Justin Verlander, Proving What Good Mechanics Can Do...
by madpoopz on Jul 24, 2010 1:07 AM EDT
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PrintNote from Al: Fan post bumped to the front page, this is good stuff from madpoopz.
Justin Verlander makes what I do easy. For those of you who don't know, I love pitching. I love to analyze the motion, the location, the velocity...I love it all. Thanks to PitchF/X I can discover cool little trends like the one I'm about to show you.
I did an article a while back when Rick Porcello was struggling really bad. I checked in on his arm slot and discussed how it was affecting his location. What I've done for this particular article is look at Justin Verlander month by month thus far and use some PitchF/X charts courtesy of TexasLeaguers.com to discover an interesting trend.
The first charts I'm going to show you are from the month of April, showing you his release points for the month and a spin movement plus gravity chart.
First thing to notice is the variance in release. Highest release is picked up at a little below 7ft and the lowest is picked up at approximately 5.5ft. BIG inconsistency there.
Here are the results. This is essentially a location chart for Verlanders pitches.
Fastball's are all spread out. Inconsistency amongst the breaking pitches.
Alone these charts may not seem that impressive. We all know that Verlanders month of April was nothing special. That's why we compare it to NOW. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN.
Ok, July release points.
This is soooo much better. It's by far not great. Still inconsistent, but at the velocity Verlander can pitch and with the amount of break he can put on pitches, he can afford a bit of inconsistency and still be quite effective.
But this next chart is where we see the big improvement in his pitching.
Look at how tight those grouping are compared to the other chart? The difference is insane! Consistent arm slot is probably most key to getting your pitches to do what they are supposed to do. Now I didn't show you guys Verlanders arm slot month by month for times sake on my part, but if you look at it you'll see improvement from month to month for the most part. That's called making adjustments, and that is what the ace of your staff is supposed to do.
So once again Mr. Verlander, oh ace of our staff, you prove that improving ones mechanics improves pitching performance overall. Bravo me boy. Bravo.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Bless You Boys writing staff.
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I love Justin Verlander. :)
Jason can go jump off a cliff, however. Good stuff, Poopz.
"While there's life, there's hope." --Cicero
Science nerd and proud of it!
This is my first time reading one of your posts and looking at some of these pitch f/x charts; but it seems as though your second release point chart (the one which you said showed “July release points”) is actually only from Justin’s start on June 3rd. Am I wrong?
It seems normal that his release points would vary a little more during the whole month of April, than one start in any month. Right?
The spin movement/location charts seem much more telling though. Thanks for sharing!
good catch.
I uploaded the wrong pic. I’m gonna fix it ASAP.
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what's silly...
is that not only had I uploaded the wrong chart, I uploaded one from a single start in June.
These are the things that happen when you write a post at 1am.
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variance is expected in release point...
nothing is ever perfect. But it’s the range of variance from the highest release to the lowest release that is important to observe. A range that is essentially a full 1.5ft is never good, even when looking at a whole months worth of pitches.
Look at the July chart (the new fixed one :P) and you’ll see that the variance in height at release is much smaller, shaving about 6 inches off.
It is important that I note that the pitch isn’t picked up at the exact moment of release. It is picked up a few feet later, maybe about 10ft or so. So pitch movement can be used to explain some inconsistency, especially side to side inconsistency.
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Nice article
Interesting piece of work. I wonder how much arm slot difference there is in throwing a fastball up and in vs down and away.
One thing I like to do...
is go outside and physically try and figure those things out. Just take a tennis ball, set up a visual target, and give it your best pitch. It’s not definitive proof but you get a good idea of what’s going on with the motion for sure. My guess would be that the it’s a couple inches at most.
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This is money.
And a great example of why Bless You Boys is where I go to find out about the Tigers. Nice work.
Excellent
This is an excellent post, I really enjoyed it. Great information and awesome graphs to prove your point. Really liked this, thank you.
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