LINK: ESPN’s Anatomy of a Pitch

Well, this is a pretty neat example of what journalism can look like with multiple mediums incorporated: video, interviews, heat maps, and pitch data. ESPN talked to the D’Backs pitchers about their various pitch types, and while some of them are basically the same thing — you even hear Brandon McCarthy refer to his two-seam fastball as a sinker in his video, even though Brad Ziegler is the official sinker guy — it’s still a pretty neat interactive way of looking at pitch types and mechanics.

Kudos to ESPN for featuring this kind of baseball analysis. More and more, I think the average fan is interested in the why and the how, and media pieces like this will help promote some understanding of things that are basic to the players but haven’t always been easily accessible to the public.

Check it out, and let’s hope the baseball media in general sees the market for stuff like this going forward.