Comments on: PITCHf/x: Examining Barry Zito’s 2007 Season

By: Enhanced Gameday analysis cataloged by author « Fast Balls

Enhanced Gameday analysis cataloged by author « Fast Balls — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:45:12 +0000

[...] January 23, 2008, he published “PITCHf/x: Examining Barry Zito’s 2007 Season“, an article about Barry Zito’s pitch repertoire and [...]

By: American Hooligans » Blog Archive » Analyzing Barry Zito

American Hooligans » Blog Archive » Analyzing Barry Zito — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:29:40 +0000

[...] watching this downright painful game, I came upon this particularly interesting post on how Barry Zito is unravelling. Please note it’s heavy on the stats and makes no measure of grit or uniform [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:54:37 +0000

Hi Paul,

It’s anyones guess really. I suspect it was a gradual thing and it’s not unheard of for pitchers to lose velocity over a period of time. Of course, we don’t have the data so we can’t really see when the drop started. Zito has put a lot of mileage on his arm so it’s possible that the workload could have something to do with it?

By: price55

price55 — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:46:10 +0000

What I’m curious about is how did Zito lose all that velocity in such a short time? It’s not like he’s Frank Tanana who got hurt and saw his fastball go into a ditch after a decade. Zito has never been hurt, he doesn’t have bad mechanics, and he’s only 29. Is it because of all the innings? It seems odd.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:42:42 +0000

Hey Martin,

I could get the half-by-half data but that would mean I would have to manually pull out the data from MLB.com, spreadsheet it, and plot it myself, I just don’t have the time or know-how to do that right now. Kalk’s tool does splits in some ways, you can see the pitch-types thrown to LHH’s vs. RHH’s, but it doesn’t do 1st or 2nd halves … yet.

If his pitching actually changed in the 2nd half — keeping the ball down more, using more changeups, etc — I would be greatly encouraged for the next few seasons.

By: obsessivegiantscompulsive

obsessivegiantscompulsive — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:30:15 +0000

Great post. I’m looking forward to the other starters.

Is there any way to divide the data by, say, first half, second half? Because Zito was clearly bothered by his contract early on. I know that Lincecum was overthrowing in his first start because he was hyped up, and his FB pitches were going high because of that, so I wonder - assuming we could split the data into halves of the season - if the pattern of throwing high pitches held for both halves of the season for Zito.

I think the same thing happened for Morris too in his first year of his contract, changing teams was not as easy as either one thought, Zito admitted as much in a late season interview.

And it reflected in his stats. Pretty brutal in the first half with all the walks and everything, so I won’t go through the gory details, but in the second half, 4.11 ERA, 92.0 IP, 82 hits (.255 BABIP; great) and 31 BB (3.0 BB/9; good), with 65 K (6.4 K/9, acceptable; 2.1 K/BB, good).

I think the key will be Zito continuing his good pitching from the second half in 2007 into a full season in 2008, he clearly figured something out in the second half, 4.11 ERA would be great to get from him (under 4.00 even better).

Also, technically, we only paid Zito $10M for 2007 and that’s about what a league average pitcher was getting nowadays. The bar is raised for 2008 with his salary jumping to $14.5M.