Early morning food for thought: Brandon Backe and the long ball
by DyingQuail
on Dec 9, 2008 3:12 AM CST
9 comments
As we wait to see what lady luck holds for us in Las Vegas in terms of our starting rotation, here's some food for thought on Brandon Backe's long ball struggles in 2008:
Those look like some hittable pitches. Josh Kalk's tool doesn't allow you to break it down by pitches (unless you want 4 or 5 different graphs) but it makes me think there wasn't a lot of bad luck in his home runs, just bad pitching. FYI, that's the strike zone and the location of the ball as it crossed home plate.
Two more graphs.
First the speed and break of Backe's home run pitches (x is horizontal movement with negative numbers indicating breaking in towards a RHB from the center of the plate and z is vertical movement):
Then, Backe's averages for 2008:
His slider, splitter, and change up lose a ton of movement, his fastball hangs just a bit more over the plate, and his curve just gets a little bit sloppier. Can we draw any real conclusions? Probably not, but lets debate.
(My thanks to Josh Kalk for implementing such a fantastic tool for the non-coding saavy baseball fan)
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Interesting....but I can't draw a conclusion about "luck" on HRs.
I suspect if you graphed this for most any starting pitcher, you would find similar location patterns and evidence of “hanging” off-speed pitches. I doubt that many pitchers give up all their HRs in good locations on the corners. Based on the locations, it looks to me like Backe needs to keep the ball down more (which isn’t a surprising conclusion). And my impression (from watching) that hanging sliders were a culprit, seems to be supported by what you’ve shown.
All pitchers have hundreds of bad location pitches over the course of the season, and I suppose the luck may show up in how many actually get hit a long way. If the pitches are “up” in the zone, they are more likely to be hit in the air, and some luck is involved in how many go over the wall, and how many become doubles and how many are caught at the wall.
By the way, I don’t think Backe throws a splitter, unless I just had never noticed. My guess is that is really a cutter or perhaps sinker.
by clack on
Dec 9, 2008 7:09 AM CST
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I believe its a cutter
But Kalk’s database calls it whatever his algorithm calls it.
I hadn’t thought about the weaknesses of this exercise, until you pointed that out. I’ll stop blogging in the early morning hours.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by DyingQuail on
Dec 9, 2008 11:27 AM CST
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so if i read this correctly
it proves what i’ve long feared….Backe is not that good at pitching.
by Aron on
Dec 9, 2008 12:06 PM CST
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That's what I was hinting
sigh We’re doomed.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by DyingQuail on
Dec 9, 2008 12:10 PM CST
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Looking at the comparison of Backe's pitches again....
it becomes apparent how small the difference in velocity is between most of his pitches. When Backe has pitched really good games, usually he has a good curveball, or at least a curve which he can regularly get in the strike zone. And the only large differences in speed are between the curve and fastball. Look how closely spaced, in terms of velocity, the rest of the off-speed pitches are. And when you look at the velocity on his pitches which ended up in HRs, the range is even tighter between pitches. For the HR group, his FB velocity declines and the velocity for most of his off-speed pitches increases.
I wonder if Backe would be better off throwing mostly curveballs and fastballs in order to take advantage of the change of speed.
by clack on
Dec 9, 2008 5:06 PM CST
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If you're still looking for a statistics project...
…I’d like to see some kind of analysis of Backe’s homeruns/pitch speed/innings pitched over time. Are his HRs clustered into a few games, did he give them up with more frequency toward the end of the year?
What I’m trying to figure out is how much of last season’s results might be attributed to him not being back fully from surgery.
by AstroAndy on
Dec 9, 2008 7:00 PM CST
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well, here are Backe's HRs by month last year:
April 5
May 9
June 6
July 3
Aug 6
Sept. 7
Here is a log of all Backe HRs (career):
http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/event_hr.cgi?n1=backebr01&type=p
You can check 08 at the bottom of the page.
He had 4 three HR games….I would call that clusters of some kind, I guess.
by clack on
Dec 9, 2008 8:31 PM CST
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Interesting...
…how few homers he gives up to the cleanup hitter in comparison to the other slots in the batting order.
Small samples, I know.
by AstroAndy on
Dec 10, 2008 1:07 AM CST
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I think it probably
Goes back to my analysis of his curve ball issue, but you could do it for all of his pitches.
Having reflected upon what I was trying to accomplish, is that Backe rarely seems to have command of all his pitches, but when does, he’s great. I don’t think Backe’s struggles were luck related in the sense that an inordinate amount of HR got out because balls just some how carried (the next avenue I’ll look into is his hit tracker data), but because Backe/his battery mates made poor decisions in utilizing pitches he had poor command of on that day.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by DyingQuail on
Dec 10, 2008 1:42 AM CST
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