Author Archive: Corbin Young

We covered several starting pitchers that have been throwing more fastballs (sinkers and four-seamers) in June and July. Pitch mix changes intrigue me because they can be a concerted effort to make changes or a noisy small sample. Sometimes pitchers command a pitch better, or it’s just the normal fluctuation of pitches across their arsenal, with some thrown more often than others. Let’s examine four more starting pitchers who have been throwing more fastballs in June and July.

Read the rest of this entry »

One area that I like to examine for pitchers is their arm angle, which consists of their vertical and horizontal release points. Arm angle is a quick way to see whether a pitcher might have different vertical and horizontal release points that could impact movement. Arm angle tends to correlate best with vertical movement whether it’s without gravity (0.225) or with gravity (-0.258). I tend to look at pitch movement without gravity as induced vertical break, especially on four-seam fastballs. There’s an inverse relationship between arm angle and vertical movement with gravity. That indicates that pitchers with high arm angles can throw pitches with greater downward movement.

I’m working on a way to find correlations between arm angle and horizontal movement since different sites list horizontal movement differently. For instance, Baseball Savant shows inch values with the words arm and glove after the number value. Meanwhile, other sites have negative or positive values, indicating glove- or arm-side movement. My guess would be that arm angle correlates similarly or slightly worse without bucketing by handedness and pitch types. That said, it’s still not that strong of a correlation to vertical movement. 

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re following up on an earlier piece covering starting pitchers who have been throwing fewer fastballs in June and July. One way to find pitchers making a pitch mix change is to look at players throwing more or fewer fastballs (sinkers and four-seamers). We averaged the fastball usage in June and July, then compared the pitch percentage to May. 

The visual below shows the starting pitchers throwing more fastballs in June and July.

Though we would love to examine more pitchers, we’re analyzing four that have been throwing more fastballs. If these pitchers have been throwing more fastballs, what’s different in their pitch mix? Does it matter? Why or why not? Let’s dive in.

Read the rest of this entry »

One way to find starting pitchers who have been making pitch mix changes is to see who is throwing fewer or more fastballs (four-seamers and sinkers). The table below shows the starting pitchers who have thrown fewer four-seamers and sinkers in June and July. I used a 3-percentage point dip as a cutoff.

I included the average wOBA for their four-seamers and sinkers to show whether it’s a pitch that has been hit hard or not. When a pitcher throws fewer fastballs, there’s probably a reason why. While we would love to examine all these starting pitchers on the list, it provides a starting point.

Let’s examine four starting pitchers who have been throwing fewer fastballs and whether that’s helpful in their arsenal. We covered a fifth name on this list, Joey Cantillo, in a recent swing timing and miss distance article. 

Read the rest of this entry »

We covered some of the best starting pitchers earlier in the week. Now, we’re covering the best starting pitchers with an average draft position (ADP) outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues. These pitchers have been performing better than the draft community expected.

The visual below shows the starting pitchers who have been drafted outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues, sorted by their earned value in the first half. If a player has a blank ADP, that means they were undrafted. 

Though Foster Griffin tops the list, I’ve already examined him in a rookie check-in article in mid-June. Kyle Harrison has been helping to win leagues, though he is on the injured list with a forearm injury. We would love to examine more of these starting pitchers (and maybe we will), but today we’ll highlight five.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s look at starting pitchers who have been performing well in the first half. The average draft position data comes from 12-team leagues in NFBC formats. Meanwhile, the dollar value is the earned value via the FanGraphs Player Rater data. The visual below shows the top 25 starting pitchers sorted by earned value in the first half, including their draft price and results.

While 10 of these 25 pitchers come from outside the top 150 in ADP, today we’ll examine some of the more highly drafted starting pitchers on this list to identify whether they’ll continue their success for the second half, or might be sell high candidates.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re back with another rookie check-in, covering several rookies that have been making an impact in fantasy baseball leagues. The theme of today’s article is the examination of several left-handed starting pitchers. Two of these rookies have been performing well. The third pitcher has been struggling, but was a highly ranked prospect. 

We’re examining their strengths and weaknesses, notable parts of their arsenal, stuff, and command, intending to provide a recommendation for whether we should be buying, selling, or holding in keeper or dynasty leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had about a month to digest the Swing Timing and Miss Distance Leaderboards on Baseball Savant. Like with any new metric, there’s probably some noteworthy information and some noise. Let’s by looking at league averages across as a starting point. Here are the the league averages for these metrics across all pitches:

• Average Miss Distance: 2.67 inches
• Flawed Percentage: 7.5%
• Perfect Contact Percentage: 22.6%
• Tied Up Percentage: 8.8%
• Flailed Percentage: 26.3%
• Early Percentage: 21.8%
• Late Percentage: 14.1%

That will provide context for each metric as we dig into specific pitch types, in the table below. Forkballs, splitters, changeups, and breaking pitches (sliders, curves, slurves, sweepers) tend to lead to a higher average miss distance. Meanwhile, the fastball types (cutters, sinkers, four-seamers) generate misses of roughly two or fewer inches. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the week, we examined several pitchers who have been pitching better than their SIERA suggests. We’re following that up with pitchers who have been struggling and underperforming their SIERA this season.

The visual below shows the pitchers who ranked in the top 25 among pitchers who have underperformed their SIERA.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the best predictors of future pitcher success – K-BB% and SIERA – tend to correlate well with each other. So when you see a pitcher outperforming their SIERA while posting a low K-BB%, you have good reason to expect regression.

The visual below shows pitchers with 50 innings sorted by the largest difference in their ERA minus SIERA.

Read the rest of this entry »