Under the Microscope

By request, here are the umpire calls for the last couple of games — first how Burnett was treated in his successful start against the Jays:

Of those two called strikes way off the plate, one of them is his big breaking ball, so it will have curved closer by the time it reached the back side of the plate (still working on a way to correct for this). The other one is a fastball to Adam Lind that is the Burnett’s only gift of the night. Now for Tallet:

One real gift for Tallet as well, and a lot more nibbling. That cluster of inside pitches just off the plate (where Tallet got 2 strikes out of 9) will often be called strikes, but hard to complain about calling the inside corner of the plate by the book.

Now for Saturday’s game, here’s Wang’s abridged outing against the Jays:

And then the Doc’s. As usual, getting a couple inches off the outer edge of the plate, but he might have been getting squeezed on the inside corner (when throwing his cutter to the mostly-lefty Yankees lineup):

Hiatus Ho

I’m out of here for a couple of days, but this site has much cuter graphics anyway. Halladay is apparently back on Monday. Vernon Wells is apparently the 58th worst regular, but attacking it with the “diligence of a lab chemist“. (No swearing, or chucking — what games are you watching?!)

And you’ll have to wait until I get back for proof, but this scout:

An American League scout who’s seen the Blue Jays thinks Wells’ biggest problem is his tendency to chase balls outside the zone. “I’ve seen him give away way too many at-bats,” the scout said.

Is just wrong. His eye is actually getting better with age. He just can’t drive low pitches to save his life these days so he gets behind in the count and it becomes all the more obvious that he never had any patience to begin with…

Update: Here’s the proof — from Inside Edge, the source behind those hot zones and the bestest baseball analysis site of all time that for some reason pays attention to the Jays more than anyone else out there, a lack of reach from Wells seems to be the problem. Lingering hammy, shoulder still out of whack, or the dreaded decline – any guesses?

Accardo’s New Pitch

Confession time: when Jeremy Accardo saved his first game of the year, I almost cried. Yeah, he got two outs on five pitches, but they were almost unbelievably straight down the middle, he was hit hard, and didn’t even hit 91 mph. He threw one slider, and none of his once-incredible splitter. Great. ANOTHER Jays pitcher completely broken, explaining why he’s been rotting in AAA after his mysterious forearm troubles and revamped delivery.

Then he came out in his second outing and threw his fastball at 95-96, with a nasty splitter like the old days, and struck out 4 rather quality Phillies. What the hell?! Turns out that pitch he was throwing on in his first inning was actually a new cut fastball:

In my completely unprofessional opinion, it looks like a really good one – hard and closer to the Rivera/Halladay style that moves straight from side to side than the Jesse Litsch version that was like a mini-slider and dropped and was inevitably figured out. The fact that every Blue Jays pitcher not named Roy that has thrown/learnt a cutter from Arnsberg recently has had serious arm surgery within the next few years is a little worrying, but considering that Accardo’s slider was a bit of a joke even during his excellent closer season, along with the return of his splitter this has to make him even nastier — at least until it fries his arm.

• I would vote Albert Pujols into the Hall of Fame right now, even if he is 10 years older than he says he he is and juiced to the gills – but it was a pleasant surprise to hear that that major leaguers consistently named Halladay as the pitcher they would most rather watch him face off against, as opposed to someone with more flashy stuff that just isn’t as good. Evidently the pros have more refined taste than your average media tool (even the Onion makes slam-dunk jokes about him being completely ignored).
• DJF sums up my feelings and repeats my profanity about the fake umps that have been behind the plate for too many Jays games lately. Undeniable appeal? Seriously? If watching their shtick was entertaining to you for more than a few innings, you care less about baseball less than Adam Dunn. Props to Darren Fletcher for getting crotchety and not playing along with Sportnet’s picture-in-picture infatuation with these bores. And why the hell do they make foul tip signs on every foul ball? Like I find myself yelling far too often at the dome these days with ever-increasing baseball curmudgeonness: siddown and watch the damn game. You might learn something.

Throw the Damn Curve

So how did Scott Richmond not only survive, but strike out 11 against a lefty-stacked Phillies lineup, when lefties have hit him on for an absurd .972 OPS this season? He finally ignored the completely overblown concept that as a righty you don’t throw breaking pitches to left handed batters (because they move towards rather than away from them) and just threw his normal repertoire to them instead of a majority of fastballs that were getting hammered. As Inside Edge put it earlier this year:

Although his breaking balls have been effective versus hitters on both sides of the plate, Richmond throws them less often to left-handed batters, even though lefties have pummeled his fastball for 13 extra-base hits. Nearly half his pitches to right-handed batters are breaking balls, but left-handed batters see a curve or slider just 35 percent of the time.

Richmond threw 40 fastballs, 15 curves, 21 sliders and 3 changeups to lefties tonight – almost the exact same 50/50 fastball and breaking pitch combination that has been dominating RHB so far this year. Although you would expect his changeups to be more effective against LHB, they are simply not his best pitch. His slider and curve are. He trusted them on both sides of the plate and dominated one of the best offensive teams in the league. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Sweet In the Middle

For a little pick me up in the middle of the latest Jays’ slide, check out John Dewans’ stat of the week, where the authour of The Fielding Bible gives the nod to the most defensive runs saved so far this year to Aaron Hill (13) – with Marco Scutaro (9) not too far behind.

A couple of weeks ago Dewan ranked the Jays second overall, and I will sing Brian Butterfield’s praises just as loud now as I did then. Hill, ok…we knew he was good as soon as he made us forget the O-dog out there. But Scutaro?!  Even if you don’t really believe in the accuracy of these fancy fielding metrics, or this sample size, the very same stats that haven’t liked him at all as long as they’ve been around are suddenly claiming he’s one of the best in the league.

Now if you’re the Precambrian type that  can’t quite wrap your head around anything but errors, 1) you don’t read this blog, and 2) he is also leading the majors with 1 error so far after tying the AL record for errors in a game (4) in 2007 and committing 9 in almost an identical number of innings in 2006. And this about-face in sure-handedness and range has come at the age of 32, when no middle infielder has any business at becoming any better at what he does.

If I was a real journalist stretching for a story, I would now say something like “and his added comfort in the field can only have helped his impressive performance at the plate”, implying that his new-found range and batting eye were somehow related. But that would be stupid.

Instead I’ll point out that even after regressing to the mean (i.e. assuming he goes back to playing at his usual level for the rest of the season), ZIPS predicts a .286/.378/.413 batting line from Scoot. How good is a .791 OPS for a shortstop, for a Blue Jays shortstop? Only one other Blue Jays SS in history has played 100 games and had a higher one (.805) . That was Tony Fernandez in 1987, the best offensive year of his career.

ETA: And Butterfield knows it, too: “In my mind right now he’s the best defensive shortstop in the American League and by quite a wide margin. … He’s been phenomenal, our MVP,” Butterfield said.”

Whoever Trains in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind that shipping all your young, potentially bumpkin prospects  just about to hit the bigtime to LAS FREAKING VEGAS is the dumbest idea of all time, listen to the fear in the voice of  Jays’ funnyman and new mop-up guy Dirk Hayhurst (who has been getting love around here for his real human-beingness in these parts from back when he was officially writing a “non-prospect diary”) as he gives his take on the town:

Then, realize that the woman flirting interviewing him was the 2008 Penthouse pet of the year*. Not at all to cast doubt on her ability to seamlessly make the jump from nude modelling to minor-league beat reporter, but when she mentions her “connections”, I can almost see the rest of Dirk’s career flash before my eyes. The good news is he manages to maintain a pretty decent ERA right up to the point where he’s sleeping under a pile of newspapers and sneaking into the 51’s clubhouse for the post-game sandwiches.

*I only know that because I was searching for the video on Youtube and she’s all over the place, Grandma. Kind of like Shannon Stewart. Please don’t believe everyanything you read about me, however repeatedly, on Drunk Jays Fans. I really need that birthday cheque for…errr…gummie bears.

The New Champ

It Hurts When I Swing, Doc

So Coco Crisp was ready to go yesterday, but the Royals decided to give him an extra day off because Roy Halladay’s stuff is apparently so good it doesn’t just tie hitters in knots, it breaks them:

“I didn’t want, going into the off day, to take a chance on the high velocity and nasty stuff of Roy Halladay setting (Crisp) back,” manager Trey Hillman said. “I don’t know that it would have. I just don’t want to take that chance.”

Instead, they have decided to baby him back by starting him next against Cliff Lee. Nuff said.

In other news, B.J. Ryan is apparently “giving off the right signs” after one perfect inning, despite a 4.70 ERA and a 1.56 WHIP since his return. It’s a sad day when you’re making a mountain out of your former fireman retiring Brayan Pena (12 at bats this season), Mitch Maier (hitting .234 and 4 for his last 29) and David DeJesus (batting .232) in order. Especially when most of the pitches he threw were left up and right down the middle:

Sadly, it’s been so long since Ryan was dominant that pitch f/x didn’t exist, but I feel confident in claiming this is not yet the Ryan of old. Especially against the two lefties, his bread and butter used to be fastballs down and away and the sweeping slider off the plate. Those 88-mph meatballs are going to get pounded if he keeps throwing them.

How to Beat the 2nd Best Pitcher in Baseball in 2 Easy Steps

“We discussed what he did to us last time,” Lind said, referring to Greinke’s domination of Toronto in Kansas City on April 29. “All we really wanted to do as a team was to lay off his slider. If we could do that, we could maybe force him into throwing some fastballs over the plate.”

Sounds wayyyy too easy – conquer the rival Cy Young candidate by laying off his nasty breaking pitch that starts right over the heart of the plate and dives two inches off the bottom outside corner, but remember to hit his 95 mph moving fastball once you’ve worked the count. Easy! But although Greinke didn’t have his best stuff tonight, that is exactly how the Jays got to him.

First, here’s all of Greinke’s sliders:

Ok, ok, they still bit on 1/3 of Greinke’s sliders, but that is pretty damn good. Not to beat a dead horse here, but if Alex Rios had managed to lay off of 2/3 of Lackey’s sliders last night, Adam Lind would have won that game three times over. Throw in some defensive fouls on the borderline strikes, and a few (fruitless) hacks at hanging sliders, and that was some downright stellar pitch selection from the entire team against a very good pitch.

Now for Greinke’s fastballs:

You can almost see them turning on pitches middle-in and grounding out when reaching across the plate (although there are 2 lefties mixed in there). Greinke wasn’t corner hunting as well with his fastball tonight as well as he has for most of this season, but notice not ONE swinging strike on a fastball, let alone a chase of one of the many fastballs that were really not that far off the outside corner.

Instead, the Jays waited out Greinke, and when he came over the plate they took advantage of fastballs that were left just slightly up (and in Scutaro’s 3-hit case, inside). I really don’t think Greinke was that bad tonight, despite his claim that:

“No matter what I threw, it was just hammered,” he said. “I’m not used to that. I don’t remember seeing anyone get hit that hard in a long time.”

Or his bewildered and downright self-depreciating comments after the game:

“It was kinda weird out there,” Greinke said. “It’s one thing to get hit. Everything was just a line drive. No weak contact. Good hitting and bad pitching come together at the same time.”

“Early in the game, if I threw a strike, they jumped on it right away,” he said. “I was getting behind on the other guys and then having to come to them. If I threw a strike, they hit it hard. They didn’t chase anything with two strikes. There were some close pitches, they took them. If I threw it for a strike, they hit them. Obviously, I didn’t do anything right.”

Instead, the Jays just showed an unusually good eye at the plate, and apparently executed a rather general and admittedly very simple game plan perfectly. If only it all came together so well every night…

Scott Downs: Mop No More

At least in this distinguished community, the fact that Scott Downs has been a downright unearthly reliever for the last three years has not been lost, because he topped the request list. One shudders to think where the Jays would be this year without him mercifully and effortlessly sliding into the closer’s role before B.J. Ryan could do any real damage.

And he was a gift! Out of nowhere, released by the Expos and probably the biggest bullpen freebie for the Jays since Tom Henke, certainly J.P. Ricciardi’s best find. After being rushed to the Majors several times and bouncing around, Downs finally started striking out guys when he got to the Jays, and then this happened some time around 2006 (when he was actually really good as a reliever, with a 2.77 ERA, but had 5 spot starts with an ERA of 9.39), as he went from fringy rotation guy to bullpen stalwart:

Year	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
2005	8.9	1.1	3.3	7.2
2006	8.5	1.1	3.5	7.1
2007	7.3	0.5	3.7	8.8
2008	6.9	0.4	3.4	7.3
2009	7.4	0.4	0.8	9.0

Note that Downs’ control didn’t get any better at all (although it has been off the hook this year). He did however get more strikeouts by going to a straight 1-2 punch of fastball/big breaking ball (that he throws now) than with his old fastball/changeup/breaking ball combination.

(All Downs ever really throws is a fastball and a curve. I thought he had a changeup too, but it’s erratic and he throws it infrequently, only six times total this season. The same goes for his slider/cutter. He seemed to be experimenting with it earlier this season and threw 3 in one at bat to Granderson and got him out. Later he threw Sweeney 3, he got a hit and it has never been seen again).

Downs also started giving up fewer hits and fewer home runs around that time, which your friendly neighbourhood stathead will tell you is either the result of luck, or fewer fly balls. As we can see from Fan Graphs, his GB% went from ~50->60%. There’s isn’t pitch f/x data from that period, but that just screams the birth of a sinker. (Perhaps after his brief time in the rotation alongside Mr. Halladay? Where’s a journalist around to probe the tired “mentor” angle when you really need one??)

And yes, it turns out that Downs’ fastball now has quite a lot of drop on it. All I can think is that watching on TV it is harder to pick up sink for lefties, because I never would have thought this, but it’s there. The amount varies quite a lot, averaging 6 inches, but quite often approaching the Brandon League type of 10-12 inch drop.

That explains how he can be so dominant without throwing more than 92 mph, as well as his extremely high GB% of 61% in 2007 and 67% last year. In a post from last winter, I noted that he topped the Jays bullpen (as if Cito would even consider groundball pitcher-baller matchups!) in grounders, and was even up there with Halladay.

Both of the last two seasons Downs has thrown his sinking fastball 65 percent of the time, and that is how he gets all his groundouts:

Scott Downs BIP Outs
Pitch	GB %	LD %	FO %
Fastball	78.6	3.1	18.2
Offspeed	54.2	12.5	33.3

For another look at it, here’s a heat map of the movement on all the pitches Downs has thrown since 2007. A straight fastball from a lefty comes in at about (5, 10) on the graph below (think the opposite of the Marcum example on the right). That’s about as flat as Downs’ fastball ever is, and it ranges in movement anywhere within a foot and a half down from that:

You can also see his dalliance with throwing a slider in the middle, and his breaking ball to the lower left, very consistent and about at big as they get. Of course, that sweeping curve is going to be tougher on lefties, and Downs does throw it to them more often:

Scott Downs Pitch Frequency
Frequency	Fastball	Curve
Lefty	57.7	41.6
Righty	72.7	26.4

But 30% is about league average for a breaking pitch to either side so that just means Downs really pours on his curve against lefties and just uses it as a normal offspeed offering against right-handed batters. Some pitchers really shy away from throwing something that breaks into the body of a batter, but Downs is proof that if you have a really nasty pitch, nobody wants to hit it and it can and it probably should be thrown to both sides. (There was a stat of the week a while back at Inside Edge showing the taboo against throwing changeups that tail back towards the body same-sided batters was misguded as well).

Downs at least has certainly found a way to get strikes and prevent hits against both sides using just his curve, which is probably what lead to his dramatic improvement after ditching his changeup:

Scott Downs L/R Performance against Curve/Fastball
BAVG	Fastball BAVG	Fastball Strike	Curve BAVG	Curve Strike
Lefty	.294	38.9	.167	30.6
Righty	.323	29.7	.143	32.6

Even with a dominant fastball, most pitchers have higher averages against it (Burnett’s being consistently above .300 comes to mind), partly because of the counts it is used in, but also because offspeed pitches are just harder to hit as well as harder to control. Downs, however, has almost as much control against his curve as his fastball, and neither side of the plate can do anything with it.

That curve is also especially deadly when he throws it across the plate to the far (right side), so that it starts over the heart of the plate but ends up down and away to left handed batters and cuts down and in (often off the plate) to righties. Here’s all the swings and misses that Downs has gotten with his curveball.

However, Downs gets most of his called strikes with his fastball, particularly on the lower outside corner to right-handers:

There was some talk in the preseason about converting Downs to a starter, and apparently he declined. I think most pitchers would rather be a starter than a setup man, but maybe he knew that his greatest success has come from being a rather predictable repertoire – sinking fastball to one side of the plate, and big hook to the other.

From watching him I used to think of Downs as kind of a control guy, but now it seems he’s more of a “here’s my best stuff, hit it if you can” slightly-wild closer type – except his best stuff is a breaking ball instead of a 98 mph heater, and his sinking fastball awkward enough that it is hard to hit in the air when he needs a strike.

Rios Loses It

If you can’t see this in the comments, it’s worth it just to hear Rios swear in a suit. While personally not the type to rag on a hot hitter after one bad game, that was so over the top terrible and in such contrast to Adam Lind’s amazingness, I’m really glad there are people out there who don’t understand baseball to do it for me:

Let’s just hope this plot continues to follow Burnett’s and immediately after mentally imploding and flipping off the fans, Rios goes from useless to Superman…

Update: Rios apologized. For being accosted. Yeah, yeah, we already forgot about that…kinda cool that the team is all over a minor internet flurry in a heartbeat, though.

The Puerto Rican Prince Goes Platinum

“They’ll call him on his cell, that’s how much they had his number,” said Gaston.

There’s a story here beyond spectacular failure from a key player right as it looked like he had turned the corner sighhhhh…In his first strikeout of five, Alex Rios saw four fastballs and was eventually punched out on a rather terrible call (the strikeouts are numbered on the graph above).

His second time up, Rios swung through a really excellent slider on the first pitch, right at the bottom of the zone. Maybe Lackey could see that his brain was broken, or the frustration in his eyes because he poured on the junk for the rest of the game (just one more fastball), and Rios swung at almost quite literally everything.

The Prince saw only 2 fastballs and 15 breaking balls over his last 4 strikeouts. It took just 17 pitches, five over the minimum to strike him out! And three (maybe four) of those pitches were in the strike zone, which lead to two foul balls and one called strike. It sure looks like he just got frustrated and went on a hacking bender – reminds me of A.J. Burnett in reverse…(who incidentally has been suspended for throwing at a batter – ha!)

Doc Halladay Has Surgery

“Doc Halladay has surgery,” Hunter said. “He was a doctor today. You have got to give it to him. He had surgery on all of us.

That’s not a pretty quote…but here are some pretty pictures of what Halladay did to the Angels in a stunning 133-pitch performance en route to a career-high 14 strikeouts. First, the pitches he threw (incidentally, he baffled the automatic pitch algorithm all night, so if you were watching on gameday it told you he threw nothing but sinking fastballs). 2 Changeups, 33 curves, 40 sinkers and 58 cutters:

Is it just me, or does it look like Halladay is throwing two different kinds of cutters again? He only threw his changeup twice all night, but didn’t need it against lefties, as his two seamer was in control. All 6 of his swinging strikeouts came against his curve, and most of his strikes looking came on his cut fastball:

Now here’s his pitch location (looking from behind the plate):

“We’re doing different things now, kind of throwing everything to both sides which at times will give you a lot more takes and swings and misses.”

Interesting that he gets away with a lot of high cutters over the middle of the plate (although that starts at a right-handed batter’s neck). Here’s the same graph with all his strikes labelled:

Notice he seems to get better calls on his cutter, including one almost 4 inches off the plate. Some of that is likely due to the bending around the plate effect (or at least the umpire’s exaggeration of it) effect discussed in this article by Josh Kalk over at the Hardball Times. I’m trying to think of a way to show how much effect that should have…

The only blemish on Halladay’s evening was the 7th, when the Angels scored all their runs as the result of a couple of very hittable 0-2 pitches, a walk, and a couple of sac flies.  It was just a blip for Halladay, but you can see it in his velocity, which was down on both his fastball and cutter to start that inning:

Maybe the Jays left Halladay sitting on the bench too long by hitting all those singles and scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 6th, because he came out cold. Otherwise, Halladay did not tail off at all towards the end of the game at all (as almost all pitchers typically do) – his 130th pitch was a 94.7 mph sinker.

A Plane To Catch?

Especially in the later innings, with two called punchouts back to back on Bautista and Scutaro on pitches some 3-4 inches outside, that was some, well, typical umpiring for Jon Lester against the Jays tonight.

Romero didn’t get the same generosity on the outside corner, and he also got squeezed on the bottom of the zone. It’s tricky because of course the top and bottom change and that box is just an average but for example, two of those calls are to Jason Bay.

The bottom of his zone is measured by the pitch f/x people at 1.5 (even slightly below the average of 1.6) feet above the ground and those pitches crossed the plate well above that at 1.836-1.891 feet above the ground, ~3.5 inches above the bottom of the zone. Pitch f/x makes it look like a much better outing for Romero controlwise – rather than struggling to control his big breaking ball, he was throwing it pretty much exactly where he should.

Butter Hands

There is an extremely early look at how the Jays’ defence has been doing this year over at John Dewan’s stat of the day:

Defensive Runs Saved — Top Five Teams

Texas Rangers 	        28
Toronto Blue Jays 	25
Tampa Bay Rays 	        21
Cincinnati Reds 	18
Houston Astros 	        14

 
He also mentions Scutaro as a standout (that will probably come back to earth). To this untrained eye, Scoot has just looked better and better with the glove (and his release) this season compared to last year, which was a career year for him defensively anyway. Brian Butterfield is officially a god among men.