Tuesday’s game is a big one, as they all are at this point. Essentially, the Sox get a Brandon Morrow vs Tim Wakefield rematch, the same matchup from last Wednesday in Toronto. In that game, Wake allowed four earned run in five innings, but the Sox offense put a whooping on Morrow, who was tagged for eight earned runs in 4.1 innings, including two homers. That wa sonly the beggining of the scoring however, as the Sox ended up losing 10-11. This time, however, the Sox will play in front of the home crowd.
A lot is riding on the shoulders and fluttering knuckle ball of Wakefield. The Rays are only three games back of the Sox, who have the current lead in the Wild Card race. Can Wake keep the ball in the ball park, keep the Sox in the game and put himself in position to finally win number 200? He’ll have to keep the ball from dangling out over the plate to insure himself the best chance for victory, but he hasn’t been doing much of that this season.
In last Wednesday’s matchup, Wake got hurt when he left pitches up in the zone and over the plate. You can see from this pitch f/x chart at BrooksBaseball.net evidence of that as well as evidence that he wasn’t getting some strike calls low in the zone that should have gone for strikes.
As a matter of fact, according to pitch f/x from TexasLeaguers.com, Wake has been getting many more strike calls on pitches up and out of the strike-zone than he has low in the zone this season. While I understand that this is just the nature of the beast when it comes to umpires attempting to gauge the entry path of a wobbly knuckleball, the missed called strikes low in the zone this season haven’t been consistent with data from the previous two years, though there sowmehat close to his 2009 data.
Is this forcing Wake to raise his strike-zone? I find that somewhat hard to believe — that any pitcher would try and work frequently up in the zone — but if he’s not getting the calls low in the zone, he has to be, to some extent at least, forced to locate higher if he’s behind in the count. That’s a recipe for disaster.
If we compare Wake’s strike-zone data over the past three years, we find that this season his location in general has migrated more toward the upper-center of the plate.
(Images start from 2009)
You can see in the last image that the thickest cluster of black marks seems to reside almost center cut up in the strike-zone. If this trend continues during Wednesday’s matchup, it could spell trouble. Then again, perhaps the knuckleball gods will put a little extra shake-and-bake on the ball to help Wake reach the 200 win plateau. Yeah, sure.
Whether the change has come from disintegrating skill or the result of getting fewer strike calls low in the zone, it has not been a good trend for Wakefield this season. His knuckleball has been worth -16.7 weighted runs above average this season. He has never seen such poor results on his knuckler before — though it was trending that way last season (-10.1 wKN). I’m willing to bet a lot of that damage has come due to location.
Let’s hope Wake finds better results this time around against the Jays or it’s going to be another sleepless night for Red Sox Nation.