Boston Herald: “Get to crux of the data”

“The answer is no,” however, according to Dan Brooks, a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Brown University and the founder of brooksbaseball.net. “We’ve heard broadcasters say (Buchholz’ pitches) are dipping and diving and moving in weird ways — well, we can look at what the pitches are doing, we can look at the data. And the data say that they’re not doing anything special.”

Brooks’ website has data on nearly everything a pitcher can do on a mound: pitch selection, pitch trajectory, release points, outcomes and, notably in this case, vertical and horizontal movement.

If Buchholz’ pitches were doing anything wacky, it would show up on the PitchFX tool, which MLB has installed in every big league ballpark. Buchholz’ “entire career has been under the shiny cameras,” said Brooks. “If you think about it, anything he’s done in his entire big league career has been captured and put into pixels.”

The pixels show nothing out of the ordinary. In case you enjoy conspiracies and are wondering if Buchholz has been lathering up baseballs his entire career, Brooks said Buchholz’ pitches move in similar fashion to other pitches, so there are no red flags. [...]

Ryan Dempster was inspired enough by the flap to have a bottle of baby oil, a bottle of body lotion and a tub of Vaseline atop his locker. “Just having fun,” he said.

Jose Molina and Called Strikes - Beyond the Box Score

There is nothing like a handcrafted leather framing of a good pitch.

Washington Post: Introducing a new baseball analytics feature

And now, I’ll be blogging here every week. We’ll also be taking this rich PITCHf/x data and using it in other various ways to bolster The Post’s Nats coverage. Stay tuned, and let us know what you think.

How Much Better Could Justin Masterson Be?

We have a pretty good idea of the Justin Masterson skillset. He’s got a big, sweeping motion and he leans heavily on a low-90s sinker. Sometimes he’ll threaten to go entire games without throwing anything else. Masterson keeps the ball on the ground, he strikes out about one batter for every six, and he issues the occasional walk. Last year, he posted about the same FIP as Jon Lester and C.J. Wilson, which is good company at least in terms of name value. Masterson’s ERA was elevated, but, ERA.

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Relative to the league average, over his career, Justin Masterson has pitched to the tightest strike zone out of the sample. Because 1,000 called pitches is an unfamiliar denominator, know that Masterson has averaged about 1,815 called pitches per 200 innings. So this is a pretty extreme result we’re looking at, and it’s the sort of thing that makes you want to regress it going forward. It makes you want to blame someone other than Masterson — someone like, say, Masterson’s catchers. One wonders if this is a framing thing, since, in theory, a strike zone is a strike zone. Why should Masterson get screwed so badly?

Generally I think that the pitch framing stuff is pretty interesting. Here we have a look at the effect of poor framing on a specific pitcher.