Pitchers throw offspeed pitches that intended to cause deception and batters normally would swing before the pitches arrived. On the statcast website, we can see that split-finger, changeup, forkball and screwball are in this group.
Split-finger is not very common in the major league, but there are still some pitchers who have it as part of their arsenal. Last season, the Rays batters swung at splitters 187 times and of these 187 times, 118 swings were in zone. However, it’s not that easy to hit well against split-fingers. The Rays batters only had a batting average of .200 when they chose to swing at splitters. Nonetheless, some teams didn’t swing much at splitters in 2020. The Reds swung at splitters 23 times, Brewers batters swung 22 times at splitters and the Pirates batters only swung 21 times. The Pirates batters only had one hit when swinging at splitters. Splitter is not frequently used in the major league, but changeup is a very important pitch for most pitchers in the league, in particular, almost all starting pitchers throw changeups. In the 2020 season, Arizona Diamondbacks swung at changeups 618 times, most in the majors. And, of these 618 times, 353 swings were in zone. Swinging at changeups didn’t sound like a good idea for the D-Backs, they only posted a .233 batting average when swinging at changeups. Meanwhile, the Rays and the Dodgers each swung at changeups 598 times and 595 times. The Cincinnati Reds only swung at changeups 397 times, and of these 397 swings, 238 times were in zone.
As we can see, less than 60% of swings at splitters or changeups were in zone last season.
Forkball is not common in baseball. Last season, only Angels’ pitcher Kyle Keller threw forkballs. How many forkballs did he throw in 2020? Three, so there were only three forkballs in the majors last year. All three forkballs were in zone, one was a called strike, another was a flyout to leftfield and the other was a popout. Thus, no hit against forkballs last year.
Shohei Ohtani only threw 13 splitters last year. If he can stay healthy, it will be highly possible to see him use his splitters more than he did in 2020. In 2018, he threw nearly 200 splitters before being shut down as pitcher and batters only hit .036 against his split-fingers. The Angels fans will definitely want to see him pitch as he did in 2018 and we will see how MLB hitters identify the right ways to hit Ohtani’s splitters. In the meantime, let’s look at the top 5 pitchers who threw most changeups in 2020. They are Zach Davies, Lucas Giolito, Luis Castillo, Kyle Hendricks and Tyler Anderson. Zach Davies was traded to the Cubs and he and Hendricks are teammates now. Luis Castillo is also in the NL Central, are batters in the NL Central going to see a lot of changeups? Lucas Giolito tossed a no-hitter last season and finished 7th in the Cy Young voting, will his changeup become more dangerous in 2021? How will batters react to his changeup? Are batters going to swing more against his changeup? We shall see.
No comments:
Post a Comment