Zito…Pitches…Well?

Following a disastrous 0-6 start that saw him allow 56 baserunners in 28.2 innings, the Giants demoted Barry Zito to the bullpen. How bad was his start to the season? His average game score, which measures the in-depth quality of a start, comes in at 34; with game scores, 50 is the starting point for quality. He struck out just 11 batters while walking 15 and surrendering four home runs. Though his FIP of 5.81 suggested a 7.53 ERA may have been too harsh, 5.81 is not going to help a manager sleep at night.

Prior to a game against the Phillies, cameras spotted Zito getting advice from the venerable Jamie Moyer. I guess since Zito is already pitching like a 70-year old lefty he might as well learn how to be effective as one. Or maybe they were talking about Moyer’s favorite episode of Dharma and Greg.

Either way, Zito’s demotion did not last long as he made no relief appearances and was given the ball to start last night. Perhaps the demotion served its purpose as a wakeup call or one of those trips to the disabled list with a phantom injury.

As the title of this post suggests, though, Zito actually pitched pretty well. Generally a fastball, curveball, changeup pitcher, Zito had been struggling with velocity; if his fastball lacked speed there would not be enough of a separation between that and the changeup. Additionally, if hitters knew he had a weak fastball, he could not utilize it to keep them off guard; therefore, his curveball would look like hanging junk instead of the devastating out pitch it used to be.

In his previous start, April 27th against the Reds, Zito got clocked with a fastball ranging from 80-82 mph. In fact, some of his fastballs were so slow that the classification algorithm mistook them for changeups. Last night, however, against the Pirates, the Pitch F/X data says that the vast majority of Zito’s heaters came in the 84-86 mph range.

He threw a first pitch strike to just 7 of the 18 batters that did not put it in play on the first pitch. Despite this, he only walked two batters, and recorded a season high five strikeouts. Of these strikeouts, he did not follow a pattern in using a specific out-pitch but he did use his curveball as a major device. If he didn’t strike a batter out with the curve he would use it to set up the following pitch. All five of these strikeouts came from either a curveball or a sequence set up by the curveball.

His changeup was quite effective last night, however two poor ones resulted in the only two runs he surrendered; essentially, these hanging changeups handed him a seventh loss. Throwing it exclusively to righties, here is a location chart:

zitochange.JPG

The circled pitches are the two hits that cost him: a single and a home run in the fourth inning given up to Jason Bay and Xavier Nady respectively. The home run came on the pitch with the larger circle.

Here is a look at Zito’s movement last night:

zito-movement.JPG

Though a few of his curveballs lacked efficient movement the larger majority moved quite a bit. Very interesting is his fastball movement. Last night it averaged around five horizontal inches and twelve vertical inches. Here is his movement from the 4/27 start:

zitomovement2.JPG

Here his fastball averaged about three horizontal inches and eleven vertical inches. Not only has his fastball lacked velocity but apparently it has also lacked sufficient movement to garner some positive results. His changeup was much more consistent last night as well.

Hopefully, for the sake of Giants fans, Zito can build on this in his next start. While he is still on pace to at least tie the all-time losses record (29), this particular loss must have been pretty uplifting for his confidence.





Eric is an accountant and statistical analyst from Philadelphia. He also covers the Phillies at Phillies Nation and can be found here on Twitter.

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Charles Cashdollar
15 years ago

Why do you say Zito did fairly well “albeit against the Pirates”?? Look at the Pirates’ runs scored and runs allowed compared to the National League. The Pirates have been losing because of lousy starting pitching; they are easily the league’s worst in runs allowed. But, their runs scored ranks quite high–only Chicago, Arizona, and LA have scored more runs. So, it’s not very fair to opposing pitchers to imply they are getting a break when they face the Pirates’ batters.