The Three Movements of Dan Haren

Over the last three season Dan Haren complied a 3.47 ERA, 20th in the majors among pitchers with 400 innings.  Part of Haren's success comes from presenting the batter with three different movement to his pitches.  His fastball comes in as expected, with little variation from how the batters thinks it should move both horizontally and vertically:

Dan Haren fastball movement, 2008-2010.His splitter is similar on the horizontal axis, but drops more than the fastball:

Dan Haren split-fingered fastball movement, 2008-2010.Finally, his cutter moves more relative to both axes.

Dan Haren cut-fastball movement, 2008-2010.In addition, the two off-speed pitches come in five to six MPH slower than his fastball.  The upshot is that batters swing more and miss more on the off-speed offerings:

Haren 2008-2010	Fastball	Splitter	Cutter
Swing Percentage	43.1	57.2	59.4
Contact Percentage	87.9	65.2	72.1

Haren uses movement and speed to keep hitters off balance, and his fastball does a good job of setting up his out pitches.