Ted Lilly's Slow Fastball

Ted Lilly provides a nice example of what happens to a pitcher when he tires.  Note, first of all, that hits against Ted come in a very concentrated part of the strike zone:

Ted LIlly, hits off his fastball, 2008-2010.In that red area, his release velocity tends to be slower:

Ted Lilly, hits off his fastball, 2008-2010.Compare that to the outs he gets on his fastball:

Ted Lilly, outs off his fastball, 2008-2010.When Ted throws his fastball fast, around 90 MPH, batters can't handle the pitch as well.  When it drops to the mid 80s, they cream the pitch.  From looking at the movement of his pitches, the quicker fastballs stay up higher in the zone, likely preventing the hitters from squaring them up as well.  When Ted's velocity drops, however, the pitches come in pretty straight, waiting for a major league hitter to pounce.

The Best in 3-Ball Counts

Top 20 Pitchers by BB% in 3-Ball Counts (min. 75 PA)

Of course, simply limiting your walks with 3 balls is not an indication of success. You obviously want to avoid awarding free bases to batters, but you also don't want to do so at the expense of grooving pitches either. You can see that both Lee and Halladay were able to limit their opponents to around a .200 batting average (also around .300 slugging percentage for both) with three ball counts in 2010. Of course, they were just as successful when pitching with two strikes (Lee .220 SLG%, Halladay .243 SLG%, both w/ .161 BA). Conclusion: working the count on these Philly aces doesn't seem to do much good.

Brett Myers Part Two: Location, Location, Location

Continuing our examination of Brett Myers, let’s take a look at his pitch frequency over the last 3 years.

Brett Myers Pitch Comparison (click to enlarge)

In 2010, Myers became a lot more efficient at hitting the outside corners against both hitters.  Against RHB, you can see that he rarely touched the inner half of the plate at all last year; against LHB, Myers primarily hit the lower outside corner, unlike the previous two seasons where he threw to the center of the plate quite often.

In his career, Myers has relied mostly on his fastball and curveball, throwing in a slider (borderline cutter) and changeup from time to time.  However, he’s slowly begun to utilize his slider more, and last year was the first time he actually threw it more than his curveball.  The results were very good.

Batters vs. Brett Myers' Slider

	P	PA	AVG	SLUG	wOBA	K%	BB%	HR%
2008 Season	479	133	.304	.552	.371	20.3%	4.5%	7.2%
2009 Season	201	48	.326	.652	.421	18.8%	2.1%	8.7%
2010 Season	917	230	.233	.314	.264	18.3%	5.7%	1.0%

Now first things first: Myers 2009 season was cut down by injury, so we should take that into consideration when comparing seasons.  But there’s no doubt that he’s improved his slider to the point where it’s become an effective out pitch.  His walk rate did jump bit, which is no surprise given that he’s throwing to the edges of the zone more.  I would caution optimistic ‘Stros fans that the ridiculously low HR rate on his slider is bound to regress this season, especially if he’s utilizing the pitch more.  But location is key, and if Myers avoids the middle of the zone like he did last year, he should continue to see positive results.