Where Not to Locate
Wow, what a trading deadline that was! One for the ages certainly and one that people will remember whenever trade deadlines are mentioned, forgetting that the vast majority are closer to snoozefests than the shop-a-thon of this year’s.
Given how active it was, it is easy to have July 30’s Chicago-Colorado game get a bit lost in the shuffle. To recap, here is what happened with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning:
Carlos Gonzalez single
Troy Tulowitzki double
Brad Hawpe double
Chris Iannetta triple
Ian Stewart home run
Clint Barmes single
Melvin Mora double
Dexter Fowler home run
Ryan Spilborghs single
Carlos Gonzalez single
Troy Tulowitzki double
Brad Hawpe walk
Chris Iannetta walk
Ian Stewart fly out
Thirteen consecutive hitters reached base spanning three pitchers: Sean Marshall, Andrew Cashner and Brian Schlitter. Cashner was the worst of the offenders, coming in after Hawpe’s double and being relieved after Spilborghs’ single. He faced six hitters and recorded no outs on six balls in play. Here Cashner’s pitch location chart, courtesy of BrooksBaseball:
Note the light blue marks representing balls put into play of which there were six and none resulting in an out. Five of the six were centrally located vertically and the one that wasn’t was over the middle of the plate at the knees. Four them could be called center-center. Suffice to say, that’s not the great place to try and live for a pitcher and it’s no wonder that the Rockie hitters were able to tee off so effectively.
Matthew Carruth is a software engineer who has been fascinated with baseball statistics since age five. When not dissecting baseball, he is watching hockey or playing soccer.
The pitch location that ended the game was “piss poor” as well. CarGo hit the crap out of that.
I know the information is just from one game but this is what I mean when I state that pitchers have *some* influence on BABIP and HRA.
I would not be surprised if the leaguewide wOBA on “center” pitches is .400+. In pitching this is what is referred to as “missing in the zone” and is the difference between “control” (they were strikes) and “command” (likely not where the pitcher wanted it).
Instead of looking at it and thinking “bad luck on BIP”, this would be a good example of what one should expect when so many pitches are centered at the ML level.
That’s what makes pitching at the ML level so difficult, you can make multiple good pitchers to a batter, and one mistake, and you’re hurt. What makes hitting so difficult is that pitchers that do that aren’t long for MLB. Very unforgiving.
A large part of the increased performance on center-center pitches is going to come from fewer strikeouts and more HR, though.
I always think of control and command as entirely different qualities. Control would be his ability to hit his spots. If he misses his target location, he didn’t have good control. I think of “command” as his ability to consistently deliver his pitches in the way he intended, i.e., throwing them at a certain speed, with a certain amount of spin and spin angle so they have the desired break, etc. If some of his pitches come out flat, or don’t have good movement, aren’t thrown with the proper velocity, he is lacking command of his pitches.
That’s all about nomenclature, of course. I think those terms mean different things to different people.