Tonight the Giants will face off against Colby Lewis and the Texas Rangers. Lewis is a fascinating story in the realm of baseball redemption. He’s a former 1st round draft pick (#38 overall in ’99) that struggled to put things together in the majors. Prior to this season, Lewis had thrown a sum of 217.1 innings in major league baseball… Read more →
The panic in Giantsland with regard to Tim Lincecum’s recent struggles has been overwhelming. It’s for a good reason, too. Tim Lincecum has been the most valuable Giant since he moved from really-good to really-freaking-oh-my-goodness good. The Giants, as a team without the benefit of a top notch offense, will need every starting pitcher on their roster to excel. If… Read more →
In his first career start with the Giants, Randy Johnson looked good. He pitched 5 innings and gave up 4 earned runs while striking out 7 batters. A three-run homer to Gallardo sealed his fate, but otherwise he looked pretty solid. He ended up taking the loss, but don’t let that get you down. Johnson pitched well. Some PITCHf/x graphs… Read more →
If you watched yesterday’s Home Opener, you noticed that Tim Lincecum really struggled to get through his three innings. By the end of the third inning, Lincecum had already thrown 78 pitches and he never made it back into the game. I do commend Bruce Bochy for pulling Lincecum when he did. It was pretty clear he didn’t have the… Read more →
A simple question today, should the Giants sign Will Ohman to a 1-year $2M-ish deal to replace the struggling Jack Taschner? After avoiding arbitration with Taschner — he was signed to a 1-year 830K deal — the Giants can’t be pleased with how the Special Agent has performed thus far in Spring Traninig. Taschner’s 12 free passes in 8.2 innings… Read more →
All PFX data is from 2008. Unlike in the Randy Johnson FX post, I cleaned up some of the pitch-types for Zito this time around. The first plot is the familiar movement plot that you’ll often see with PFX data. The second plot is movement based on velocity. It’s very crude — I broke everything into 5mph chunks — but… Read more →
If you watched the Giants bullpen last year, well, I feel sorry for you. No person should be forced to watch the bullpen atrocities that were Tyler Walker, Jack Taschner, Vinnie Chulk, and Brad Hennessey pitching in relief*. The good news is that Walker, Chulk, and Hennessey are no longer on the team and there’s a good chance that Taschner… Read more →
The Giants kicked off the free agent market this offseason by inking lefty reliever Jeremy Affeldt to a 2-year, $8M contract. The team, in sore need of bullpen help, made the first step among many in an effort to fix their battered bullpen. Affeldt definitely improves the bullpen but for fans that haven’t seen Affeldt pitch, what does he throw?… Read more →
Looking at Lincecum’s 138-pitch CG through the scope of PFX data.
Quick plot post this morning before I run off to a meeting. Release points for Matt Cain and Geno Espineli from last nights loss against the Padres. Cain’s release point looks pretty good. The pitches are grouped pretty closely together. Sometimes if a pitcher changes his arm angle to throw a breaking ball, hitters will be able to tell by… Read more →