There seems to be something wrong with the Stuff engine this week… one pitcher is throwing off the numbers, and I’m getting a new leader with an astronomical score. Just going to check under the hood and see what’s wrong…

rich hill 1

Hmm.. at first glance, can’t seem to see anything. Wait a second… what is that… what the….

rich hill 2

Ah damn! Rich Hill! You’re breaking my stuff, man! I guess I can’t blame you. If I could make people fall over just from looking at the pitches I throw, I’d probably do it too. Why do you have to be so nasty?! Let’s just put things in perspective here for a second.

This is Rich’s fastball. Not overpowering by any means – according to FanGraphs, it averages around 90 mph. Now, let’s look at the curveball.

Well, that’s just not very nice. What a beast. The resultant separation between Rich’s curveball and his fastball rise is 24.76″ – the third best of any starting pitcher. However – what actually broke the metric was that Rich snuck in a 58 mph Eephus (according to FanGraphs). That would be a 30% change in velocity, and gave him a stuff score of over 3.5. To account for that, I’ve set a new standard, stating that a pitch must be thrown 30 times by a pitcher before it is included in the repetoire. So thanks, Rich. You made me change the rules. NO CHEATING (you still have the 9th best stuff of any starting pitcher).

Starting Pitchers

I mentioned earlier that Rich Hill had the third most separation between his fastball and curveball in the league. You know who is number one? None other than Toronto Blue Jays’ Aaron Sanchez. This is what his curveball looks like.

Relief Pitchers


The one obvious addition to this list is unfortunately Aroldis Chapman. He throws the ball really hard. Here he is giving up an RBI single to Devon Travis.

 

That’s all for this stuff report! It’s my last day of work as a post-doctoral researcher, and I must celebrate my entrance to the real world.