What makes an elite pitcher so good using Pitch FX.
I have a new article that examines this very topic over at Fantasy Baseball Strategy and I found a few interesting differences.
- The first one may not be that surprising but elite pitchers have a higher avereage velocity than other groups of pitchers which carries over to the off-speed and breaking pitches as well.
- The movement on the elite pitches are greater, in some case much greater, movement on the off-speed and breaking pitches than those in the other groups.
- The elite pitchers tend to focus their off-speed pitches outside to a right handed batter while the above average and average groups, focus their off speed pitches on the inside.
- The average pitcher has much less horizontal movement than the other two groups.
The groups were broken down by 1st only looking at right handed pitchers for simplicities sake. I chose the #1 starting pitcher for each team according to Sportsline and grouped them based on this year only on the research by Derek Jacques over at Baseball Prospectus. The breakdown goes as follows:
| Elite | Above Average | Average |
| Beckett | Baker | Meche |
| Chamberlain | Cook | Redding |
| Halladay | Duchscherer | |
| Hernandez | Guthrie | |
| Lincecum | Jurrjens | |
| Peavy | Lackey | |
| Sheets | Lowe | |
| Verlander | Millwood | |
| Webb | Nolasco | |
| Zambrano | Oswalt | |
| Vazquez | ||
| Volquez |
Let’s look at three graphs (I have more on my site) that quickly show what I’m talking about.
Looking at these graphs above you can see how the elite pitchers have a lot more late movement than the other groups of pitchers. If you want to see the other graphs and charts, I recommend visiting my Fantasy Baseball Strategy.
