Um, what? The guy is w/o question one of the top starters in baseball right now, if not THE top starter. He’s a groundball machine who rarely gets hit hard and misses just enough bats. He’s also walked very few hitters this season. I fail to see how this is a guy you shouldn’t feel good about throwing in a playoff series.

I suspect that, in real terms, it’s difficult to separate the two pitches and, functionally, their movement and velocity is probably a near overlap. I’m guessing the ones that slot in around 87, 88 are cutters and the ones a little slower than that would technically be sliders, but given the fact that they all come from a similar arm alot, and all reside on the same spectrum of velocity/movement, it’s arguably moot.

Interestingly, looking at his FanGraphs player page, the pitches he’s thrown this season at an average of 87mph are classed as “sliders”, whilst the pitches he threw at that velo in 2006 were classed as “cutters”. The combined % of pitches thrown in 2006 of the slider & the cutter (8% and 19% respectively) is roughly equivalent to the % of pitches thrown as sliders this year (28%). He has no cutters classified this year. I wonder if the movement has somehow increased on his cutter (leading them to be lumped in with the sliders) this year as opposed to 2006?

An interesting exercise, I think, would be to try to pitchFX all his pitches that fall into the “slider/cutter” velo/movement category (all of which BIS seems to class as sliders this year, but which were separated into the two pitches in 2006), and separate them (probably pretty much arbitrarily, I guess) into higher speed (cutter) and lower speed (slider) pitches, and see if there are any significant differences in whiff rate, GB rate, when he throws them (i.e. at what stage in the count), linear weights, and whether he throws the cutter more to left-handers and the slider more to righties (which is what I suspect).

Pitch-type linear weights class both his slider (which will include some cutters, this year) and his cutter as excellent pitches (2.18 and 3.14 runs/100 above average, respectively).

Carpenter also throws an occasional changeup, btw, but seems to have dumped that pitch almost entirely this year. His cutter is very effective vs lefties so presumably he’s decided to “simplify” his repertoire and dump his weakest pitch (his only below-average one), which has also helped him to (so far) his best ever season.

And, to the guy who said he “didn’t trust” Carpenter in October – he’s been pretty damn good, in fact, in the postseason. 5-1, 2.53 ERA (his FIP is only the same as his career FIP, however).

To some degree, I suppose, what you call a pitch is arbitrary and subjective. But going just based on what it’s more similar to (based entirely on surface level observation) — other pitchers’ sliders or other pitchers’ cutters — I’d definitely say he’s a fastball-cutter-curveball pitcher.

In any case, great analysis, and I do love me some Carp. Stay healthy, Chris!

There are a lot of 1-2s in the NL. If Billingsley’s healthy, he and Kershaw are terrific (though Torre will probably pitch Kuroda or Wolf in game 1 or 2). And I’m stunned that anyone — especially a Braves fan — still can’t recognize the Braves’ best pitcher! How much does a guy have to dominate in order to get a little love?

I still think Hamels rights the ship and cruises with Lee. If the Giants get in, I don’t think anyone would want to face Lincecum and Cain. My wild card (and I’m biased as a Braves fan) is Jurrjens and Lowe. I generally think you need to two power pitchers and timely hitting to survive in the playoffs. The Cardinals have the hitting but I’m not entirely sold on Carpenter in October.

Karl Moats
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