MLBAM Get's Super Fancy

Those of you have been reading the blog for a little while are probably somewhat familiar with MLBAM's pitch/fx system. It's what we, and serveral other's, have been using to get better insight into the art that is pitching. We've pretty much just used to try and explain Roy's abberationally high HR/FB rate most recently, but there is an absolutely gold mind of insight and analysis that is emanating from this data. Most Astros fans should now be familiar with it because JD and Brownie have been looking at close calls on "Pitch Tracker" (which is just a pared down version of the full pitch/fx data) all season long.

While at school, Evan and I were forced to watch several games on MLB's Gameday application, which aside from the lag, was a great way to keep up with the game "live". I sometimes keep Gameday open just to "see" the pitches better while I watch it on TV and to that effect, I was thrilled to see this announcement. Gameday now offers full 3-D modeling of each and every pitch. If you've every wondered just how filthy a Johan Santana change-up, you can easily see that now, from any angle you desire. It looks pretty awesome and I'm looking forward to playing around with it during tonight's rubber game.

Sphere: Related Content

Examining the Wizard: Roy Oswalt, a Case Study in Luck

Today, I was excited to see this article from The Hardball Times. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link and read the article, I’ll quickly summarize. The article looked at pitchers who were the unluckiest so far this season; measuring their rate stats against league averages to define unlucky. Astros fans should not be surprised to find out that Roy Oswalt was the most unlucky pitcher in terms of HR/FB (Home Runs per Fly Ball), posting an absolutely astounding 21.05% HR/FB so far this season. The article by, Derek Carty, goes on to normalize Oswalt’s (and the other pitchers listed in the article’s) outlandish rates stats back to league average levels, plug it into a very complex formula, and determine Oswalt (and company’s) LIPS ERA (Luck Independent ERA). Carty finds that by normalizing Roy Oswalt’s HR/FB back to league-average, Roy Oswalt owns a LIPS ERA of 4.08. Not an outstanding ERA, but I don’t think any Astros fan would quibble with having Roy Oswalt’s ERA be 1.30 earned runs lower.

The LIPS ERA concept works, because by-in-large, things like BABIP, HR/FB, and LD% are largely beyond the pitcher’s control (See above linked articles and this one for supporting evidence). However, what does the knowledge that Roy Oswalt has been unlucky tell Astros fans, or fantasy owners for that matter, about what to expect? Thankfully, Derek Carty again, provides some insight into a favored term bandied on this blog “the law of averages” or “regression to the mean”. Once again, for those to lazy to click the link, essentially we can expect Roy Oswalt to surrender HR/FB at a rate consistent with his career levels from here on out, meaning somewhere around 9% HR/FB, ( he’s never exceeded 12.9%).

To dig further than just discussions of luck and regression to the mean, I was graciously given Roy Oswalt’s pitch-result data from the talented and majestic Josh Kalk. Honestly, I cannot thank him enough for helping me, who knows absolutely nothing about database coding, for providing this data. While I had just about anything you’d ever want to know (and a lot you wouldn’t about) Roy Oswalt’s every pitch in 2008; save his last two starts (tonight’s start included) due to when I actually obtained the info. I’ve isolated only the pitches that resulted in HR, since that’s what we’re looking at (click here for an explanation of the data):



Quickly, here are the pitch averages for all of the available data on Roy Oswalt for 2007:



And then his 2008 pitch averages:



Clearly, movement is down on his Fastball (FB) and slider this year. Velocity does not seem to be the issue for Roy on his fastball in terms of HR allowed either. Of the 11 FB’s that turned into HR in 2008 for Roy, the average speed was 93.23 MPH (min: 91.62 max: 95.61), so that’s clearly not the issues as evident by just looking at his 2007 average. His movement on the FB’s that turned into HR: -4.09 in. X (min: -1.44 in. max: -8.16); 6.00 in. Y (min: 1.99 in. max: 10.85). There’s not as much life on the FB’s that became HR this year by comparison to Roy Oswalt’s 2007 numbers and on the whole his movement is just down. This probably explains his overall decline in strikeout related rate stats, but I don’t know that it really explains why he’s just getting crushed so much. However, I get the feeling that 11 FB's is just far to small of a sample size to say anything meaningful about. In fact if anyone can see any clear trait from the FB velocity or movement from the chart that indicates he's doing something that's allowing his HR spike, please speak up.

Note: I’m ignoring the three sliders, because his slider is just God awful this year, but not the issue apparently.

In my last attempt to decipher the enigma that is Roy Oswalt in 2008, I cited the fact that his release point seems excessively bunched, most likely in an effort not to tip his pitches, thus causing him to lose life on his pitches. While my initial conclusion from that observation was that it must be his slider that is getting pounded was wrong, I none the less stand by the observation as providing insight into his struggles to date.

Tonight, however, I am offering another observation. Looking back at Roy Oswalt’s HR pitches, all of but three of the fourteen pitches have one thing in common: men on base. While it is clearly a limited sample size, perhaps either pitching from the stretch, or the distraction of holding runners is causing Roy to throw pitches that are a bit more crushable. Food for thought at least. While it’s not an earth shattering observation, the pitch/fx data of his HR pitches revealed no other apparent trend. Oddly though, his 50/50 split of RHB/LHB going yard is elevated for his career 75/53 RHB/LHB HR split. There wasn’t a meaningful home/road split for the HR’s either.

Having spent the entirety of the game researching and writing this article, we saw some dominant pitching from Roy Oswalt tonight, but the Ryan Braun long ball makes it 17 HR the season. During the post game so far I’ve heard a lot of discussion centering around Roy Oswalt trying to pitch to contact more vs. trying to strike guys out. Our first attempt to discern what was ailing Roy Oswalt revealed little in the way of evidence that Roy was attempting to pitch to contact from his numbers, but there are probably short comings in trying to prove or disprove pitching philosophy from limited statistics. After an exhaustive combing of pitch/fx data, I’m left scratching my head. It seems that although pitch/fx is an incredible tool that is sure to further revolutionize baseball analysis, it also seems to support the assertion that pitchers have little control over their BABIP, DIPS, HR/FB, LD%, etc. If this is the case, we can only have one logical expectation of Roy Oswalt from here on out: that he should pitch in-line with his career numbers. Astros fans should rejoice and fantasy owners should do what they can to acquire him.

Sphere: Related Content

Examing the Wizard: The May Report

In April, we looked at Roy Oswalts’ struggles and determined that it wasn’t his fastball’s velocity that was hurting him, it was that his curve ball, just simply wasn’t curving. Well over a month has passed, and Roy Oswalt is still sporting a 5.61 ERA. While his ERA is inflated, his K-related rate stats have been solid: 6.9 K/9, 2.94 K/BB. It's the hits and the HR that's are killing him: 11.08 H/9 and 1.96 HR/9.

So, what’s changed? Last time we noted that his curve was flat. Looking again at his pitch/fx data from 2007 and 2008 we can see that there some disticnt changes to Roy’s pitches. The fast ball is 1/2 MPH slower, broke 9.51" down in 2007, but only 7.51" down in 2008. That's a significant amount of elevation to his fastaball. Roy's curve is now breaking as far down as it did 2007 (the red flag we sounded in our last post), but only moving away from RHB 4.33", where as in 2007 it broke 6.69 away, a 2.33" difference. So it's staying closer to RHB and not getting in as much on LHB, both if which makes easier to get wood on. Both of these 2" changes are very much the differnce between a swinging strike or a meekly hit ball, and an absolutely crushed ball. His slider has been even worse. In 2007 it broke 3.74" away from a RHB while dropping 2.46". However, in 2008 it's only breaking 1.86" away from RHB and only dropping 1.78" down -- I believe the term is hanging slider. Yet he’s throwing it at a much higher percentage, 17% this year compared to 14% in 2007. It’s an absolutely crushable pitch, and it might explain his unprecedented 15 HR surrendered.

In attempting to explain why it is that his pitches aren’t breaking as well as the used to, we’ve discerned a small, but perhaps meaninful difference in his release point.

2007 Release Points:


2008 Release Points:



It appears that, perhaps, in an effort not to tip his pitches, Roy is trying keep his release point constant. Our guess is that by tightening it release point up, he’s losing life from his pitches.

So there you go, impress your friends and family with your new found knowledge.

Sphere: Related Content

Examining the Wizard, 2.0

This past offseason, Astros fans heard quite often that our starting pitching would be a worrisome aspect of our club. Thirteen games in, the rotation has a total of two wins to show for it's otherwise competent work. For instance, every Astro starter has at least one quality start, except for one. Roy Oswalt has started his ninth major league season with an 0-3 record a 9.00 ERA. He has made no admissions about an injury being the cause (although he was hit with a batted ball in his first start against the Padres), and his fastball has been consistently around 93-94 MPH. Oswalt wondered openly whether or not he was tipping his pitches in last Friday’s loss to Florida. Whatever the case may be, Astros fans, Fantasy owners and the team itself are searching for reasons why one of the most consistent pitchers in the game has struggled to open the season.

For the past few years, writers and broadcasters have come to the conclusion that Roy Oswalt just doesn’t throw that hard anymore. Opinions differed as to whether this was due to declining skills or because he simply changed his philosophy, but this theory is becoming more entrenched in the baseball community. However, looking at his pitches from 2007, seem to indicate that he's still throwing hard. A glance at his average numbers should give 'Stros fans and fantasy owners a like a ray of hope, given that his pitches' speeds (hopefully he gets his location down or discerns whether or not he was tipping his pitches) have been in line with his 2007 averages, and 2007 was certainly a very effective year for Roy.

So why's he struggling then if velocity can't be blamed?

When looking at his career numbers, it is apparent that Roy has declining rate statistics associated with strikeouts. His walk rate jumped quite a bit in 2007, as evidenced by his sharp decline in K/BB. Besides that however, his statistics are remarkably consistent. Even his much talked about K/9 rate diminished only slightly after a fairly dramatic dip after the 2004 season. Has Oswalt has made an effort to reduce his pitch count by attempting to pitch to contact more, thereby using less pitches to get hitters out? Looking back at his split-season statistics, this hasn’t not been the case. Though, in 2007 this may have been due in large part to the high amount of walks he surrendered, stymying his ability to get contact.

Looking at his small sample of pitches from 2008, we can see that the problem has been his curve ball has significantly flattened. In 2007, his legendary curve ball broke, on average, 6.69" away from a right-handed batter, while dropping 6.35". In '08, his curve is breaking a scant 3.45" away from a right-handed batter and only dropping 3.73". Roy has said in a few interviews that he hasn't found the right grip for the pitch this year, and it certainly seems the case. As a result of not being able to use his curve ball effectively, Roy Oswalt is now throwing 5% more fastballs (from 65.53%, to 70.9%). If hitters are getting a steady diet of fastballs, Roy's bound for trouble.

What leads us to believe that his stuff will return and his 2008 struggles end, is his that his PERA from 2005-2007 have been improving (3.98, 3.73, 3.60 respectively) as his PECOTA projections indicate he should be regressing, if ever so slightly. Simply summed, the man is learning how to adjust to the fact that he's not as dominant as he used to be. Roy struggled at times last year to get a grip on his curve, but found his stride. While this is assuredly the worst period of his career, in reality, it's only been 16IP, and we should see him return to form.

For a man that is entrusted with anchoring perhaps the least proven (read: worst) pitching staff in baseball, this is welcome news. Oswalt probably will not achieve the levels of success that he had from 2001-2006, but rumbles concerning his eminent demise seem to be far from the truth, statistically speaking.

Sphere: Related Content