Baseball sabermetrics

LJHS lefty Weston Clark fires a pitch Wed.

in Lions Tourney. (Photo by Ed Piper)

"Every picture tells a story, don't it"
                                                             Rod Stewart


Having immersed myself in baseball for the past month--starting the first week of March, going to Spring Training in Phoenix/Tempe for the first time in six years, then covering each of the four Lions Tournament games La Jolla played this week--I am reading about sabermetrics and other newer measures of effectiveness of baseball players.

Weston Clark's graceful-looking high arm angle on his pitches (see photo above from Wednesday's game) does tell a story, according to Baseball Prospectus 2015. Arm angle determines movement of the pitch, which is key in a pitcher being successful against opposing batters.

"...[Matt] Lentzner provided preliminary evidence that movement of fastballs (and indeed, other pitches) could be predicted by arm angle," write Daniel I. Brooks, Glenn S. Fleisig and Harry Pavlidis in their article "Evidence from Biomechanics and Pitch Tracking" in Baseball Prospectus. (I'm reading the Kindle version.)

In fact, Lentzner uses "photographs of pitchers at the moment of release" as part of his study.

The authors cite Lentzner in asserting the importance of the tilt of the pitcher's hand as he releases the ball. A four-seam fastball, which Timmy Holdgrafer was throwing in Monday's game, is "generally thrown with nearly pure backspin with respect to the hand,...", Brooks et al say. If the fastball is thrown with the arm angle straight up (12 o'clock), its backspin will make it "rise"--actually, fall less than expected. Gravity should pull the pitch down, but it stays "up".

But Timmy and Weston are not throwing their fastballs with their arms stuck straight up in the sky when they release. Very few pitchers do. They throw at an angle. Thus, the authors are saying, other forces come into play in determining the particular pitch's movement in the 60'6" from mound to plate (actually less--the pitcher's wind-up leads him to stretch toward home plate).

Now, Luke Bucon, another Viking hurler, bends his right arm down without fully extending it behind him before whipping his arm forward for the release. He's using a lot of shoulder to generate force. This creates a whole other dynamic. But that's a different topic from pitch spin.

A round ball, such as the stitched baseball used in high school competition, should have a certain trajectory as it is pitched. But we all know, from watching baseball, that the ball darts and curves, depending on what the pitcher is doing to the ball.

I remember having to face giant (it seemed to me) Jamie Castellanos, a 12-year-old who wore black glass frames and threw a curve that moved a couple of feet, as a puny little 10-year-old in my first year in Majors. I went up to the plate scared.

He wasn't going to hit me in the head with a fastball--that was the fear with Butch Wharton, another giant who threw a ball faster than I could see clearly. Jamie, one of the superstars of the Pleasant Valley Baseball Association (PVBA) in Camarillo, struck me out on a curve that started toward the plate, then ended up completely out of the strike zone. I didn't want to swing at it, but I did want to swing at it. My mind thought the ball was going to come within my reach. I slumped back to the dugout defeated.

Write Brooks and his colleagues, "A sinker thrown by a right-handed pitcher [Timmy and Luke are right-handers] tilts rightward, which effectively trades some amount of the force normally given to making the ball 'rise' and translates that into horizontal, directional force,..." Because they're throwing at 10 or 11 o'clock, let's say, the angle dictates a sinking and tailing action.


Copyright 2015 Ed Piper