If you don't hit, you can't win.
Elementary really, so it isn't some grand sabermetric discovery. Then again, I didn't really need Hit f/x or anything like that to tell you the Marlins offense was atrocious tonight. What made it especially frustrating was the fact that Brad Penny was more than hittable. His fastball was definitely working, with 95-98 MPH heat throughout his innings. But he wasn't placing pitches particularly well and there was a good set of pitches that were out there to be hit. Look at his pitch type strike zone, again courtesy of Brooks Baseball.
1) There were a good amount of belt- and thigh-high fastballs the Marlins could have driven.
2) Penny hung a huge amount of curveballs middle and high in the zone.
Yet the Marlins eked out, from my count, approximately four hard hit balls, one of which ended as Jorge Cantu's two-bag error that drove in the team's only run. Two others were doubles by Ross Gload and John Baker, but the team never capitalized.
Andrew Miller had some bad breaks.
In contrast, let's take a look at Andrew Miller's night out.
So if all of that good was working, how come he gave up four runs? Two major things contributed to the run scoring against Miller:
1) He was missing the zone a lot, mostly down. Can't blame him too much though, as he was getting squeezed in the strike zone (more on that later).
2) He was getting really unlucky. A lot of soft hit balls found their way through the infield, into holes in the outfield defense, and other inaccessible areas. Some of that is our defense, some of that was just plain bad luck.
I can't be too disappointed in Miller's performance. He struck out six while walking four, right around his average performance, but as I mentioned he was being squeezed pretty bad down in the zone. He was getting whiffs with his pitches and showing better command on his changeup, a key to making him a solid starter. As a Marlins fan, you hope a better strike zone can make his numbers look better.
The strike zone seemed way off.
As I watched the game, I noticed some awkward stuff about the strike zone home plate umpire Jerry Crawford was calling. In particular, the one consistent thing I saw was a lack of a knee-high strike, made particularly obvious because Miller was living in that area of the typical strike zone. Normally, I'd be pretty happy to see a pitcher working down consistently like that, but take a look at the strikezone plot for both teams.
The other oddity I spotted was this.
I didn't notice this in-game, but it makes me particularly mad. When the umps don't call an even strikezone for both teams, it's hard to gauge what types of pitches and locations should be used to get hitters out. These sorts of thing can really affect a pitcher's performance, and aren't usually seen through the box score stats. Just looking at the box score, I would have said Miller had a difficult struggle, but using the Pitch f/x data and some observation, you can tell he was really more in the strike zone than it was called. Combine that with some bad luck and you can get the makings of a poor performance.
The opposite went for Penny and the Sox starters. They got to take advantage of a fairly consistently called "bad" strike. I know Pitch f/x normalizes the strike zone, so the real zone is more hitter dependent, but those sort of bad calls can get players into chasing pitches that are far worse. It all stinks of just a forgettable evening for the Fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment