Openning Day

And they're off!

I elected to look at four of the opening days performances: Verlander, Greinke, Lincecum, and Halladay. Honourable mentions go to Marcum and Jimenez who set aside six each. Also interesting was Seam Marshall who in 2.67 innings missed 5 Brave bats with 5 swoopy curveballs.

Verlander: Last year’s victor took the start versus the royally inept, baby blue clad, Kansas ball club and despite having his fastball at top speed, and both off-speed offerings working, he managed a mere 6 K’s in the process. As a silver lining he did make Rick Ankiel and Scott Podsednik look pretty hapless.

Greinke: Normally very diverse operator in the realm of punch-outs, yesterday Zach was only able to seal the deal with sliders, and only four times at that. An unrealistic conjecture of pop-sport psychology would posit that as a result of today’s bullpen melt down, Greinke will –to this site’s chagrin - ditch high Pitch-Count/Strikeout strategy for a more Contact-based/higher inning total approach. Dam you Robinson Tejada. Dam you Juan Cruz. Dam you Roman Colon.

Lincecum’s change is officially a “double plus good” pitch. More interesting was the absence of strikeouts with his fastball. In his first inning he worked up to 95 mph, but by the seventh it was a 90-92 mph pitch. Early season rust, I suppose. Also interesting was his frequent use of the 83 mph breaking pitch (over the 77 mph version) which last year he used only about 5% of the time.

The Doctor was in the national league. If one game is anything to go from (it’s not really) he’ll have no problem leading the majors in K’s following the offseason Junior-2-Senior circuit swap. If anything I think it just means we should watch the Nationals as a source for high strikeout games. In any event, Halladay pounded the zone to great success. Six of the K’s were on pitches in the strike zone, and seven were on four pitches or less. In short: Dominance.

TIMMMYYYYYY!!! sorry, that was obnoxious

On September 28 Tim Lincecum took the mound against the Dodgers at Pac Bell Park (–Pac Bell? are you for real? – just a little stubborn). A few hours earlier C.C. Sabathia had made his final start and, in punching out seven, brought his season total to 251. Lincecum sat at 252. However, Giant’s game that day is enough to inspire wishful thoughts not only that pitchers care about the strikeout race with some of the interest of this website, but also that Lincecum had yet to receive the news that he had the strikeout race all but locked up prior to his start. In any event, striking out the first 4 batters, recording the first nine outs by way of the strike out, and finishing his day’s K-ing with number 13 to end the 7th inning, ‘the freak’ cemented himself as the season total leader (baring of course a 173 strikeout performance by Nick Blackburn in the season’s final game (he managed only 3.))

The opposing Dodgers faced a fastball ranging as high as 98 mph or at lower velocities with 2-seam action, a biting breaking pitch, and a devilish change up. The curve and fastball worked counts to Lincecum’s favor where the change up was frequently the coup- de-gras. It becomes at times difficult to differentiate the 2-seam fastball and the change up. Presumably an 86-87 mph pitch with arm side run is the change up and a similar movement in a pitch at 92 mph is the fastball. At around 90-or 89 mph the distinction is less clear.

Looking at year long data on FanGraphs.com, Timmy’s average fastball was ~94.1 mph which he threw 66.1% of the time (the league average heater among qualified starting pitchers was 90.26 mph, and this pitch was thrown about 59% of the time). There are of course other pitchers who throw more fastballs and faster fastballs but with his three pitch mix Lincecum was more than capable of missing bats.

As any reliever knows, Lincecums 14 K victory margin in the season total tally -and of course any victory in the strikeout race- is attributable to more than how often you’re missing batters you face - you’ve got to face a lot of batters. 2008 saw Tim Lincecum square up against 928 batters last year, 7th in the league. Nothing wrong with that, but facing batters often correlates to throwing pitches. While Lincecum’s September 28 start was efficient for it’s fanning of 13 with only 103 pitches, (interesting note; did you realize Ricky Nolasco struck out 13 last year on only 93 pitches? [Insert prolonged - Clay Davis of ‘The Wire’ fame - “shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” here] but I digress) for the year Lincecum threw 3682 pitches, second most (to a certain hefty lefty’s 3814) in all of baseball.

OK, I’m sure you’ve heard it all before;
-oh my god he’s so small. Save his poor arm, you’ll kill him. Honey, they’ll kill him!
-he’s a freak he can handle it. His daddy taught him to pitch like that, so he can’t get hurt.
-in the good old days we threw 3682 pitches everyday before breakfast
-TomVerducciRanyJazayerliWillCarrollMarkPriorRamonMartinezDocGoodenMARKPRIOR!!!

What I’m saying is, Mr. Bochy didn’t bother to get off his duff to collect a tired ace-on-the-hill whole lot last year. Even for a site which professes to eschew all concerns for winning and loosing baseball games, the relative merit-or licentiousness- of Bruce Douglas Bochy is hereby called into question. Should we champion him for giving Lincecum ample opportunity for greatness (as we here define it), or curse his soul for riding the right limb on the bony frame of a young child too much too soon and by his managerial inertia lay bear this promising marvel to a fate of arthritic ineptitude before he reaches his first day of free agency?

Skirting this difficult question of use, abuse and injury, another question is if Mr. Bochy’s tactics will be different if the Giants contend like they hope to in 2009. (Obviously there is a very big chance the Giants, once again, will blow and this point will be moot.) But, a contending team is a little more likely to want to pinch hit, or go to the pen in a close game. [Unsubstantiated claim warning ! I have no data to support that. I’ll look into it some other time.] Conversely, it is possible that the sight of a division title within reach will only inspire B.D.B. to further affix his rump to the pine leaving Lincecum and his funky delivery to fare as they may against the ravages of, say, 138 pitches, like September 13th en route to a complete game shutout.

Prior to the 2008 season, Baseball Prospectus, as they do every year, projected with the self proclaimed ‘Deadly Accurate’ PECOTA the stats of every major league baseball player in the upcoming season. A difficult task no doubt – one that I’m sure not up to- and one I’m sure they would admit is inherently doomed to many failures small and large.

MESSER	PECOTA 08 K’s
SANATANA	230
PEAVY	223
BEDARD	196
KAZMIR	194
SABATHIA	179
GALLARDO	177
VAZQUEZ	177
BECKETT	176
HAMELS	176
HARANG	176
HAREN	175
ZAMBRANO	173
MATSU	170
SMOLTZ	169
WEBB	167
LACKEY	166
BURNETT	163
CHAMBERLIN	162
VERLANDER	161
HILL	160

Notably absent from this top twenty list when viewed with hindsight is the eventual winner, Tim LeRoy Lincecum. PECOTA forsaw a mere 133 strikeouts for the 24 year old righty in 23 starts. Most of its error was in his playing time; had it known he would launch the first pitch in 33 games we can prorate it’s projection to 190 strikeouts – still 75 short of his eventual total. Baseball Think Factory’s ZIPS system pumped out a 173 strikeout conjecture bracketed by 15% optimistic/pessimistic projections of 126 or 230 punch outs – still 35 short at the high end. This is not to criticize these projection systems, but to note that it was far from clear that Timmy would walk away with the leading total as he did.

In Lincecum’s last start September 28th, the rival Dodgers pulled Hiroki Kiroda for the young Clayton Kershaw. The 20 year old Kershaw was in his debut season of about 20 starts, and punching out batters with a heater, a duce and a change piece, much as Lincecum had been in 2007. So I’ll conclude with this; as much as Lincecum is with out a doubt the leader in the clubhouse and favorite for the ‘09 season title, perhaps he too shall be eclipsed by another (for instance Kershaw) who as of yet is off the radar in terms of contenders for the 2009 Strikeout Race.