Gil Meche, before his last start in Kansas City, was asked about his last start at Texas and here is his response:
"The reason I was stiff," Meche said, "is the mound (in Texas) was so flat. From the first pitch in warm-ups, I knew I was going to have to battle.
"With a flat mound, I don’t know if it’s the way my hips move or the way I stride out, but it affects something. That’s why I like steep mounds. I feel like I can generate more power instead of having my leg land too early and me having to generate power with my arm. That’s the only problem I had. That’s why I threw so many off-speed pitches."
This got me thinking about some work I did previously on individual park factors where I noted Rangers Ballpark in Arlington's official park factor was ~1.05, but it was predicted to be ~1.01. It has been stated that the stadium funnels the air to flow to center field was causing this discrepancy, but there seem to be another factor.
I decided to see if there was any truth to what Gil was talking about. For a initial look to see if there is anything to the accusation, I examined the average and maximum speeds of the opposing starting pitcher's four seem fastball that have pitched so far at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in 2009. I limited the comparison games to those that happened as close possible to the start at Arlington, in case there was an injury to the pitcher. Also, I wanted to take the Texas pitcher's out of the study because they will be used to the supposedly smaller mound (I will look at Texas's pitchers as I get the time to see how they actually compare). There have been 9 pitchers so far that meet this criteria and here are their numbers:
| Game before Texas | Game at Texas | Game after Texas | Start before Texas | Start after Texas | ||||||||
| Date | Team | Starting Pitcher | Average Speed | Max Speed | Average Speed | Max Speed | Average Speed | Max Speed | Difference in Average Speed | Difference in Max Speed | Difference in Average Speed | Difference in Max Speed |
| Mon, Apr 6 | Cleveland | Lee | -- | -- | 89.74 | 91.6 | 90.65 | 92.5 | -- | -- | 0.91 | 0.9 |
| Wed, Apr 8 | Cleveland | F Carmona | -- | -- | 92.01 | 94.1 | 91.35 | 93.9 | -- | -- | -0.66 | -0.2 |
| Thu, Apr 9 | Cleveland | C Pavano | -- | -- | 87.73 | 89 | 90.34 | 93.2 | -- | -- | 2.61 | 4.2 |
| Mon, Apr 13 | Baltimore | K Uehara | 87.83 | 89.4 | 85.78 | 87.8 | 87.88 | 89.4 | 2.05 | 1.6 | 2.1 | 1.6 |
| Tue, Apr 14 | Baltimore | A Simon | 92.97 | 95.3 | 89.93 | 91.8 | -- | -- | 3.04 | 3.5 | -- | -- |
| Wed, Apr 15 | Baltimore | M Hendrickson | 87.16 | 88.7 | 86.24 | 88.7 | 86.54 | 88.1 | 0.92 | 0 | 0.3 | -0.6 |
| Fri, Apr 17 | Kansas City | Meche | 91.32 | 94.6 | 89.79 | 92.4 | 91.96 | 94 | 1.53 | 2.2 | 2.17 | 1.6 |
| Sat, Apr 18 | Kansas City | Greinke | 92.93 | 95.6 | 92 | 94.7 | 94.17 | 97 | 0.93 | 0.9 | 2.17 | 2.3 |
| Sun, Apr 19 | Kansas City | Davies | 92.12 | 94.2 | 90.62 | 92.3 | 90.9 | 92.9 | 1.5 | 1.9 | 0.28 | 0.6 |
| Average Values = | 90.72 | 92.97 | 89.26 | 91.35 | 90.45 | 92.64 | 1.66 | 1.68 | 1.28 | 1.36 |
Just using this small sample size, it can be seen that there seem to be a little truth to ability of pitchers to throw their fastest stuff at Texas. Fausto Carmona is the only pitcher that has thrown faster in a start before or after going Texas compared to the start at Texas. In the other 14 cases the pitcher through slower in Texas by ~1.5 mph.
These numbers have peaked my interest enough that I will continue to update the preceding data as the season continues, expanding it to the Texas pitchers and look back at 2007 and 2008 data with pitch F/X to see if the smaller mound is linked to higher than expected scoring at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
In 2008 left hander Ron Mahay, just off signing a 2 year, 8 million dollar deal with the Royals, seemed to cruising through the season and helping the Royals solidify their bullpen. On August 15, he had an ERA of 2.91 and help make the pen at Kansas City one of the leagues strongest by joining Ramon Ramirez, Leo Nunez and Joakim Soria. On August 22, Ron was retroactively placed on the 15 DL and since that point, his results have not been the same. Ron was place on the disabled list for “plantar fasciitis in his left foot”. Plantar fasciitis is condition in the foot caused by excessive to the supports to the arches of your feet. Pain is felt in the heel of his plant foot.
| Games Before DL Stint | ERA | FIP | WHIP | KK/9 |
| 6 to 16 before | 0.73 | 2.07 | 0.97 | 9.44 |
| 5 before | 31.3 | 21.03 | 4.35 | 7.83 |
| 11 after | 12.68 | 6.86 | 2.96 | 11.41 |
I wanted to see how the injury effects his pitch speed and movement. Looking at the same three time periods using Pitch F/X data, some some interesting results materialize on his 3 main pitches: Change up (CH), Slider (SL) and Fastball (FF)
| Type of Pitch | Games Before DL Stint | Start Speed | End Speed | Break Angle | Break Length |
| CH | 6 to 16 before | 83.97 | 77.58 | -29.21 | 6.64 |
| CH | 5 before | 82.52 | 76.52 | -28.16 | 7.02 |
| CH | 11 after | 83.7 | 77.42 | -27.33 | 7.04 |
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| SL | 6 to 16 before | 82.83 | 76.81 | -3.74 | 7.47 |
| SL | 5 before | 81.33 | 75.66 | -1.4 | 8.04 |
| SL | 11 after | 81.94 | 76.31 | 9.81 | 4.2 |
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| FF | 6 to 16 before | 90.58 | 83.1 | -39.23 | 3.93 |
| FF | 5 before | 90.62 | 83.27 | -36.01 | 3.82 |
| FF | 11 after | 90.07 | 82.57 | -32.95 | 4.07 |
Lets look at the changes to each pitch type:
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| Games Before DL Stint | Out | Safe | % outs | Out | Safe | % outs | Out | Safe | % outs |
| 6 to 16 before | 4 | 3 | 0.57 | 15 | 5 | 0.75 | 6 | 0 | 1 |
| 5 before | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 4 | 6 | 0.4 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 11 after | 3 | 3 | 0.5 | 8 | 11 | 0.42 | 1 | 3 | 0.25 |
The loss in overall speed (and slider break distance) has led to more balls hit into play to be hits, especially for his fastball and slider. Though this is a small sample size, but he just not being very effective. In Ron's last two appearance, Trey Hillman him in the eight inning and Ron has allowed the tying or go ahead run to score. Ron just not the same pitcher he was in the first 2/3s of 2008, but Trey keeps using him as if he was the same pitcher.
With Pitch F/X there has been quite a bit of work on looking at different pitchers. I decided to extend the work I did on umpire scoring and link that information to pitch F/X. I used the standard strike zone of -1, 1 for the width of home plate and then adjusted the batter's height to the vertical standard of 1.5 to 3.5. Here is a spreadsheet with the percentage of pitches that each umpire called strikes and ball and and how they compare to the standard strike zone (-1,1 to 1.5,3.5). I drew the cutoff line to include umpires with more than 1456 called balls and strikes (The bottom 11 umpires called 918 or less strikes).
| Average value for: | Value |
| % of strikes called strikes | 78.8% |
| % of balls called balls | 85.4% |
| % correct | 83.2% |
| Adjustment for Strikes (90% zone) | 0.15 |
| Adjustment of Called Balls (90% zone) | 0.09 |
| Combined Adjustment Distance | 0.24 |
After that, I went ahead and determined the zone for each individual umpire (on previously link spreadsheet).
I went ahead and linked the previous data I had on umpire effects to the Pitch F/X, but I am wanting to do the R/G, K/G, etc for the same seasons I did the pitch F/X analysis. I want to include park factors and finally get an umpire factor for each umpire that can be applied to each pitcher to see how much the home plate umpire effected their season. As always thanks for your time and and I am open to comments and suggestions.
