I’m never one to jump on single game data, but I’m also never one to pass up a chance to play with Pitch F/x and also test the announcers claims. Sunday and Monday have been full of chatter on Beckett and that it was only one game, but also that his stuff was not under control.
Then add in a contract extension the next day and you have the perfect chance for me to pull out my November contract extension commentary. I’ll save that for the end though and lets jump right into the data.
Here is his pitch chart from last night thanks to BrooksBaseball
| Pitch Statistics (Velocity Histogram) | |||||||||
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Nibbleness | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 93.89 | 95.6 | -8.69 | 11.77 | 38 | 24 / 63.16% | 1 / 2.63% | 4.80 | 0.405 |
| CH (Changeup) | 87.66 | 88.7 | -8.82 | 7.50 | 15 | 12 / 80.00% | 0 / 0.00% | 3.89 | 0.430 |
| CU (Curveball) | 75.78 | 77.2 | 6.60 | -3.00 | 14 | 4 / 28.57% | 0 / 0.00% | 8.22 | 0.506 |
| FC (Cutter) | 90.30 | 91.9 | 0.77 | 12.43 | 2 | 1 / 50.00% | 0 / 0.00% | 5.23 | 0.413 |
| FT (TwoSeam Fastball) | 92.97 | 94.4 | -11.05 | 8.97 | 11 | 5 / 45.45% | 0 / 0.00% | 5.39 | 0.404 |
| Pitch classifications provided by the Gameday Algorithm and may be inaccurate. Clicking individual pitch types will provide individual velocity histograms for each pitch. Nibbleness is the arithmetic mean of the distance of each pitch, in inches, from the edge of a normalized strikezone. Lower indicates “more Nibbley”. |
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We can compare those velocities and movement numbers to his previous seasons to see what was off in his control Sunday, if anything. First up we can ignore the cutter since two pitches is insignificant and not a good measure. Although it is worth noting that he threw cutters five percent of the time in 2009, which was his highest value yet.
His fastball was right on the mark for his 2009 speed of 93.9 and his average of 94.0 since Pitch f/x began use in 2007. His other pitches matched as well showing there was nothing going wrong there. Not that we had any reason to think so.
When we get to the movement though we can see he didn’t have it on Sunday. Starting with the fastball we see his horizontal movement was fine, but an average “rise” of 11.77 is huge compared to a 7.9 average since 2007. That means without accounting for release point his fastballs were ending up almost four inches higher than usual. That is huge in a strike zone only two feet tall.
That seamed to be his problem across the board as all his pitches had vertical numbers three to five inches higher. That means his pitches were staying that much higher in the zone. That means more fly balls and more homers are headed his way when this happens.
There is no reason to think he has any problems and it’s likely if you look at previous seasons, he has had games like this mixed in. His release point was clumped in the lower half of previous graphs and seemed fine. I think Beckett just didn’t have his best stuff and should rebound in his next start.
While we are discussing Beckett I would like to take this chance to pat my back a little and point to an article I wrote back in November. Valuing Josh Beckett. Here was my final call on a contract value:
I’d be willing to give him $17 million for 2 of the three years as well making it more like a 4/64 contract. I don’t have any clues to what Beckett is looking for, but I’m pretty sure the Sox would like to keep this deal under 5 years.
So I missed by just $4 million on the low side and have no problem with the final value. This is a pitcher who has been worth an average of 5.6 WAR on average his past three years and holding the contract to four years should avoid to much risk for a year of dead money to injury or aging.