Johan’s Velocity
On Sunday, the Yankees blistered Johan Santana for nine runs, the most he’s ever given up in a start. We’re not used to seeing Johan get beat like he stole something, so after the game, theories began to fly. Almost all of them centered on his decrease in velocity of late, which is usually a pretty good reason to be concerned. Take a look at Santana’s velocity chart.
As you can see, Santana’s velocity has been lower as of late, with a shift coming around the sixth start of the season. Let’s break Santana’s season into two parts, isolating his first five outings of the year and his most recent seven starts.
April 12th – May 6th.
Pitches of 87 MPH+ – 330 of 514 (64.2%)
Average of those pitches – 91.3 MPH
Pitches of 92 MPH+ – 94 of 514 (18.3%)
Average of those pitches – 92.7 MPH
Pitches of 93 MPH+ – 29 of 514 (5.6%)
Average of those pitches – 93.4 MPH
May 7th – June 14th.
Pitches of 87 MPH+ – 398 of 675 (58.9%)
Average of those pitches – 90.3 MPH
Pitches of 92 MPH+ – 40 of 675 (5.9%)
Average of those pitches – 92.6 MPH
Pitches of 93 MPH+ – 7 of 675 (1.0%)
Average of those pitches – 93.4 MPH
As you can see, the frequency with which he’s throwing higher velocity pitches is down, but the average of the pitches he throws at the top of his range hasn’t changed much. His top end velocity is basically still the same as it was at the start of the year – he’s just not getting the ball up to 93 as often.
This should be encouraging for Mets fans, I think. If the velocity drop was a sign of a serious arm problem, we’d see a bigger fall from top-end velocity. Instead, what we’re seeing is that he’s throwing more pitches in the 88-90 range that used to be in the 89-91 range, which is accounting for most of the 1 MPH dropoff he’s experienced in his overall fastball speed.
This data supports the blister theory that suggests he’s adjusted his grip to avoid popping the blister, and that the adjustment has caused his ball to cut a bit more with a bit less velocity. We’ll have to keep an eye on Santana’s velocity over the next few weeks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was just a temporary problem.
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I’m constantly amazed at the amount of meaningful analysis you pump out Dave. It’s pretty ridiculous, keep it coming.
I’m calling Poe’s Law…
Incredible info
Is there any kind of site that has velocity info like that for all pitchers?
yeah—i think it’s called fangraphs.com or something like that…
This strikes me as fairly silly. It’s not terrifically surprising that the average fastball over 93 MPH is coming out to be the same speed for each of the time intervals – you’re using speed as your threshold, after all. (I’m not saying using “93 MPH+” as your cutoff will guarantee this result, just that it will make it artificially more likely.) I would think that using some kind of percentile (like the top 5% of fastballs, or the top 1%, or even the maximum) would be much more appropriate.
I don’t have the data handy to do the analysis myself (I second R M’s question), but there’s a post up at the Hardball Times today that has some of the relevant data, and it certainly seems like Johan’s peak fastball in June has been a couple miles per hour slower than it was in April. Interestingly, he also had a dip on 5/11 and, to a lesser extent, 5/16 before increasing again on 5/22 and 5/27 before beginning the more recent downward slide in velocity.
There are links to that THT article in my comment that I should have bolded or underlined. Here’s the URL: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/johan-santanas-blister-and-the-rub-of-pitchf-x/
I think it would be useful to look at his velocity over a longer time horizon, for example, the last three seasons.
Justin – The dips may not be dips at all, or at least in part are due to park effects. I’ll have more on that next week in part 2
Thanks
HP
Dave,
I don’t want to hijack this discussion, but I also don’t see an easy way to contact any of you guys through email, so here goes:
Last week, David Appleman posted an article on “The Best Fastball of 2009″ and I wondered in the comments how to tell if the pitch value tables were up to date (since there is no “stats thru” date). He replied that they are updated every day by 6:30 AM (unless there is a hiccup) and if the pitcher log is updated, then the pitch value tables are also updated.
Well, as of 9:00 EDT this morning, I see that Wakefield’s outing in listed in his game log, but the pitch values for all of the Red Sox hitters are exactly the same as yesterday.
Like I told David, I’m not griping because this stuff is fantastic. I’d just like to have an idea of “when” I’m looking at!
David
It´s incredible to see this kind of analisis free for everyone. Thanks a lot for the time you take doing this job. I trend to think the problem with Johan is not about his velocity.
Has you see Johan.s platoon splits this year?
Against RHB he is still keeping his dominance as the last year (637 OPS in 2008 vs 642 OPS in 2009) but against LHB his OPS is now 810, almost 140 higher than the last year, and this year the ratio of LHB vs RHB is lowest in his carrer (2.2 RHB by each LHB this year vs 2.7 RHB by each LHB the last year). The only explanation I can find is in the mix of pitches he is throwing against LHB, which shows a decrease of the change-up pitch from 14% in 2009 to 8% in 2009 in favor of the cutter, which has been throwed 7% this year against 1% the last year.
Traditionally Santana has been hurted more by LHB than by RHB but this year is ridiculous.
I doubt this change is due to any kind of blister or a decrease in his velocity and looks more as a wrong strategy by his part.
This is by far the best baseball site out there. Taking this analysis to the ground, I don’t believe velocity is the issue. Even is he starts throwing more pitches at the 87+ range with that nasty changed up he has he’ll be OK. If you saw the game that day, his location and mix of pitches was terrible. It seems to me that he did not used his changed up as much as in other games. It will be interesting to find out how many pitches by type he threw that day vs previous games.
seems like his stats have been trending down since ‘04.