It’s not Cordero’s fault

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If your closer can make Brandon Inge celebrate like this, he probably shouldn’t be your closer.

It’s not Francisco Cordero’s fault. It’s really not. Never mind the fact that, to date, opposition batters have posted a 1.164 OPS against him. Never mind that his ERA is closing in on double digits. Never mind the fact that he’s blown three of five save opportunities so far this year. It’s really not his fault.

The blame for Cordero’s failures has to fall squarely on the shoulders of manager John Farrell. No, Farrell is not on the field failing to get the job done, but Farrell is the one who continues to put Cordero in at times when it seems he shouldn’t be called upon.

Farrell has said many times that he misused the bullpen last year and that he believes the relievers need defined roles to help them succeed. I’m not one to completely deny the fact that psychological factors can affect a player’s performance, so I’m willing to buy it. But for Farrell to say that Cordero is “our guy” is just plain wrong.

The team has a capital-C closer (whether a team really needs someone in that role is an argument for another day). His name is Sergio Santos. Yes, he’s on the disabled list, but just because he’s out, doesn’t mean his role has to be filled.

It seems to me that Farrell should be telling his guys that, while Santos is out, who he calls upon to close out a game will be a decision based on how his relievers have pitched lately and any sort of statistical evidence that suggests a given pitcher would have success against whoever’s due up for the opposition in the ninth. Maybe that’s Jason Frasor or Darren Oliver. Maybe it’s Luis Perez. Hell, maybe it’s even Cordero.

I do believe that Cordero has value. I do believe there are situations in which he could be called upon to do good for the Toronto Blue Jays. But it’s obvious that, for right now anyway, he should not be the team’s go-to ninth inning guy. And bad results that come out of the team continuing to call on him in save situations have to fall on Farrell for continuing to treat Cordero as “our guy.”

Fastballs Illustrated

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I like baseball on TV. Not that going to a game isn’t a thrill, because the arc of the ball, as viewed from field level, is unique to me. There is something special about the tumbling seams on a pop-fly, or the rapidly receding circle of a double into the gap. I think that those views are special to me because I only go to a few games a year, at most. My season tickets are with my LCD tv.

Pitching, on television, is nothing like pitching live. I know, because I umpired minor (kids and teenagers) baseball for three years. It is the closest you can possibly get to pitching and catching, and not be responsible for touching the ball. There is a very real hiss to a baseball coming in at anything over 50mph. The impact into the mitt of a 60 or 70 mph fastball is something that reverberates in your ears. You can feel it when it hits the mitt. To lean into that at MLB game speed would make me flinch.

I know that my eyes and ears could not tell me the whole story as an umpire. All I had to focus on was where the ball was when it hit the front edge of the plate. That isn’t really hard to do, with a little practice. Measuring what happened before and after that never really entered my head at the time.

I also know that the single outfield camera does not convey or measure what is going on at home plate. It just isn’t in the right place, or at the right distance to really tell how and where a pitcher releases the ball.

Combine these methods with the play-by-play and colour announcers on TV, and everything gets jumbled up. Some fastballs have ‘late life’, some have ‘hard sinking action’, some are ‘backdoor cutters’. Cute, but how do you tell which of those descriptions is anywhere near accurate? None of the guys in the booth has crouched down to catch the pitcher in question, they are relying on a story from someone else. And if you’ve ever tried to convey a story through two or three people, you know how any description can get jumbled up.

Pitch f/x to the rescue. If you are not familiar with pitch f/x, there is a primer here. All of my data comes from the very comprehensive data at brooksbaseball.net. Very briefly, 2 cameras are positioned in each park to give accurate data about the behavior of every pitch thrown in the Major Leagues.

I have 2 charts to compare the fastballs of the current five members of the Toronto Blue Jays rotation. As of this writing, they are Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, Henderson Alvarez, Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison.They are identified by their initials in the charts.

Behold, Chart 1

Speed and Spin Direction

Taken as an average from all pitches thrown in 2012. This is pretty much just speed differences. I was hoping, when I input the data for spin direction, that the sinkers would cluster apart from the four seamers. Not so lucky. And can you tell I haven’t made any charts since my second year at community college? But enough about me. Four seamers are blue data points, sinkers (usually thrown with 2 seam grip), are in red. Kyle Drabek is the only one who throws enough cutters to be of any note. That’s the yellow diamond. Notable points, Henderson Alvarez is the hard thrower of the bunch, not Brandon Morrow, as you may have guessed. Drabek next, then Morrow. These are all above 94mph and are very good fastballs, especially for MLB starters. The other odd thing is Drabek’s two data points are very close together in the MPH, unlike a typical pitcher, changing to the sinker grip doesn’t cost him even 0.5 mph.

Behold, chart the second.

Movement, including gravity.

This chart shows us movement from the catcher’s perspective. It tells us that Rickey Romero may, in fact, be left-handed. I’ll check into that later. Also, the two purple circles are Romero’s and Alvarez’s sinkers. Getting ground balls happens naturally, as even mistakes are carried down under the bat quite often. The green circle is Morrow’s ‘rising’ fastball, and it makes it easy to see why he’s a natural fly ball pitcher. Here we can cross-check if Drabek’s sinker (which we saw him throwing extremely hard, above) has had any of its movement cancelled out by his extra velocity. I would have to say no. The distance between his straight and sinker data points is similar to both Morrow’s and Hutchison’s. Also, Drabek’s cutter does, in fact, cut its way back across the middle of the chart with a little reverse break.

So, next time somebody tells you who they think throws the hardest, now you’ve got some pictures to back up your own arguments. This also gives an idea of how far from straight even a ‘straight’ four-seam fastball can be.

If anybody would like to see any other pitch types broken down this way, or two pitchers and their pitch mixes put head-to-head, put it in the comments, and I’ll try to cook something up.

Brandon Morrow, and his new toys.

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I’m going to say this right off the top, again, for those of you who don’t know. My favourite Blue Jay pitcher is Brandon Morrow. Even before he sent seventeen Tampa Bay Rays back to the dugout holding a letter “K” in their hands, I really loved to watch him pitch. He throws anywhere from 92 to 97mph. Sometimes his slider comes over the plate at 88mph. Seriously. Remember Brad Mills? He huffed the ole fastball up there at around 86. Mr. Slider and Mr. Fastball could get in a race, slider running around a big bend in the road, because he has to, you know, he’s a Slider. He still beats the silly little straight riding Mr. Fastball to the destination.That’s pretty ‘sick’, as the kids used to say.

I could go on about my admiration for the raw and deadly repertoire of Mr. Morrow, but I’ve got to save something for my inevitable follow-up posts, so let’s get on with it. Brandon Morrow had a makeover, and like that thing that my wife did with her hair a couple of years ago, I’m not sure what to think. He’s had a few starts to show off his new look, and I know one thing for sure. He doesn’t seem as sexy as he did. It’s because he doesn’t strike people out anymore, and we know strikeouts are sexy. At least, that’s what I though I knew about the new Brandon Morrow. Lots of people did, I’m sure. This person wrote about it. Then the new Brandon Morrow rolled into the Rogers Centre and struck out nine Mariners in 6 innings. Which is a letter “K” for everybody in the lineup, if they want to share it out like good friends do.

Which is why I’d like to talk about Clayton Kershaw.

Not that I’m giving up on Morrow, but I’d like to talk about Kershaw, as a path to saying something about Morrow. Besides, Clayton Kershaw is plenty interesting in his own right. For example, did you know he won the National League Cy Young Award last year? He did. I kind of assume that they just give that award to Halladay or Lincecum after a game of rock-paper-scissors, but they must have changed that process last year.

Back to Clayton Kershaw. He strikes out lots of people, walks very few, and threw a very accomplished 233 innings last year. He has found his keys to success, it would seem. I might have chosen Roy Halladay for this comparison, but everyone knows Halladay is a cyborg from the future, and who wants to compare a mere human being to a cyborg? I looked Kershaw up on Brooks Baseball, and, after wading through a few of the graphs, I assembled this picture from four of Kershaw’s 2012 starts.

Four starts from 2012, Horizontal and Vertical movement.

As the caption says, these are all the pitches Kershaw threw in four different starts this season. Vertical movement is on the vertical axis, Horizontal movement is on the horizontal. Different colours indicate different pitch types. Brooks has several other ways of breaking down a pitching performance, which could only be put into one graph if you could draw in 6 dimensions. My photo editing program doesn’t have a button for that, so we’ll go with 2 dimensional graphs for now. First, please note the similar overall shape of each game. The game in the lower left was played in Houston, where the pitch cameras that make this system work may be calibrated a little differently. Even considering that, we have the same thing happening each game. A cluster of rising fastballs in green at the top, the tighter the cluster, the more identical each pitch is on arrival. Why do I call this a rising fastball? Funny thing, there is so little sink on these fastballs, compared to the effect of gravity on a normally thrown ball, that the fifteen inches of ‘rise’ in the Brooks Baseball graph cannot contain them. These fastballs care not for the limits of your standard graph! That’s just ridiculous. Remind me never to step in the box against Kershaw. There are a few changeups in yellow just to the right of the fastball cluster, these fade a little more than the fastball. He throws a good selection of biting sliders, shown in orange, and about four or five big curveballs that have a huge drop on them. I’m sure he mixes those in just to keep everybody honest in the batter’s box. Four pitches, four similar sized clusters, Clayton Kershaw is going to ride this horse until it drops. And why not? He’s 2-0 with a 1.78 ERA as I write this.

Now, since I went to all that trouble to look at the very steady methods of Mr. Kershaw, allow me to do the same with one Brandon Morrow.

What lovely pitch clouds we have here! Now, 2 of these starts are away, and two are at Rogers Centre, so the two on the right will be more consistent than the other two. However, without looking at the scatter diagrams, we can see from the legend, that Morrow uses between 4 and 6 different pitches per start. Now, that 6th pitch may be some confusion on the part of the pitch f/x computer, which assigns a name to pitches to the best of its ability. Morrow was throwing a cut-fastball last year, and the computer may be trying to find it where he hasn’t thrown it at all. There is more going on here than computer error, though. Sometimes the curveballs have more sideways break than the sliders, other times they are right about the same. Ptich f/x also sees four seamers, 2-seamers an sinkers, sometimes overlappnig clusters, sometimes not. That nice tight cluster of fastballs that Kershaw shows us is only there in his first start, on the upper left graph, with Morrow. His fastball will slide across the zone in a variety of ways. This might make him effectively wild some days. Other days he might have trouble with the heater not being where he wants it all the time.

Even in his most recent start against the Mariners he has three curveballs that didn’t drop at all. Flat breaking pitches are often the kind of pitches that get turned into extra base hits. Morrow has not been shy about using his new pitches, but the results seem to show that he hasn’t been able to count on getting them to do what he wants all the time. I’m not surprised by that, but it’s nice to have the pictures to back it up.

The new Brandon Morrow has spoken about getting quicker outs and being efficient. I think the idea of pitching to contact, of getting deeper into games, is a valid one. Where a fireballer like Morrow might want to leverage his ability to get swings and misses, is only after he’s found himself in trouble. The knock against Morrow, in the past, has been his inability to work out of trouble with runners on base. So, what’s been happening when he’s been in trouble?

In the game in Kansas City, Morrow recorded three strikeouts.Two of them came with a runner on third base. The third was against a hitter who had homered of Morrow in an earlier at-bat. Against Seattle, he struck out nine, as I said before, but Seattle has the second highest strikeout total in the AL right now, that’s going to happen. Whenhe needed strikeouts, what did he do? Every time Seattle had a runner in scoring position, Morrow came up with a strikeout. Maybe he’s trying to be his own high leverage relief pitcher. That’s an idea from this Fangraphs article about Roy Halladay. If it is part of the mentality, of rearing back to make the high effort pitches only when necessary, Morrow is certainly blessed with the arm to do that.

What am I getting at here? Well, I think I’ve come to believe two things. The first one is that the old Brandon Morrow is gone. I don’t think he’ll ever find himself in a position to strike out 17 ever again. The second thing is that the new Brandon Morrow has not arrived yet. I don’t think we’ll really know what he’s done with himself until much later. Maybe after the All-Star Break? He’s not been afraid to play with his new pitches, but he really hasn’t broken them is yet.

It is unusual, and interesting, to see this kind of change in a pitcher. It seems to be what happens after surgery, and many try to re-invent themselves after abject failure. Ask R.A. Dickey. Morrow hasn’t hit bottom, or had his arm fall apart, though. He’s made these changes because he thinks he can be better for them. That’s really the kind of talent and thought that make me happy he plays for the team I cheer for every day.

What if Bautista doesn’t turn things around?

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What happens if Toronto's vaunted slugger continues to remain frustrated at the plate?

It’s safe to say that over the first 18 games of the season, a lot of the sheen has been rubbed off what was supposed to be one of Toronto’s strong suits this year – the offence.

Of course there have been some pleasant surprises, such as Edwin Encarnacion’s early emergence as a threatening hitter and Kelly Johnson’s good plate discipline that makes him a great hitter at the top of the lineup.

However for every bright spot there have been equally and exceeding frustrations and perhaps none are greater than that of number 19, Jose Bautista.

Continue reading →

Kelly Johnson? Yes, please

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Oh man. There are a lot of things for Jays fans to be excited about so far this season: Colby Rasmus looks like he’s figuring it out; Edwin Encarnacion has figured it out to the point that he’s been officially handed the cleanup hitter’s role; Brett Lawrie is being Brett Lawrie and that gets people excited even if he’s not yet playing as well as he’s capable of playing; the pitching!

Yes, there’s a lot of to be excited about. But there’s one guy who seems to be flying under the radar. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t seem to have a personality that lights the world on fire. Perhaps it’s because his offensive production isn’t the flashiest. Perhaps it’s because your Toronto Blue Jays had to trade John McDonald and someone other scrub to get him. Continue reading →

A baseball fraternity… of one.

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Philip Humber threw a perfect game on Saturday April 21st, 2012. He joins a baseball brotherhood that spreads across 132 years. I don’t think I have much to add to describing Humber’s effort, it has been covered as extensively as it need be, its unlikeliness covered in-depth by Jayson Stark.

After hearing about the last out of the perfecto, it stuck out in my mind that A.J. Pierzynski recorded the last out of the game by throwing to first on a dropped third strike. Since Pierzynski has been the White Sox regular catcher for a few years now, I thought about Mark Buerhle’s perfect game in 2009, and how he might have been lucky enough to catch that one too. No luck, the immortal Ramon Castro was Buerhle’s receiver that day.

That thought spurred another about teammates and perfect games. The two Davids, Wells and Cone, had achieved perfection about a year apart for the New York Yankees. Were both games caught by the same man? Again, the answer is no. Wells threw to Jorge Posada, Cone delivered his pitches to Joe Girardi.

This is all leading up to the answer to a trivia question from back when I was a teenager. When I, neophyte baseball fan, was introduced to the concept of what a perfect game was, I went digging through my copy of Total Baseball (yes, this was before the internet, I am old), to find out as much as I could about them.

When I looked it all over, I found that no pitcher had ever thrown more than one. No plate umpire had ever called more than one. However, one catcher had, indeed, been there when lightning struck for a second time.

The man on the right, despite playing for the Cleveland Indians for almost 7 years, may well be the luckiest man in baseball history. He caught Len Barker in 1981 when he shut down the Blue Jays, and was behind the dish ten years later when Dennis Martinez silenced the Dodgers bats.

So, if you brought every catcher in MLB history into the room, it would be crowded indeed. Dismiss all the men who have never caught a no-hitter, and there are a few hundred in the room. Send away those who have never caught a perfect game, and there are but twenty souls remaining. Ask those who have caught but one perfect game to be on their way. The room has one man left in it.

Ron Hassey, the “perfect” journeyman.