Analyzing Grayson's First Start in the Bigs

[nvpacchi]

Like most of you, I was pumped to see Grayson's big league debut, and I don't remember being his hyper focused on a pitching performance since...maybe ever.  Ultimately his performance was solid, and if we throw out the first inning it was a bonafide strong start.

So I dug a bit into the statcast data  to see what we can garner from the first start.

1. The arsenal - 

(CSW = called + swinging strikes)

He threw five different pitches, with fastball and slider featuring nearly 75% of the time.  Unsurprisingly those were his two biggest whiff pitches, and the fastball was excellent by any metric you wanna use.  The slider was great at inducing chases and whiffs, but he wasn't really able to use it as a secondary strike getting pitch.  Maybe that's nerves a bit, and the first inning didn't really do him any favors, as many of his pitches were far too easy for hitters to lay off.

But he certainly settled down after the first inning, and was able to nab a strike via a swing and miss or called strike - one out of everything three pitches (comfortably above average).

 

2. His pitch shape

His five pitch shapes have the "opportunity" to all be unique.  The slider was very wonky for him, and even after he settled down in the second inning, the slider shape was still all over the place. (check out deGrom's slider from comparison - granted no fair comparing him to the game's best pitcher, but it is good for comparison's sake).

The blue circle looks like the ideal place to have all five pitches play off each other.  I'd have liked to see him throw the change up more.  It's shape is quite similar to the fastball, but a 13 MPH velo difference, it should have batters thinking fastball until it slows up far too much for them to make contact.  It didn't look like he had the feel for the pitch on Wednesday, so hopefully there's more to come with it.

 

3. The fastball

Frankly, the fastball had me a bit worried entering the season.  I understand the velo and elite extension were always there, but the lack of induced vertical break (or I guess too much of it for a FB) had me worried.  He was averaging about 15.5" in spring training, which fell into a 'dead zone fastball' that some of the pitching nerd gurus like to talk about.  Fortunately this time out, his fastball picked up an extra inch of ride, above average for the league and his arm slot.

The 95.6 MPH fastball he struck Jonah Heim out on had 19.2" of IVB which is getting into Tyler Wells and Felix Bautista territory (or any other elite IVB guy with a high over the top arm slot).  A lot of Os in the early going (Irvin, Gibson, and Baumann for example) have gained more ride year over year.  Now I don't know exactly how more ride is gained, but if Grayson can continue to tap into that fastball that plays up... with that velo and extension, watch out!

 

The chart below doesn't really fit into any story above.  I just wanted to share it to show how he settled down inning over inning.  He was either getting the fastball up or painting it, and while the slider still was a little wonky command wise, there were more sliders that were competitive.  I hope you all enjoyed!  If there's anything else you want to see, let me know and I can try to track it down.

[Moose Milligan]

Damn, this is good research.  Well done.

[BRobinsonfan]

Yeah, but how did the ball look coming out of his hand?     Sorry, couldn't resist.  I echo what @MooseMilligan said, great research and much appreciated!

[wse120372]

I thought this take was interesting regarding the change-up...

 

https://twitter.com/LanceBroz/status/1644014134713786370?s=20

 

 

[Frobby]

Thanks for the hard work.  I have to admit, though, that I find the pitch movement profile graphics almost incomprehensible.  

[interloper]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

Damn, this is good research.  Well done.

Don't pretend like you understand any of that. 

Edited April 6, 2023 by interloper

[Spy Fox]

51 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Thanks for the hard work.  I have to admit, though, that I find the pitch movement profile graphics almost incomprehensible.  

What I think I get from those graphs and nvpacchi's explanations is this: 

• Smaller blobs are good. The smaller one of the colored regions appears, the more similar each instance of that pitch was to each other, which probably means the pitcher is executing the pitch how they want more consistent. 
• Blobs being far apart from each other is usually good because that means wider variety of pitch movements a batter has to be prepared for. 
• Blobs being close together can also be good if there is a strong velocity difference, because it means the two types of pitches will appear similarly to the hitter, making it hard to differentiate the velocity. 

But I think I need an education in how to understand "Induced Vertical Break."

[NCRaven]

1 hour ago, Spy Fox said:

But I think I need an education in how to understand "Induced Vertical Break."

I think that's what happens when she say's "it's me, not you."

[25 Nuggets]

Induced Vertical Break - well we know what Vertical Break means, that is the delta Y or difference in height between start and end point - so Induced Vertical Break must mean the amount of that break that is above or below the amount expected from gravity.

[nvpacchi]

1 hour ago, 25 Nuggets said:

Induced Vertical Break - well we know what Vertical Break means, that is the delta Y or difference in height between start and end point - so Induced Vertical Break must mean the amount of that break that is above or below the amount expected from gravity.

Yes what 25 Nuggets said for Vertical break!

Basically for 4 seamers the higher the number the better. The article below is really good primer into it.  Frankly I don't know how to weigh the importance of it for pitches other than four seamers... Like what there's great sliders that barely have any horizontal break (the gyro slider like Emmanuel Clase), and then the sweeper types that look like video game pitches (Ohtani sweeper) - and both rate out as great pitches.

How the other pitches play off the vertical break generated by the four seamer is what matters, I think.

https://baseballcloud.blog/2020/12/02/__trashed/

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by nvpacchi

[nvpacchi]

2 hours ago, Spy Fox said:

What I think I get from those graphs and nvpacchi's explanations is this: 

• Smaller blobs are good. The smaller one of the colored regions appears, the more similar each instance of that pitch was to each other, which probably means the pitcher is executing the pitch how they want more consistent. 
• Blobs being far apart from each other is usually good because that means wider variety of pitch movements a batter has to be prepared for. 
• Blobs being close together can also be good if there is a strong velocity difference, because it means the two types of pitches will appear similarly to the hitter, making it hard to differentiate the velocity. 

But I think I need an education in how to understand "Induced Vertical Break."

Yeah basically that was what I was getting at.  Small blobs are better suggest being able to repeat the pitch, and larger distance difference between blobs means that not one pitch acts like the other.

 

The changeup blurb that @wse120372brought up from Lance is super interesting.  Didn't realize his change had even more drop previously.  That will be something to monitor. 

[Spy Fox]

1 hour ago, 25 Nuggets said:

Induced Vertical Break - well we know what Vertical Break means, that is the delta Y or difference in height between start and end point - so Induced Vertical Break must mean the amount of that break that is above or below the amount expected from gravity.

8 minutes ago, nvpacchi said:

Yes what 25 Nuggets said for Vertical break!

Basically for 4 seamers the higher the number the better. The article below is really good primer into it.  Frankly I don't know how to weigh the importance of it for pitches other than four seamers, but how the other pitches play off the vertical break generated by the four seamer is what matters.

https://baseballcloud.blog/2020/12/02/__trashed/

How is the 0 point for IVB determined? Is 0 the expected drop over 60ft6 of a ball thrown with no spin at all? At a certain velocity? (Since a faster ball would be expected to drop less over the same distance.)

[nvpacchi]

19 minutes ago, Spy Fox said:

How is the 0 point for IVB determined? Is 0 the expected drop over 60ft6 of a ball thrown with no spin at all? At a certain velocity? (Since a faster ball would be expected to drop less over the same distance.)

I'm not sure if its velocity dependent or not., but it makes sense that it would be.

Sadly this guy just started a consulting gig with some MLB clients, so he stopped his blog, but he has some really good research into pitching shapes.

He posits that IVB/sec rather than just IVB is a better metric.  So if you can pair a high IVB fastball and high velo, it can be even more effective.  Pete Fairbanks and Felix Bautista territory.

https://elibenporat.substack.com/p/does-velocity-even-matter

Edited April 6, 2023 by nvpacchi

[SilverRocket]

7 hours ago, nvpacchi said:

The slider was very wonky for him, and even after he settled down in the second inning, the slider shape was still all over the place. (check out deGrom's slider from comparison - granted no fair comparing him to the game's best pitcher, but it is good for comparison's sake).

The two sliders that Semien didn't bite on to start the game had 36 and 35 VBreak and 4 and 5 HBreak. The one that struck out Duran had 42 VBreak and 16 HBreak. They were so different that I wondered whether they were two different pitches that were conflated.

Looking after the game, it looks like it was probably the same pitch but with a lot of variance. Of the 11 sliders with lower VBreak, 29-36, 8 were taken for balls, 1 foul, and 2 put in play softly. Of the 8 with 37+ VBreak, there were 3 swinging strikes, 2 fouls, and 3 balls.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

6 hours ago, interloper said:

Don't pretend like you understand any of that. 

Me reading the above post.