Sheets returns from the DL

Ben Sheets came off the DL yesterday and pitched a gem of a game going 6 innings and only allowing one run. How did he do it you ask? Well I have been messing around downloading the pitchFX data that MLB has been providing and lucky for us it was in use at Wrigley yesterday. I am planning n doing some hard core analysis with the data but for now I am content in making some pretty pictures. So why don't we start with Sheets' pitch speed for the game.

So it looks to me like out of the 85 pitches Ben threw the vast majority of them were fastballs. The Wrigley field radar gun that was in use during the game seemed to show him a tick faster than this but there is a lot of variation in those guns and this snapshot is a few feet away from where the ball actually left his hand. Anyway, for now I am going to place an arbitrary cutoff at 85 MPH and say the ten pitches below that were curves and the 75 above that were fastballs. Now lets look at where those pitches crossed the plate.

This is a very busy graph so let me take a minute to clear things up. First, all numbers are in feet here and negative x is going toward a right handed batter. So basically you are looking at it like the catcher would be. The red marks are fastballs and the blue marks are curves. Squares are pitches that were called balls. Circles are strikes with filled in circles strikes swinging. Plus signs are foul balls or foul tips. Filled in triangles are balls in play. I have added a strike zone box in black using the correct width of the strike zone according to MLB and I have averaged the height of all of the Cubs batters for the vertical zone. The first thing that jumps out at me is what an excellent strike zone Gerry Davis had. This isn't too surprising since Davis is a crew chief and has been an umpire for 31 years!

Anyway, back to Sheets. Look at the ten curve balls he threw during the game. All but three of them were up in the zone and six of them were in the strike zone. It appears that he was using that pitch as a "get me over" pitch and something to keep the Cub batters thinking about. With his fastball he basically was pounding the zone staying somewhat around the corners. If the strike zone had been slightly larger up or out Sheets could have had an even better day. Surprisingly, the Cub batters seemed to do a pretty good job of laying off those pitches. For a team that walks as little as the Cubs do that is some good work. Ok we know where the pitches ended up but how did they get there?


Here the graph is in inches not feet but negative x still points to a right handed batter. What this represents is how the ball moved up/down and left/right compared to a pitch thrown without spin. So, a negative number on the vertical axis means the ball dropped lower than a ball thrown without spin. Now we can really see Sheets curve balls. He throws almost a 12 to 6 curve which means it only moves slightly away from right handers and down. His fastball is positive here which doesn't mean it actually rose it means it curved less than a ball without spin. This is very typical of a four seem fastball that Sheets throws. You can see how the ball appears to rise and bores in to a right handed batter. This plot definitely shows that Sheets didn't throw his changeup once during the game and got away with just two pitches. If you are going to do that as a starters you had better make them good and Sheets definitely had his fastball working last night.