Kershaw’s Hard Slider
As Dave Cameron wrote earlier today, Clayton Kershaw dominated last night’s Opening Day pitching matchup with Tim Lincecum. Over seven innings he struck out nine while giving up just four hits, one walk and no runs. Dave noted that in the broadcast Orel Hershiser mentioned that the Dodgers were looking for Kershaw to throw his slider with more velocity this season. Plus, during the game, the slider looked great to me, so I wanted to turn to the trusty PITCHf/x data to see what was going on.
It does look like those sliders were faster than the ones he threw last year on average. Last night’s sliders average 84.0 mph compared with just 81.4 mph last year. On top of that a third of them last night were faster than 85mph, compared with only a handful of last year’s slider over 85 mph. None of Kershaw’s sliders last night was under 80mph compared to a fair fraction last year. On the other hand Kershaw did have three games last year when he average at least 84mph on his slider: April 13th, April 24th and May 4th.
So compared to his average slider last year he was throwing quite a bit harder, though not outside of the realm of what he did during some extreme games last year. As Dave noted maybe this hard slider (almost cut fastball) could be more effective against right-handed batters than a big sweeping slider. Last night that was certainly the case; Kershaw threw 12 sliders to right-handed batters and got three swinging strikes, three fouls, two called strikes, two outs in play and two balls.
Obviously, that is a tiny sample size. But this potential hard slider is definitely a thing to keep on eye on with Kershaw in the 2011 season, because if he does develop an effective secondary pitch against right-hand batters (his changeup isn’t great) he could erase part of his huge platoon split.
Went back to look at the game logs of the games you mentioned, and Kershaw didn’t pitch on May 5.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=2036&position=P&season=2010
Interesting to note that in both the April 13 or in the April 24 appearance Kershaw allowed two runs or less. If that trend holds in the third game that we currently have an incorrect date for, that could add some more optimism for Kershaw holders in fantasy leagues.
Thanks, meant May 4th. Changed it. May 4th was ugly though.
Dave, obvious question: Is it even the same pitch? The faster sliders seem to have less tail and less sink.
Garik16. That is a good question. It definitely could be, and a couple more games will give us a better idea.
But yeah, less tail, less sink and faster would make it more cutter-like and less slider-like.
I recall a story from a journalist who visited Gaylord Perry on his farm in NC. Mr J was trying to get the lowdown on Perry’s splitter, but Gaylord kept dodging direct questions. After a couple of frustrating days, Mr J, finding himself alone with Perry’s young daughter, tried to pose a question for her that he hoped would be revealing. He had barely started when Perry fille interrupted: ‘It’s a hard slider!’.
First of all, the Crawfish looked unhittable. I thought the “slider” had exceptional sink…sometimes more than horizontal movement. The hitters were reading knee high fastball out of the hand and waving at the pitch as it bounced in the dirt. He left a few over the heart of the plate, and will see some of those get hit hard. I think he’ll flirt with a couple no hitters this year, mainly due to this pitch.
Not sure it’s safe to say anything at this point – It looks like his fastballs were a little faster as well, but it’s only one game.