Please welcome new Fire Brand author, Harry Pavlidis.
One of the most appealing aspects of PITCHf/x is the opportunity it gives researchers to spot changes in a pitcher’s stuff. With millions of tracked pitches, and thousands for some pitchers, it can be difficult to do.
First, you have to notice something is different. A pitch at a certain speed that moves like none of the other pitches a guy throws. It’s actually more likely you’ll find yourself diving into PTICHf/x data to verify something you’ve read or heard. But, sometimes, a blip on the PITCHf/x radar turns out not to be a data error, or a pitch that slipped, but a new offering.
Second, now that you’re aware (one way or the other), you have to take a moment to consider the pitch development process. Perhaps this is something you’d expect to be commonplace in places like Spring Training or Minor League games–a pitcher fiddling with a new grip, adjusting and adapting it until he reaches a point of comfort.
At this point, unless you’re working bullpen sessions, none of us have seen the new pitch, right? Maybe they’ll feel OK about it and try it out in a game, or simply break it out in earnest all the sudden.
Or maybe they’ll just throw the sucker to big league hitters in real games until they reach that comfort point.
Today we can talk about two Red Sox pitchers who have added a new pitch during the season. Clay Buchholz, who debuted his splitter at a convenient time, and Josh Beckett, throwing a slider for a few weeks that a few of us were calling “a strange cutting change-up, perhaps a splitter”.
Chickens, Eggs, Graphs, Tweets
No this isn’t about fried chicken. I wouldn’t dare bring up that nonsense in my first appearance here. No, not me. Not gonna talk about video games, beer or fried chicken. Or golf. Not even a little.
So as mentioned above, there’s usually the “hey what’s that” or the “I read that somewhere, let’s go see” moment when discovering newly added pitches. Sometimes the chicken and the egg arrive around the same time.
As Lucas Apostoleris wrote at The Hardball Times, Buchholz’s new pitch was confirmed by Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal after some funny looking pitches were spotted in a recent start.
The two charts Lucas posted are taken from my worksheets, and you can see the new splitter hanging out with a bit less speed and a bit more drop from his two-seam fastballs (or “sinkers”). When Lucas and/or Dan Brooks tweeted me about the unusual looking pitch we were looking at two pitches. One was a splitter, the other nothing special, as confirmed by MacPherson.
Buchholz has made one more start since the new pitch was spotted and confirmed, and Apostoleris posted a screen capture of the new grip from May 21.
Buchholz used the splitter three times in this most recent outing, finding the strike zone once. The ball, in turn, found itself in the bleachers thanks to Chris Davis. Can you believe Buchholz gave up a home run to a pitcher?
Anyway…this is possibly the second transition we’ve seen from Buchholz. First the slider-to-cutter switch and now the possible addition of a second off-speed pitch.
Clay Buchholz Pitch Arsenal 2008-2012
| Fastball | Sinker | Cutter | Slider | Curve | Change | Splitter | |
|
2008 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
||
|
2009 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
|
|
2010 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
||
|
2011 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
||
|
2012 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
Beckett’s new pitch was a slower discovery. It took some time to label it as a slider, as alluded to earlier, but Mike Ferrin started the move towards that label with a bit of reporting. While Brooks and I were saying the pitch was a new pitch, distinct from his cutter or change-up, it’a slider after all. Ferrin thought it was just a bad cutter, but his curiousty prompted his follow-up and led us all to the right label.
Josh Beckett Slider Usage, 2012
| April 7 |
2 |
| April 13 |
2 |
| April 18 |
0* |
| April 24 |
1 |
| April 29 |
2 |
| May 10 |
3 |
| May 15 |
3 |
| May 20 |
2 |
Beckett threw one or two cutters that could be marked as sliders on April 18. In any case, his arsenel has changed for the first time since 2008, when he added the cutter.
Josh Beckett Pitch Arsenal 2007-2012
| Fastball | Sinker | Cutter | Slider | Curve | Change | |
|
2007 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
||
|
2008 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
|
|
2009 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
|
|
2010 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
|
|
2011 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
|
|
2012 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |