Comments on: Brad Lidge’s Issues

By: The A Team

The A Team — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:06:21 +0000

So for anyone keeping score at home Lidge is up to 11 BS…I believe the record is 14?

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:44:49 +0000

thanks a ton tide.

surprisingly, he’s getting squeezed by about 2x. way more strikes are being missed than balls.

on an 0-0 count alone he had 11 missed strikes compared to 5 balls. that is just on the fastball alone.

By: tide182

tide182 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:09:38 +0000

you can do that pretty easily here:

http://baseball.bornbybits.com/php/combined_tool.php?pit=400058&bat=0&type=0&result=-1&count=-1&r_spd=1&spd=-1&r_brx=1&brx=-100&r_brz=1&brz=-100&l_b=0

By: Ted Miller

Ted Miller — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:20:26 +0000

His fastball has been pitched badly. I believe he has thrown more balls than strikes when throwing his fastball. This allows the batters to take his sliders. Last year he threw more fastball strikes so the batters had to swing more.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:53:12 +0000

When Lidge has his bouts of bad performance with the Astros, hitters were able to immediate differentiate the slider and fastball. As a result, they didn’t swing at the slider, which is normally outside the zone. At first, the Astros believed he was tipping pitches, but correcting that didn’t cure the problem. My recollection is that Brad Ausmus identified mechanical/slot issues which allowed the batter to tell the difference between the fastball and slider.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:50:15 +0000

yea, i figured that was possible. but i don’t know how to operate any of that stuff.

i know his FB k% is terrible. one of the reasons why his fastball is -5.xx per 100 pitches.

By: R.J. Anderson

R.J. Anderson — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:38:22 +0000

Not that I know of. You could do it manually through PitchFx data mining, but that’s a ton of work.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:32:35 +0000

is there a site that displays fastball strike percentage?

By: Harry

Harry — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:34:06 +0000

This is where I disagree. If his sore knee is the reason why he is having trouble locating then he surely isn’t fine.

By: MattS

MattS — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:27:09 +0000

This is spot on. We had a very similar discussion about Brad Lidge over at TheGoodPhight.com:

http://www.thegoodphight.com/2009/5/26/887438/the-big-question-what-to-do-with

Same conclusions for the most part– fewer first pitch strikes, higher homeruns/flyball, more contact with pitches in the strike zone, higher BABIP. Still the strikeout rate is a huge issue. His QERA has been remarkably constant between 2.92-2.95 for 2006-2008 and now stands at about 4.66 largely due to his much lower K rate.