TPC Video Break: The Freak

A nice compilation of Tim Lincecum related clips for your viewing pleasure.



I really like the comparison between Lincecum and cricket bowler Shoaib Akhtar, who at one point held the world record for fastest cricket ball in the world (100.2 mph). Both Lincecum and Akhtar use "momentum pitching", which helps them attain maximum velocity by creating a significant amount of forward momentum with their bodies, which is then transferred to the ball via their arms.



In contrast to the momentum approach, here's a clip of Felix Hernandez, who actually comes to a complete stop in his motion before throwing to home plate.



I'm not an expert when it comes to pitching mechanics, but I would much rather see a pitcher use their whole body like Lincecum than to use the stop-and-start motion that Hernandez uses. It seems to me that by utilizing your body more, it reduces the overall stress on your arm, and increases velocity without increasing fatigue. There's a really good article at Drive Line Mechanics about Hernandez and the whole momentum versus stop-and-start pitching approach.

Daisuke Matsuzaka seems to have a mixed approach, creating some momentum, but not quite as much as Lincecum.



This final clip is of Greg Maddux during a bullpen session. He uses a very smooth momentum based approach that allows him to create velocity without putting much strain on his arm, and allows for a very efficient approach.



Everybody's different, so it's impossible to say that one approach is always better than another, but I think I prefer the momentum based mechanical approach. ...Read more

The Fallacy of Scouting Reports

It's obvious I'm a stat guy. I won't go so far as to say that you can know everything about a player just by looking at his stats, but numbers can tell you a lot -- and I mean a lot -- about a player. Even just the basic stats like contact rate, strikeout rate, walk rate, and groundball rates can give insight into a player's mechanics, speed, mentality, maturity, hand eye coordination, and even the late movement on a pitcher's fastball. After looking at thousands of stat lines, these types of attributes pop out at me more and more, and prove to be false less and less.

As much as I like stats, it's nice to take a moment to occasionally read a scouting report or 2 about a player. Sometimes I read scouting reports looking for certain information, as well as affirmation about my stat based analysis of a player, but I also read scouting reports that might help explain certain statistical anomalies that I can't attribute to any particular element of a player's game.

The problem with scouting reports is that unlike stats, they can have such a wide variation and observer bias that it's very difficult to determine which reports are accurate and which reports are worth ignoring.

Just as an example of why I shy away from scouting reports, here are 2 scouting reports of Greg Maddux when he was in high school. The first report was written by a Cubs scout named Jorgensen on April 20, 1984.


Not really a bad report, but if I were to read that report about a high school pitcher being considered in the 2009 draft, I'd probably not think much of him, and I'd move on to find someone with more promise. Nothing in the report would make me think that this could be a special pitcher, especially when you see that the scout has rated all of his pitches and skills as a '5' or a '6' with a future projection of '6' and one '7'.

But check out this scouting report written just 1 month later by a scout named Mapson.

All of a sudden, in the space of 1 month, Maddux goes from having a bunch of '5' pitches with a '6' potential to having anywhere from a '4' to a '6' with the potential to have an '8' fastball, a '7' curve, with a few more catergories receiving a future '7'. Instead of being a "hardthrower" who lacks "overall control", he's now good enough to be the #1 pick in the nation, with a big league curveball.

So, what happened? Did Maddux improve so much in one month that he went from being an above average high school pitcher to a possible #1 pick? Did his curveball suddenly start breaking an extra foot, and his fastball start moving at the last second? My guess is no. Maddux was the same pitcher in May 1984 that he was in April 1984.

In retrospect, it looks like Jorgensen wasn't such a keen observer, and Mapson was some kind of baseball prophet. But in reality, the difference was a variety of things, including the individual writing the scouting report, the conditions and competition, and the length of observation among other things. That's why the numbers don't match up, and that's why one report describes a good pitcher, while the other describes an elite pitcher.

For all I know, Jorgensen may have gone on to great things as a scout, and Mapson might be flipping burgers in Vegas somewhere. I don't know the whole story, so I can't really say. But what I do know is that people have opinions, and not everyone sees things the same. I might see a kid with an attitude, you might see a kid with spunk. I might see a kid with an average breaking ball that falls behind hitters, and you might see a kid with good arm action and a great mental approach. Over the course of a small sample size (like 5 innings of a high school or college game), who knows what a scout might see, and beyond that, who knows what a scout might think they see.

I'm not picking on scouts, but rather the process of scouting. I think that in most cases for most teams, it is severely flawed, and allows for heavy personal and group biases. For instance, take the following comments from scouting reports that several big league organizations used prior to the 2006 MLB draft. I'll first give you the reports, then the name of the player under examination.

"It looks like his head is going to snap off and his arm is going to fly off."

"He [is] short, not a real physical kid, and mechanically he [is] going to break down..."

The player in question? Tim Lincecum.

In 2006, 9 teams passed up the chance to draft Tiny Tim, instead taking Luke Hochevar with the #1 pick, followed by Greg Reynolds, Evan Longoria, Brad Lincoln, Brandon Morrow, Andrew Miller, Clayton Kershaw, Drew Stubbs, and Bill Rowell. Of the 9 players chosen ahead of Lincecum, only Longoria and Kershaw appear to have comparable talent, and none of them have had such an amazing impact on the game so early.

Obviously, in hindsight it's easy to see that Lincecum should have been at least in the top 3 picks in the 2006 draft. But at the time, teams felt like they had to look out for themselves, ignored the stats, and passed up the opportunity to draft a proven top tier talent simply based off of size and some poorly worded scouting reports. Perhaps those very same teams had never heard of Pedro Martinez, Tim Hudson, or Roy Oswalt, all of whom top out at 5'11" or 6'.

If Lincecum's draft position was the only time that teams made a mistake due to scouting reports, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But according to an article written by Lincoln Hamilton at Project Prospect, of the college hitters drafted from 2001 to 2005 the factor that had the least correlation with a hitters success at the major league level was draft position. That means that of all the college hitters drafted in that space of time (within the top 50 picks), the later a hitter was drafted, the more likely he was to become a productive major league ballplayer.

What does that have to do with scouting reports? Almost everything. Due to the wide variation in competition levels and sporadic stat keeping at the college level, the de facto mode of evaluating college players is primarily through scouts and scouting reports. And according to Hamilton, scouts were so bad at evaluating talent from 2001 to 2005 that teams actually drafted the worst players first.

It would be on thing if only a few factors better predicted the major league success of college hitter, and draft postion were somewhere in the middle of all of them. That would mean that in general, scouts were doing an average job of evaluating talent. But the fact that of all the factors out there, draft position was dead last (and in Hamilton's study it wasn't even close), which means that scouts were so bad at their job during that time period, a team would be better off drafting the exact players their scouts told them not to, and avoiding the players that scouts liked the most.

As one final example of why I find scouting reports so difficult to accept, I'd like to point out a basic review of scouting reports performed by Jeff Sackman and Kent Bonham at The Hardball Times. By comparing the statements made in various scouting reports of several college players with actual statistical data, Sackman and Bonham were able to gauge the accuracy of each scout's assessment. Though it was a small sample size (only 4 examples were analyzed in this particular publication), the results were quite surprising. Sackman and Bonham found that 75% of the scouting reports were not only inaccurate, but completely inaccurate. Players that scouts felt were spray hitters were actually pull hitters. Pitchers that were reported to be groundball pitchers were actually fly ball pitchers.

What does it all add up to? I'm not exactly sure. But one thing I do know is that the more scouting reports I read, and the better I get at analyzing stats, the more I've begun to listen to the numbers and not the scouts. I don't personally have anything against scouts and the work they do. I just don't believe everything (or most things) they say.

Fausto Carmona: Comparisons and Career Projections

Thursday Indians fans saw a much improved Fausto Carmona, as he bounced back with a win and 6.1 innings of solid pitching. He struck out 3, walked only 1, gave up 2 runs, and had his ground ball rate back up to a more "Carmona-ish" level. He wasn't perfect, but much better than a week ago. In honor of Carmona's return, here are some of his comparable players and how they fared over the years...

Actually, let's have a little more fun before we get into all the details. Without looking, what comps would you suggest for Carmona? If you need to, take a moment to check his stats at your favorite stat site. I promise I'll wait right here while I eat a plate of cheese nachos with baked beans on top (one of my favorite nacho combinations)...

Ok, ready? Who'd you come up with?...Seriously? You think Carmona compares well to Goose Gossage? Is this a joke?...Well, I guess you have a good point. Put a mustache like that on Carmona, and they would look pretty much like twins.

Ok, seriously, who'd you come up with? Here's who I found along with their minor league averages.

Greg Maddux and Brandon Webb. Pretty nice comps for Carmona. You can see that there's a bit of an age difference between Carmona and Webb, but in linear progression terms, Maddux, Carmona, and Webb all match up pretty well. Of the 3, Webb had the higher strike out rates and ground ball rates, but his control wasn't so good. Maddux comes in with the lowest ground ball rates, but he played a year ahead of Carmona and 4 years ahead of Webb, so the strike out rates and walk rate are very respectable. As for Carmona, his ground ball rate and control were very advanced even in the minors.

Now that we have some comparables for Carmona, let's see how each of them did (or is doing) in the majors. We'll start with K/9 and BB/9 rates.


Very solid progression trends for both pitchers. Just as with their minor league stats, Maddux had better control, while Webb relied on a better strikeout rate, but overall they were very similar. I added the little orange stars to indicate the years that each player won the N.L. Cy Young Award, and we'll get back to that in a second, but before we do let's check their ground ball rates.

Once again, both pitchers displayed very solid trends in their ground ball rates. I wrote an article a while back discussing the value of high ground ball rates so I won't spend too much time on them here, but you can see that in general ground ball rates don't see the heavy declines during the transition from AAA to the majors like we see with strike out and walk rates. They might fluctuate a bit, but a great ground ball rate can almost immediately be applied in the major leagues, and make a ground ball pitcher very valuable early in their career.

Anyways, let's move on. I mentioned the Cy Young Award years for each pitcher, so we'll take a moment to see what kind of production a ground ball pitcher has to reach in order to have a Cy Young type year.

So, if Carmona is going to be a Cy Young caliber pitcher, he'll need to come somewhere close to the numbers above (notice that I threw in Webb's stats from this year since it looks like he has a very good chance of winning the Cy Young this season). If we apply the same trends displayed by Webb and Maddux to Carmona's minor league numbers, then we can determine if and when Carmona might be able to compete for MLB's top pitching award (I also project Webb's stats along the same lines of Maddux to make things a little cleaner).


The first thing to point out about Carmona's stats is that the giant spike you see at the age of 24 are his actual stats from this year. It seems completely out of line with Webb and Maddux's numbers, but Carmona has only appeared in 12 games this year, and injuries have also been an issue, so I'm not really concerned about him or the inflated stats.

What I am interested in is the numbers projected for Carmona from the age of 25 up to 32 and possibly beyond. Between his walk rates and ground ball rates, Carmona should be a Cy Young caliber pitcher even with slightly lower strike out rates than Maddux and Webb. That doesn't mean he'll definitely win a Cy Young Award during those years, but he'll likely perform at a level equivalent to a ground ball inducing Cy Young Award winner. Once again, it's not a guarantee, but he has the potential to do so.
...Read more

Ian Kennedy - a young Greg Maddux?

Maybe, maybe not...

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you’re a Yankees fan, you’ve got to be pretty excited right now with all these young pitchers coming up through the farm system. It reminds me a lot of when the Braves started their streak of division titles back in the early 90’s. They had a young John Smoltz, a young Tom Glavine, a very young Steve Avery, and later added a young Greg Maddux. Between those four guys and a long list of offensive talent that included Terry Pendleton, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Fred McGriff, David Justice, Gary Sheffield, Javy Lopez, Rafael Furcal, and many others, the 90’s was the time to be a Braves fan. They don’t have the pitching anymore, and it’s unlikely they’ll be able to dominant the National League East anytime in the near future unless they address that need. But right now, the Yankees have Chien-Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain, Phillip Hughes and Ian Kennedy, with the possibility of adding depth through trades or free agency. The market value of just those four pitchers is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of at least $40 million a year, if not more. Depending on how Chamberlain and Hughes perform, that number could be closer to $60 million, and possibly $80 million by the time their shot at free agency rolls around. I never thought I’d say it, but it almost looks like the Yankees are turning into one of those low budget home-grown-talent teams based around a well planned scouting approach. Obviously, the Yankees still need an established dominant pitcher for the play-offs, but if they keep the work loads of their younger pitchers relatively light, then I think one of their young prospects will step up and be a great Game 1 starter.

With Chamberlain and Hughes, the debate isn’t so much about if they’ll be any good, but rather how good they will eventually be. They’ve both proven themselves during their time in the minors, and they’ve both been impressive in the appearances they’ve made for the big league team, so the only real question is how long will it take to fulfill their potential.

When it comes to Ian Kennedy, there really doesn’t seem to be a clear cut decision about how good he is. The Yankees recently tried their very best to use him as trade bait in the Johan Santana mess, so it would make sense that they would try to convince the Twins and everybody else that Kennedy is a rising star. However, they couldn’t run the risk of over-hyping Kennedy and then have the Twins scoff at their sales pitch, or even worse they ran the risk of over-hyping Kennedy and then face the possibility of him never meeting the expectations of a deceived and unforgiving Yankees fan base. Either way, I think the Yankees have had to be cautious about the impression they give about Kennedy. I think the best thing they could probably do is put him in positions where he can succeed early, and then either trade him or hope he keeps developing (actually, I think that’s exactly what they tried to do this past season by working Kennedy into some late season starts, but the sample size was too small to convince other teams or Yankees fans of his potential). Regardless of what the Yankees hype-machine is or is not saying about Kennedy, we have his stats to tell us the real story. For quick analytical purposes, I’m just going to throw out a few pitchers with their minor league average stats and then we’ll take it from there.

Player K/9 BB/9 GB% H/9

Ian Kennedy 9.97 3.14 39% 5.62

Phillip Hughes 10.18 2.16 49.8% 5.56

Joba Chamberlain 13.79 2.76 53.7% 6.33

Tom Gorzelanny 8.98 3 43.3% 7.08

Ian Snell 8.46 2.13 43.5% 8.06

Kyle Davies 9 3.25 39.3% 7.56

Mike Pelfrey 8.53 3.17 53.5% 8.18

Out of these 7 pitchers, Kennedy ranks last in groundball percentage, and he ranks fifth in BB/9. His K/9 rate and H/9 rate are high, and scouts have praised Kennedy for being able to locate his off-speed pitches well, even making comparisons to Greg Maddux. But to be fair to Maddux, he went through the minor leagues at a much younger age and maintained a groundball percentage of almost 60% throughout his career. Also, while Kennedy was pitching through AA and AAA ball as a 22 year old, Maddux was pitching his second full season in the major leagues at the age of 22 with a K/9 of 5.06, a BB/9 of 2.83, and a GB% of exactly 60%. So the Maddux comparisons aren’t all that accurate. If anyone looks like Greg Maddux right now it’s Fausto Carmona, who just finished his second full season in the majors at the age of 23 with a K/9 of 5.73, a BB/9 of 2.55, and a GB% of 66%.

My biggest problem with Kennedy is that his power stuff isn’t good enough to blow major league hitters away and his off-speed stuff doesn’t result in enough groundballs, which tells me he’s leaving pitches high in the zone and isn’t getting much downward movement on anything. In the minors, those types of pitches were being popped up and usually didn’t amount to much, but major league hitters won’t be so merciful, especially in the AL East.

So what can the Yankees fans realistically expect from Kennedy? Probably #4 or #5 starter stuff for a few years, with a chance of becoming a solid #2 in the next 5 years. He’s much closer to being Mike Pelfrey or Tom Gorzelanny than Greg Maddux, which gives him a projected ERA for the next 2 years of around 5.00. That would probably put him in a good position to win 10 or 11 games next season pitching for the Yankees, while losing about the same number. Not bad, not great, just kind of average, but in a few years he’ll start to figure things out and if the Yankees can hold on to Hughes and Chamberlain until then, they might have two #1 starters pitching in the #1 and #2 spots and a solid #2 pitcher in the #3 spot, and that would make them a great playoff team.