Can Pitch FX track the Okie Dokie?

Reader Bill in FLA asked about a few pitcher profiles we could run in Pitch FX, and the first player I thought would be an excellent example of Pitch FX’s capabilities and limitations is Hideki Okajima.

Part of the limitations of Pitch FX, is that until the technology has a way to verify the exact pitch the pitcher intended to throw, the classification is an approximation of the overall speed, movement, and release points the pitches have.  This is also why some pitchers have their pitches classified incorrectly, or in Oki’s case, a severe change in classification that was most likely caused by a change in one of those above factors.

My goal with Okajima is to see how Pitch FX would classify the “Okie Dokie”.  The team refers to it as part changeup/split/screwball.  We know he definitely does not throw it as often as his fastballs and curveballs, but we should be able to pull up his entire pitching maps and find a way to locate the collection of the Okie Dokies.

First, let’s look at the 2007-2009 composite of Okajima’s work.

Okajima 2007-2009

Now, this graph will have a lot of noise (the pitches labeled “CU” near the pitches labeled “2S” are outliers and improperly executed), but you should be able to make out the heavily populated areas of the 5 pitch types to help you decipher what a pitch “should” do.  The categorized pitches are:

CU: Curveball

CH: Changeups

FB: Fastballs

FS: Splitters

2S: Two seam Fastballs

Let’s try and find a group of pitches in these categories that are very unlike the standard layout I talked about last week.

Okajima’s curveballs, while not your typical 11-5 or 10-4 curveball path you’ll see Jon Lester throw, look more like a classic 12-6 curveball Kerry Wood and Cole Hamels also throw.  He throws this pitch fairly slow to, normally in the mid 70s, in comparison to his high 80s fastballs.

His 4 seam fastballs and changeups are normal.  While Okajima doesn’t throw many changeups(hence they being harder to see), they are very tightly clustered, and their frequency has increased each year he’s been with the team.

That leaves the pitches categorized as FS (Splitters) and 2S (two seam fastballs).  According to Fan Graphs, the 2S fastball (they list as FT) is a brand new pitch this year, having never been thrown before.  Unless Okajima begins to throw his shuuto again (which would look like a cut fastball, but slower), I highly doubt he’s secretly added a new pitch.  We also can see Oki’s splitters are offset to the right of his 4 seam fastballs, closer to the overall action of the Okie Dokie as we described above.

If we consider combining those two main pitch groups into one classification, that’s our Okie Dokie.  It has the combination of a changeup, a split, and a screwball, and it coincides with everything we’ve seen the pitch do: slightly run into left handers, drop like a split finger, and normally roll in slightly above his changeup speed.

One thing I did find, is that his Okie Dokies this year seemed to average about 2-3 mph slower than previous years, which was consistent with the slight decrease in overall velocity Oki suffered through this year.  I’m also curious whether this drop in velocity is possibly related to the fact that the motion to make the Okie Dokie act like a screwball is not quite the most healthy motion for an elbow.

To be honest, I was surprised he throws so few changeups; my perception was always the opposite.  But on inspection, it makes sense.  He’s mostly a fastball/curveball pitcher, and sprinkles in a few changeups, and a modest amount of Okie Dokies– and we normally see this when he’s pushing for a strike 3.

So Bill in FLA, while this wasn’t focused on Okajima’s changeups (or lack thereof), hopefully this edition of analyzing a Pitch FX profile that didn’t have perfect pitch classification gave you a little more insight into what Okajima does out on the mound.