot a good one coming?
We can use our Arsenal Score work to identify good curveballs in general, just as we used to find bad changeups a couple weeks ago. Basically, by weighting grounders and whiffs on a pitch, we can assign it a score based on those easy-to-identify and important outcomes.
According to this metric, here are the best curves thrown at least 100 times last year.
| Pitcher | GB% | swSTR% | Arsenal Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brett Cecil | 56% | 29% | 5.34 |
| Mark Melancon | 55% | 25% | 4.19 |
| Nick Masset | 90% | 15% | 4.15 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 62% | 23% | 4.04 |
| Blaine Hardy | 91% | 14% | 3.75 |
| Vic Black | 78% | 17% | 3.72 |
| David Robertson | 60% | 22% | 3.69 |
| Carlos Martinez | 53% | 24% | 3.50 |
| Cody Allen | 53% | 20% | 2.35 |
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Even when there’s no big, new revelation, it’s still cool to see ideas that we know (or at least suspect) to be true demonstrated with shiny numbers. Good work. Go math!