In case you don’t follow every last thing I put out on my twitter feed you may have missed these strange factoids. Anthony Rizzo was traded from San Diego to Chicago for Andrew Cashner. Rizzo’s last Major League game was against the Cubs (0-3 with a walk) at Petco Park. In his final at bat, […]

Against the division rival Rays, Ivan Nova spun an excellent game, going eight-plus innings, allowing just four hits (including none from the second batter of the game until the eighth inning) and one run while walking one, hitting one, and striking out five. He also got 12 balls on the ground out of 22 hit […]

Buster Olney had this to say about Roy Halladay’s pitch mix: The percentage of Roy Halladay pitches that were fastballs in ’11: 27. Pct. of Halladay pitches that were fastballs in ’12: 8. — Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) May 28, 2012 I have no idea what he’s talking about. First and foremost, Doc doesn’t throw four-seam […]

During Wednesday’s start against the Rays, Clay Buchholz began toying around with a new pitch in his arsenal: a splitter. Buchholz used it on an 0-2 pitch against the left-handed hitting Elliot Johnson, leading off the fifth inning. Below is the spin chart from Buchholz’s most recent start, with his typical offerings—four-seam fastball: brown, two-seam […]

The recent injuries to Mariano Rivera and David Robertson have caused something of a stir at the back end of the Yankees bullpen. Rafael Soriano, once the nominal “seventh-inning guy,” has taken hold of the closer’s role, meaning that the Yankees have needed to piece together their setup duties. Fortunately for New York, they have […]

Derek Lowe tossed a shutout on May 15, 2012. Mark it down. Three points of significance: It was Lowe’s first shutout since 2005 and the fourth of his career He didn’t strike out a single batter He shelved his slider and cutter for the night There’s a connection between Lowe’s pitch mix and whiff rate. […]

Jason Hammel picked-up (and/or emphasized) a two-seam sinker this year for the Orioles. Across the continent, Brandon McCarthy—as we all know—likes sinkers, too. While Hammel’s has flown under the radar, it shouldn’t for much longer. And perhaps McCarthy should look into the SI cover effect. In 2012, there are 54 pitchers with 110 or more […]

Shark Spellcheck F7 Jeffrey Alan Samardzija Starting pitcher Call him what you want, but Jeff Samardzija’s impressive spring training carried over into the regular season. In just his sixth big league start, and first since the end of 2010, the former Notre Dame wide receiver was one Starlin Castro throwing error away from a complete […]

We (Harry and I) have released PITCHf/x based statistics for every umpire that has called a PITCHf/x enabled game, provided that they called enough pitches to accurately represent their called strikezone. We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read this post before using our umpiring data. Being an umpire is hard. It might be […]

About a year ago, sometime during John Lackey’s precipitous decline into worthlessness, I started paying attention to an odd phenomenon in which he would lose velocity during games: Here, we can see a clear slope in fastballs thrown over the course of the game. It’s as if there’s some direct, measurable relationship between how many […]