[消息] Tales of the changeup，Johan Santana
原文網址: http://go2.tw/s9g
Who is the best pitcher in baseball right now? Some might answer that
question with Jake Peavy or Josh Beckett, but I’d guess that at least 7 out
of 10 times, the answer you would get is Minnesota Twins left-hander Johan
Santana. Santana is a 28-year-old from Tovar, Venezuela, and after his fourth
full year in the starting rotation, he already owns two Cy Young Award
trophies.
在現在的棒球界裡，誰是最好的投手 ?
有的人可能會說是Jake Peavy或是Josh Beckett，
但我猜十個中有七個答案會是雙城隊的王牌左投Johan Santana。
Now, as Santana approaches the final season of the 4-year, $39.75 million
contract he signed three years ago, the Twins appear eager to trade him, and
the reported suitors include such teams as the New York Yankees, Boston Red
Sox, and New York Mets, subject to Santana’s approval. I’ll leave the
predictions of where he’ll land to those who are better qualified or more
eager to comment than I am. However, I’d like to take a look at the pitching
repertoire and strategy of possibly the best pitcher in baseball.
.........
If you look at the scouting reports, they all talk about Johan Santana’s
devastating changeup and how he works to make his throwing motion identical
for all pitches. Most scouting reports list three pitches for Santana–
fastball, changeup, and slider–and mention that his changeup comes in 15-20
mph slower than his fastball. Were this true, it would be highly unusual.
Most major league changeups are 7-10 mph slower than the pitcher’s fastball.
A few scouting reports speak of five pitches–two fastballs, a slider, a
circle change, and a straight change. The most useful and interesting
scouting information I found was an interview from 2006 that Pat Borzi
conducted for the Sporting News with Johan Santana and his catcher Joe Mauer.
Santana throws four pitches for strikes-four- and two-seam fastballs between
92 and 95 mph, a slider/curve in the 84- to 87-mph range and a changeup that’
s about 15 to 20 mph slower than the fastball. The changeup is his strikeout
pitch; when Santana is on, he throws it from the same arm angle and release
point as his fastball, and hitters can’t tell the difference until it’s too
late.
I also found this quote from Santana interesting given that most people
acknowledge his changeup as his best pitch:
“I want to make sure my two-seam fastball is working,” Santana says. “That
’s my best pitch, and it’s going to make my other pitches look even better.
That’s what I try to do all the time.”
We have detailed data from the PITCHf/x system for 1032 of Santana’s 3345
pitches during the 2007 season. Let’s dive in and see what we can learn
about Santana’s repertoire and effectiveness with his various pitches.
Santana has at least three obvious pitch groupings: fastball, changeup, and
breaking ball. Here I’ve shown two graphs that I use for pitch
classification. The first graph shows the speed of his pitches versus the
direction they break, in polar graph format. The second graph shows the
movement on his pitches in the last quarter-second before they cross the
plate, due to the forces of spin deflection and gravity.
http://go2.tw/s9n
The fastballs run 89-95 mph, and it’s hard to tell from these graphs alone
whether Santana really does throw two different fastballs or just one.
Through additional analysis, which I will explain shortly, as well as Santana
’s own comments, I concluded that he did in fact throw a four-seam and a
two-seam fastball and have coded them separately in these graphs.
http://go2.tw/s9o
We can also see that Santana throws two different offspeed pitches. One has a
movement very similar to the fastball but is thrown slower at 80-84 mph. This
is his changeup. It’s interesting to note that we see a 10 mph difference in
speeds between his fastball and his changeup, typical of other major league
changeups and nothing like the 15-20 mph difference that was reported by
other sources. I don’t know if that was just the stuff of legend or whether
Santana has changed his approach in recent years. More likely, people were
comparing Santana’s very slowest changeup with his very fastest fastball and
writing as if that represented a typical pitching pattern.
I could not find any sign of two different changeups in Santana’s
repertoire, at least not two changeups that consistently have different
movement or speed.
Santana’s other offspeed pitch is an 83-88 mph breaking ball, described in
various scouting reports as either a slider or a curveball. Based on the spin
direction, the speed, and the direction of break, it’s very clearly a
slider. In the first graph of pitch speed vs. spin deflection angle, the
calculation of the spin deflection angle for some of the sliders contains a
good deal of error since the spin of those sliders is nearly aligned around
the direction of travel of the pitch, resulting in spin deflection of only a
couple inches or less. This is one of the classic indicators of a slider.
The sliders and changeups look difficult to separate at the margins in the
two graphs I presented above, but including the (x-z component of the) spin
rate in the discussion makes that task much easier.
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http://go2.tw/s9p
Returning to the topic I mentioned earlier, how did I determine whether
Santana threw both a four-seam and a two-seam fastball? Looking at the data
in aggregate, it was impossible to see a dividing line, but when I examined
the spin and break on a start-by-start basis, a little bit of order appeared
out of the murkiness. In some starts, two separate groupings were obvious. In
most starts, the dividing line was subtle. In a few cases, it was hard to
find a dividing line at all. I did notice that the fastballs with the most
sink and the slowest speed were thrown almost exclusively to right-handed
hitters, and this, in addition to Santana’s own comments about throwing a
two-seamer, gave me confidence in making a distinction between the two
fastballs.
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