Archive for White Sox

Following an Alex Rios lineout and an Aaron Hill strikeout, Mark Buehrle induced a grounder to third off the bat of Scott Rolen that should have ended the inning. A throwing error, ground-rule double, and single up the middle later, Buehrle found himself the victim of two unearned runs. He struck out Lyle Overbay to end the inning but the Blue Jays ultimately had all the run support they would need.

Despite posting a complete game line of 8 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, Buehrle suffered the loss; the committee of Shaun Marcum, Jeremy Accardo, Jesse Carlson, Shawn Camp, and Scott Downs collaborated on a two-hit shutout.

Buehrle threw exactly 100 pitches and 74 of them were strikes. Ironically, ten of those 26 balls came on the first pitch to batters. Here is his pitch breakdown:

• Fastball: 45, 87.8 mph
• Curve: 7, 72.4 mph
• Slider: 27, 83.5 mph
• Changeup: 21, 79.4 mph

Nobody swung and missed at his fastball though his slider proved difficult to make solid contact with; the White Sox fouled off nine of them and flat out missed six. Here are location charts showing where he threw his slider to righties and lefties:

While he tried to stay inside with the slider when facing lefties, he challenged righties in the zone more often with this offspeed pitch.

Facing a total of 29 batters, Buehrle threw a first pitch strike 16 times; ten of the first pitches were balls and another three were put in play. Unlike Matt Cain, who essentially throws a fastball to start every hitter, Buehrle started the White Sox offense with 18 fastballs and 11 breaking balls. With an 0-1 count Buehrle threw just two fastballs out of his 16 total pitches; with a 1-2 count he primarily threw changeups; on a 3-2 count he did not rely on his fastball, throwing two sliders and a changeup out of five pitches. Normally I would show this data in graphical or chart form but, when dealing with just one start, it would suggest patterns and tendencies that just cannot be determined with such a small sample.

Buehrle did not have an easily identifiable “out-pitch” last night as, with two strikes, he threw 13 fastballs, 2 curves, 7 sliders, and 8 changeups.

The aspect of pitch data that fascinates me most right now is sequencing: What does a pitcher throw after a certain pitch? Buehrle threw very few pitches to lefties but, against righties it becomes clear that he successfully mixed up his pitches.

When throwing his changeup to righties he definitely relied on additional offspeed pitches to accompany it rather than mixing speeds by throwing a fastball. In fact, there were six different plate appearances in which Buehrle threw three consecutive offspeed pitches. Never one to waste time on the mound, his quick work and mix of pitches and speeds successfully kept the Blue Jays off balance. Though his overall numbers suffer from an atrocious opening day start, Buehrle will have to pitch like this much more often for the White Sox to avoid the label of “pretender” and be in the race all year.

While Tom Gorzelanny may have had a no-hitter through 4+ innings on Thursday, John Danks threw five perfect innings this afternoon before his bid at history came to an end. Two major roadblocks stood in the way of a potential perfect game coinciding in the form of Brian Burres completely shutting down the White Sox offense. Burres went eight innings, giving up three hits and no walks, while striking out four en route to his third win of the season. He threw 98 pitches, two-thirds of which were strikes. Danks lost the perfect game but still had a very effective outing, lasting 6.1 innings while giving up just four hits; he did not walk a batter and struck out four. Of his 92 pitches, 64 were strikes (69.5%). The game looked completely even through the first five frames as evident by the steady polygraph pace in the game graph:

After five innings, no runs had scored, nobody had been walked, and the only two hits had been singles off the bats of Jim Thome and Carlos Quentin. Danks quickly lost his perfect game and no-hitter when Adam Jones singled to start the sixth inning. Jones swiped second base and came around to score on Guillero Quiroz’s first major league home run. A tad rattled, Danks gave up a single to Luis Hernandez; after giving up nothing for five innings he surrendered three consecutive hits. He settled down after the Hernandez at-bat, though, retiring Brian Roberts, Melvin Mora, and Nick Markakis. Heading into the bottom of the sixth the Orioles had staked Burres to a 2-0 lead.

A Toby Hall single in the bottom of the sixth broke Burres’s streak of 12 consecutive batters retired but he would not allow another runner to reach base for the rest of his time on the mound. After inducing a Juan Uribe groundout to the end the eighth inning his day came to an end. The Orioles provided three insurance runs in the top of the ninth off of Octavio Dotel before Matt Albers and George Sherrill closed the game out in the bottom half of the inning. Though the White Sox did score a run on a bases loaded hit by pitch from Carlos Quentin, it was too little, too late. Joe Crede flied out to end the game as the Orioles won 5-1.

Coming into this start, Burres’s numbers (2-1, 3.63 ERA) were a bit deceiving, as his K/9, BB/9, K/BB, BAA, and WHIP were all below the league average. In fact, he had a K/BB of just 0.90, surrendering 10 walks to go along with just nine punchouts. This helped to translate his 3.63 ERA into a 4.82 WHIP. Despite all of these below average rates he completely dominated a first-place offense simultaneously bringing the Orioles into a first-place tie with the Red Sox.