As advertised, Madson Avenue

Madison Avenue in New York is renowned as the advertising capital of the world. Occasionally, when we hear about a pitcher advertised as "having a great pitch," we take it with the same degree of hyperbole that we hear in an ad for a "great" product.

But today, I put the well-advertised change-up of the Phillies hurler, Ryan Madson, to the taste test, which in our case is our heat map.

The Taste Test

Let's start by looking at his fastball because the efficacy of a change-up is measured off the fastball.

Ryan Madson Fastball - In play averageYou can see as you look at the map, that of the 224 fastballs he has thrown, 39 have been put in play, resulting in 15 hits, producing an in play average of .385.

Let's see the change-up, Ryan.

Ryan Madson's change-upLook at all the nice blue. Madson has thrown 110 of these beauties and batters are 2-for-15 off it for an in-play average of .133.

Congratulations, Ryan you have passed the BaseballAnalytics.org taste test. Your change-up is as good as advertised.