In yesterday’s game, a wet and rain-soaked affair, the Giants were shut down by a complete game Jason Marquis start. Marquis has never been a dominant starter, but over the past few years he’s been above replacement level and occasionally a useful rotation piece. Since 2004 he’s posted win values of: 1.9, 0.7, -0.6, 1.7, and 1.6 wins. He’ll give you about 200 innings per year, some groundballs, and chance to win every now and then. Still, nothing can really take the sting out of losing to Jason Marquis*. Over the past few years, the Giants haven’t been the most patient team — their team BB% of 7.1 is currently the 2nd worst BB% in the majors — and pitchers like Marquis will give hacky teams like the Giants fits.
* Side note: Including yesterday’s start, Marquis holds an impressive career ERA of 1.98 against the Giants in 50+ innings pitched. That includes a WHIP of 0.915 and a 2.06 SO/BB ratio.
Because of MLB’s terrible Saturday blackout rules, the game was not televised yesterday. But here’s what Marquis looked like through PFX.
Marquis worked mostly inward and down on right-handed batters. He induced 14 groundouts in the game. Let’s take a look at the contact detail.
The majority of Marquis’ groundballs were pitches down in the zone, most likely his sinker or slider. Last graph, here’s the movement plot on the pitches that Marquis threw that resulted in groundouts.
Remember, axis units on this graph are measured in inches. On both the pitch results and contact detail graphs, they are in feet.
Pitch data from this graph:
| Batter | Pitch | MPH | pfx_x | pfx_z |
| R | SL | 83.9 | 1.057 | 1.384 |
| R | SL | 83 | 0.454 | 0.875 |
| R | SL | 86.2 | 3.554 | 2.819 |
| L | SL | 85.3 | 1.455 | 2.307 |
| L | SL | 82.3 | 1.943 | 1.526 |
| L | SL | 84.1 | 0.608 | 0.891 |
| L | SL | 81.5 | 1.001 | 2.087 |
| R | SI | 89.7 | -9.73 | 6.128 |
| R | SI | 89.8 | -9.909 | 5.918 |
| L | SI | 91 | -9.886 | 6.758 |
| L | SI | 89.6 | -9.285 | 6.278 |
| R | FF | 92.1 | -5.069 | 7.267 |
| R | FF | 90.8 | -8.717 | 6.127 |
| L | CH | 83.7 | -0.512 | 3.023 |
7 of Marquis’ groundball outs came on his slider. I was a little surprised to see that on the day Marquis threw about two-thirds of his sliders to left-handed batters. Generally RHP’s will throw the slider more often to right-handed batters because of the break on the pitch. In addition to the 7 slider groundouts, 6 more came on the sinker/fastball and 1 came on a changeup.
—
To Walk or not to Walk
After the game yesterday I noticed something interesting about Bengie Molina — he’s yet to take a walk this season. In 86 PA’s this season, Molina has yet to reach first base on anything other than a hit. Even crazier is that Seattle Mariner SS, Yuniesky Betancourt, has also gone 86 PA’s on the season without a single walk. It’s not surprising that Molina hasn’t drawn a walk yet this season because in order to draw a walk, you must not swing the bat. Out of all major league hitters with at least 40 PA’s this season, Molina has the highest Swing% in baseball. His current Swing% of 66.9% is tops.
It’s very possible that Molina’s first walk of the year will be of the IBB variety.
