I Don’t Get It
Last week, Felix threw 22 change-ups against the Texas Rangers, and tossed seven shutout innings against an offense with a bunch of good left-handed hitters. His change was the difference maker in that game, and allowed him to shut down quality LH bats.
So, last night, fresh off the reminder of how good his change up can be, Felix threw it twice. The entire night, he threw two change-ups – the first one induced a ground out from Bobby Abreu in the third inning, and he missed out of the strike zone with the second one against Chone Figgins in the sixth. The rest of the night, it was mostly fastballs, some sliders, and a curve ball here or there.
Remember the conversation we had with Dave Allen the other day? The two seam fastball and the slider are the two pitches that have the largest platoon split. They work great against same handed hitters, and they’re meatballs against opposite handed hitters. So, facing a line-up where four of the first five hitters are lefties, Felix decided to go after them with his fastball and slider.
Predictably, it didn’t work. The left-handed hitters against Felix did the following:
1st inning: Single, walk, single, strikeout, groundout.
2nd inning: Single, strikeout
3rd inning: Groundout, double
4th inning: Walk, popout
5th inning: Single, single, walk, groundout
6th inning: Popout, single, double
That’s six singles, two doubles, three walks, two strikeouts, three groundouts, and two popouts. That’s a .533/.611/.555 line that lefties put up against him last night. Yea, the defense behind him was lousy, but this was the dumbest game plan we’ve seen in a long time. 16 straight fastballs to start the game (all against LH hitters), 71% fastballs against LH batters on the night, and two change-ups in the very next start after that pitch helped him shut down the Rangers in Texas? There’s nothing else to call that besides stupid.
The Mariners have a lot of problems. They don’t need their 23-year-old with a hall of fame arm to be one as well. Pitch smarter, Felix.
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Unfortunately, this doesn’t surprise me at all. The M’s take there best asset and turn him into every other mediocre pitcher they have. Felix is still too young to be trusted with his own game plan, one needs to be carefully constructed for him.
You would think a coach would be able to show him how much better he can be, and impress upon him the importance of the change, but it seems as lost on the coaches as it is Felix.
Well, the talk with Nolan Ryan famously made the difference for the Unit; maybe a sitdown with Johan Santana would do the same for el Rey?
He was shaking off signs all last night. The onus is on him.
Yeah, that was just frustrating to watch. He wanted nothing to do with what Kenji was calling.
I don’t even know what else to say, really. I want the good Felix a lot more often.
Yeah, that’s just confusing. I mean, what happened to “I want to be a pitcher, not a hurler” or whatever it was. It’s like at the beginning of the game he realized his fastball control was a little off and decided that meant his control of everything else would be off by even more so there was no reason to even try it. Oh well. Let the tear down begin!
I know I’ve asked this before but how much responsibility or control can the catcher exert in this situation by “calling the game?” Is it just Felix doing this? And what about calling pitches from the dugout the same way quarterbacks get their plays sent from the sidelines?
How about another open letter to Felix. Seemed to work for a while last time…
Someone is bound to point out that for the starts where Felix has struggled, Kenji has been behind the plate. Could it be that when the opossing batter sees Felix shake Joh off they know for sure a fastball is coming? Does Felix shake off Johnson and Burke as much as he does Kenji? Don’t they get together and go over each batter and the plan of attack before each start? Don’t they get together between innings and make adjustents?
Amen, preach it!
I’m getting extremely frustrated with Felix. He pitches good, then pitches bad, mixes pitches, then doesn’t mix pitches. Does he just not get it or is he letting the catchers call his game? At 23 there is still time to figure it out but this has been going on for years and frankly I’m beginning to think this is Felix as a finished product.
As strange as it is to say this, the most frustrating thing about Felix for me wasn’t his game. It was this:
Felix seriously thought he was making great pitches out there. He thought he turned in a stellar performance. This must be what it was like to be a Green Bay fan and see Brett Favre hurl the ball into double-coverage because he thought he could force it to the receiver.
I don’t ever think I’ve ever spoken against The King…but it’s getting really old, really fast…
He’s either stupid, stubborn, or both…
I’m sick of our best player looking like a joke half the time…
You can already see it coming, he is going to figure out how to mix his pitches and become the pitcher we all want him to be in about 4 years, by then he will be gone. The question is do nights like last night make it less likely that we lock him up here soon? I think we all want him locked up for many years to come in Seattle because he is very good as he is, but also because none of us can stand the thought of losing him and then watching him mature and figure it all out and win cy youngs elsewhere.
Good question, wabbles. Yes, the sample sizes are still tiny, but I’d just love to know what’s going on when the splits are just night and day with Kenji and Rob Johnson.
They’ve now caught the same number of games (20), and both have BABIP-against that are essentially the same (.300). But pitchers have yielded more than twice the number of HRs with Kenji behind the plate (25) than Johnson (12). The K/BB ratio is also fairly extreme.
This doesn’t *appear* to be selection bias, as you can look at it by pitcher. Felix has not allowed an extra base hit to Burke or Johnson, but has allowed 5 HRs and some doubles with Johjima catching. Chris Jakubauskas is a decent back-end starter with good control with Johnson behind the plate, and he’s garbage with Johjima (again, 100% of his HRs have been with Johjima).
Bedard’s the one case where it’s quite close, though Johjima’s only caught Bedard once (and Bedard was great). Likewise, Silva’s gone with Kenji more often, and that’s predictably not gone well.
But what do you think is going on purely with Felix (or, just as starkly, Washburn) and Johjima? If Felix is shaking him off all the time, it’s not really about pitch-calling. What the hell is it?
Over his career, Felix has a neutralized WHIP of 1.38. That’s awful. And that’s not pitch calling.
As Dave has posted, he hasn’t got a clue why he can’t get left handed hitters out…or maybe he doesn’t even know he’ can’t get left handed hitters out.
Greg Maddux he ain’t.
We could use Crash Davis catching to knock some sense in to Felix!
“Here’s a fastball right down the middle…and when you speak of me, speak well!”
“You told him I was going to throw a fastball, didn’t you?”
In other words, MEAT, I put down the signs and you follow the game plan!
“or maybe he doesn’t even know he’ can’t get left handed hitters out.”
The problem is that it he has games/months when he DOES get them out. His previous start in Arlington, for example, he annihilated Blalock, Hamilton, Murphy, Davis.
Has anyone checked the pitch fx data to see if he had a different pattern in that game? More off-speed pitches to them, more 4-seamers, what?
More change-ups. It’s kind of the whole point of this post.
A while back, Dave said of Yuni and Lopez that they were “stupid” hitters. They took a bad approach at the plate and refused to recognize it was bad.
Perhaps Felix has the same problem. Of course, he’s not the only pitcher on the team with that problem. Morrow takes a stupid approach, more or less the same one – throw fastballs and try to macho it past the hitter. Both have natural talent, neither spent much time in the minors…
Washburn is probably the best “pitcher” on the team. He doesn’t have the raw talent, but he mixes pitches and attacks batters with a strategy rather than a heater. He also developed his approach elsewhere – with the Los Angeles Anaheims of Brokeville – who seem to turn out a pretty good number of decent pitchers.
An when you think about the number of pitchers who flame out with the M’s and go on to success elsewhere, it makes me wonder just who the M’s need to fire to revamp their pitching development program.
Wow, that sounds familiar.
By the way, FanGraphs just added linear weights by pitch type, which is a ridiculously awesome addition.
Here’s Felix’s career run values by pitch type per 100 pitches – these are displayed as relative to average.
Fastball: 0.10 (basically a league average FB)
Slider: 0.36 (a bit above average)
Curve: 0.64 (above average)
Change: 1.49 (great)
“More change-ups. It’s kind of the whole point of this post.”
But the question is why he abandons this from time to time…. doesn’t seem like it’d be the catcher, but who knows. I can’t explain why he dominates lefties in a pitcher’s park in one start, and then utterly changes his gameplan in the next, with predictably bad results. Is it that he thinks Safeco will prevent his mistakes from being hit out or hit hard? I’d doubt it, but none of this makes any sense.
(fangraphs addition: yes, ridiculously awesome.)
I don’t think Wak did us any favors in his post-game comments, either (unless the Times grossly mis-reported; I didn’t watch post-game interviews). From their game story today, “He singled out starting pitcher Felix Hernandez for looking anything but ace-like on a night when his delivery times to the plate helped the speedy Angels steal five bases.”
Great. Doesn’t that suggest to Felix that he can’t throw as much off-speed stuff, or his manager will be pissed that he allowed so many stolen bases?
And I haven’t looked up the LI for those stolen bases and caught stealings, but if they line up about the way they normally do, the Angels going 5 for 8 helps the Mariners more than it helps the Angels, no?
With regard to Johjima versus Johnson, yes, it is a tiny sample size. I find it hard to blame Joh’s game plan if he’s being shook off all the time.
Felix has been pitching in the majors for long enough. He should take a hint or at least I hope someone will tell him that he’s being a moron. His age isn’t an excuse. He’s just not playing intelligent baseball. It’s pretty simple: stick with what works. His roller coaster of development has gone on long enough. I’m beginning to think that Felix has difficulty grasping simple concepts.
I wish I didn’t get it. The frightening possibility is that Felix just might be alarmingly ignorant.
How is ANY pitcher okay with this performance after somehow finding a way to shut down Texas in Arlington Park? Unless……unless he truely believes that the Angels’ lineup is actually better than the Rangers.
That might be going too far. Perhaps he believes that he pitched a good game while Angels hitters had a good game at the plate. Not much he can do about that, he thinks.
Then I question, why is someone who is as talented as Felix Hernandez satisfied with thinking like an emergency back-end starter? Basically just “throw my limited repertoire and whatever happens happens.” I mean, hell:
That’s Jakubauskas vs. the Boston Red Sox.
Meanwhile, “staff-ace” Felix Hernandez has given up 6 runs in three of his last four starts…..and feels indifferent.
That’s not good.
While we find Felix’s pitching selection to be frustrated, Wakamatsu was frustrated with the fact that the Angels stole five bases off Felix due to his slow delivery times. I don’t know if it’s just a matter of time before they start addressing his overall game plan or what. Whatever the case, Felix needs to get smarter…and fast.
Or he just thinks that he’s the greatest pitcher alive.
You guys can ignore this or explain it away all you want, but Bad Felix begins and ends with Kenji Johjima. He’s been behind the dish for all four bad outings of the season, in addition to the nice Opening Day outing. Johnson and Burke have caught each of the shutouts and the game where Felix donated some blood to the Tigers in a bad inning of consecutive bloops and bleeders.
Sure, it’s the change-up against lefties and Felix needs to be more consistent from game-to-game. But they call it a battery for a reason, and this one’s only working sometimes.
I have to think its an ego thing with him. I think he’s relied on the fastball to get guys out his entire career, and feels he can be that dominant at the pro level as well. I think he might feel that using the fastball to get guys out is a ‘manly’ thing that he has to use the heat.
I can’t imagine that a front office, seemingly so comfortable with using newer ways of measuring players, would ignore these tendencies on Felix’s pitching. If we can sit here and realize the reason for Felix’s pitching troubles stem from his overreliance on his fastball, why isn’t this information being hammered into his head?
Unless Joh is telling Felix to only throw fastballs, it’s not his fault…
This has to go on Felix and/or the coaches…
You guys can ignore this or explain it away all you want, but Bad Felix begins and ends with Kenji Johjima.
I doubt it is that simple, but this is at least somewhat testable. Someone with good database skills and pitchf/x data could check what Felix’s pitch selection is like with Johjima behind the plate to his pitch selection with not-Johjima behind the plate.
At some point last night, I recall an announcer mentioning that Felix was having trouble getting on the same page with Johjima all night, fwiw.
It seems like every time they show Felix in a game he’s not pitching he’s hanging out on the bench with Lopez, Yuni, and Silva. I blame the company he keeps for his apparent indifference toward being great.
I don’t think it’s that easy. To me, the only way to know whether or not it’s Kenji that’s the problem is to know the following:
1) What Kenji originally calls,
2) Whether or not the P shakes him off,
3) What the pitch thrown finally is.
And since we don’t know all the signs, we cannot definitively say that it’s one way or the other.
I saw Felix shaking off Johjima. If Felix only threw two changeups, it was because Felix only wanted to throw two changeups.
Hmmm. I don’t konw if Felix believes in run value calcs or not, so he might not buy these numbers, but I wonder if this could be translated into SLG or some such more familiar stat. Then send him a note with that attached:
Dear Felix,
When you throw a fastball, you are a league average pitcher. When you throw a curveball, you are an All-Star. When you throw a changeup, you are a Hall of Famer.
Sincerely,
Your Fans.
Some sampling might give us a clue though. It would require carefully watching his next couple of starts when Kenji is behind the plate and noting what pitch is thrown after Felix shakes him off. We won’t know what was originally called, but we can have a decent idea that if he throws a fastball after shaking off a sign, it wasn’t a fastball that was originally called (well, maybe it was a FB called for a different location, so it’s not perfect, but it could tell us a little bit).
Wow. His best and most effective pitch is his changeup, so he throws two of them all night. Brilliant.
At some point (sooner rather than later, preferably), this information has to be available to the coaching staff and the player.
If everything mentioned is true, imagine being K-Joh behind the plate, having the staff “ace” shake off three-quarters of your signs to play some more Chuck ‘N Duck at home with the Hay-Lows after shutting down the Rangers, in Arlington no less, just one week ago.
Seventeen straight league-average fastballs to open the game against a bunch of fastball-hitting LH bats isn’t just dumb, it’s intentional.
Strange things are afoot in Mudville… what gives?
Johnson caught that Texas Game.
There was far less shaking off in Texas, (still some re watching a couple innings I had on the DVR). So maybe Rob was calling those change-ups.
If you keep getting hit throwing what the catcher calls, you are going to start shaking off his calls.
Felix did not look well out there. He looked tired. Three or four times I saw Felix put two fingers to his eyes. Even Niehaus commented on it. Was he not seeing signs?
I’m not so ready to assume Kenji had nothing to do with the problem.
And, what if, conversely, you keep getting hit after shaking off the catcher’s calls and throwing your own pitches? Shouldn’t that logically mean that you’d start throwing the stuff he’s telling you to throw?
Wak hammered Kenji for poor pitch-calling in a game earlier this season (against the Twinkies, I think?) when Silva was “pitching” (a.k.a., playing a game of “Here ya go!”), so perhaps he’s a bit gunshy on calling the change? I dunno.
There’s more to this than just Felix pitching foolishly, shaking off K-Joh or Johjima not calling the right pitches.
The pitcher has the final say on the pitch selection, so if Felix is prepared and has a good game plan he will know what to throw each hitter. What the catcher calls is irrelevant.
I am not going to sit here at claim Kenji is a great catcher, but the pitch sequence clearly shows that Felix was not prepped for this lineup.
Yes, his comments bug me too, but I am more concerned about his preparation and having a game plan than who he site with on the bench.
It’s surprising how much blame people are willing to put on the players. This seems like primarily a coaching/management issue to me.
If you are Wakamatsu, is your explanation for the game that you had a good game plan, but your pitcher and catcher refused to follow it? Really?
OK, I think we’ve now taken the Kenji bashing to the extreme. Are concluding that if Felix was tired or unable to see the signs that was also Kenji’s fault?
God, I hope not. All I’m trying to say is that while there is the outside appearance that there is bad game calling, we don’t know (and may not ever know) for sure what’s going on.
This is yet another head-scratcher to add to this season.
If a pitcher throws one or two dozen fastballs in a row, and if same pitcher shook off the catcher on some of those pitchers, it is a pretty safe bet that the catcher was not calling for all fastballs.
I’m not that familiar with Felix’s off-speed stuff. When he does throw them, are they Nolan Ryan-esque circle changes, or standard changes? Ryan took his pitching to another level around 1980 when he developed (and frequently used) his circle change–let’s hope Felix doesn’t wait ten years to do the same with his.
Sad to say, this falls on Wak’s shoulders now. These guys may be “major leaguers” but until they act like it, he should call every pitch from the dugout.
Maybe Joh will learn from it, and how can Felix shake off the sign if it came from the manager?
I saw Felix here in Sacramento several years ago, and my thought was, “really nice stuff, but he can’t pitch.”
If he’s not going to improve, change anything, grow up, whatever the issue is, he’s a waste of money to sign long term. Let him walk.
As I said earlier, it’s on Felix and the coaches…the coaches have a game-plan that Joh calls…if it’s a poor plan, blame them…if it’s a good plan, but Felix shakes it off and throws what he wants and gets killed, then it’s his fault…
They need to sit him down and TELL him what his game-plan MUST be…
He is a stud physically, but I don’t think he’s earned the right yet to call his own game…
Can’t we just get a random pitch selector? Set it to select each pitch the optimal amount for each hitter(leave that to the advance scouts). Then just click the button and that’s the pitch Felix throws. Outside of extreme cases(3-0 counts, pitchers hitting, etc.) wouldn’t this be the optimal solution, complete randomness?
Felix is another Bartolo Colon, good to great stuff at times, but not a clue how to pitch a ball game. Remember the days of Colon snapping around to check the radar gun display in LF after every pitch? Didn’t care where it went, he was just after triple digits on everything.
Hear, hear, though I think it goes a little beyond Wak. It’s not necessarily a matter of “they refused to follow his game plan.” It could be that Felix wasn’t comfortable throwing the pitches that were in the game plan, and regardless of the plan, the pitcher does need to have confidence in the pitches he’s going to throw.
We’ve all heard a post-game interview where a pitcher said he had a great feel for a particular pitch, or conversely that he didn’t have one of his pitches that night. It happens. These guys aren’t robots, sometimes a pitch just isn’t there, especially for younger pitchers.
But I think that’s where the confidence bit comes in. If a pitcher wants to throw a particular pitch, he’ll work hard to convince himself he “has a feel for it” on any given night. If he doesn’t really want to throw it, then mentally he’s more likely to write it off if the first couple (maybe in the bullpen) don’t feel right.
Wak can’t just tell Felix to go out there and throw changeups. He has to convince Felix his changeup is worth throwing. Felix has to start thinking of his changeup as an out pitch. I think right now he believes his FB is his out pitch, and clearly it isn’t.
If you are Wakamatsu, is your explanation for the game that you had a good game plan, but your pitcher and catcher refused to follow it? Really?
Sounds like Wakamatsu’s carte blancis about to expire.
Today, between Baker and Olney, the names of Halliday, Schilling & Koufax came up as pitchers who took a few years to get their heads to come up to their arms.
With respect to Johjima’s pitch calling, I agree we’d need to look carefully at with-Kenji vs without-Kenji to determine if there is anything to it. The people laying the blame at his feet certainly don’t have convincing evidence just from the results of the games alone.
However, it is possible that Felix, for whatever reason, doesn’t trust Kenji as much, or doesn’t respect his pitch-calling, or something like that. (Silva’s influence on Felix? — oh wait, now I’m the one casting speculative aspersions with no factual basis). If Felix shook off Kenji’s signs all night, got whacked around, and still thinks he pitched a good game, then clearly something is amiss. And it would seem to lie mostly under that askew hat on Felix’s head.
No, it wouldn’t. The goal is not perfect randomness, because some hitters are very good with certain pitches and lousy with others. Some pitchers are very effective with some pitches and not with others. Everybody knows what Mariano Rivera is going to throw: there’s no randomness, no guessing he’s going to throw much of anything beyond his cut fastball. But he throws it where very few hitters can get a lot of wood on it. Even with pitchers that have a large repertoire of pitches, some are going to more (often much more) effective than others in a given situation, and just throwing out those advantages in favor of the supposed benefits of surprise is foolish. If the batter is a good fastball hitter, he’s not going to care if the pitcher has four different pitches that might appear at random, he’s just going to wait until he sees a fastball. (Which is why the changeup is so effecitve against those kinds of hitters, of course).
The whole point of Dave’s post (and several he’s made before this) is that the changeup is the best pitch Felix throws, especially to left-handed batters. In contrast, the fastball is the worst pitch for him to throw to lefty batters. You don’t want a random number generator telling him to throw fastballs to lefties. That’s what we apparently have right now (and it’s in Felix’s head, and it’s mostly stuck on “fastball” for the first few innings at least).
Wakamatsu got upset when Kenji called for a changeup from Silva because “That’s his third-best pitch, so it was a little questionable.” You don’t want a random number generator doing that either. You’re trying to be smarter than random. Random isn’t smart, it’s just saying being smart is too hard.
Now, I’d be willing to entertain the possibility that the M’s (or at least Wakamatsu and/or Felix) don’t know or don’t actually believe that the changeup is Felix’s best pitch, especially to opposite-handed batters. But then we have that outing at Texas to confound things. And we’re back to the point of Dave’s post: I don’t get it either.
Fwiw, last year Felix was the one starter that never expressed any problems with Kenji. They’ve worked together pretty much Felix’s whole career and it’s not come up before. If I were to pick one start as Felix’s signature moment, it would be this one and the man listed under C there is Kenji Johjima.
Good, important post, Dave. I generally stay away from posting because I don’t have the detailed knowledge that is commonly referred to on this site nor the time to hunt it down.
But watching last night, it was just visibly obvious how Felix wasn’t committed to playing smart.
Too many shake offs and fastballs – basically pitching with everything but his head. I just kept saying to myself, “come on kid, just listen to your coaches.” I so don’t want to see him continue to waste so many of his starts pitching “his way.” Frustrating!!!
I was at work and thus ‘watching’ on MLB GameCenter, and when I saw Felix’s first 16 pitches were fastballs, I was immediately concerned – I figured it was his doing, and looking at the comments above that’s apparently true.
My mind is still blown by how he (apparently) didn’t realize that the Rangers’ game was a good model to follow.
Is there any way of easily looking back through multiple years/starts to see if he’s typically followed good (non-fastball heavy) pitching with going back to fastball reliance in the next start?
TCW,
Good question. I’m sure Dave and Dave have already discussed the possibility.
I’d point to his relative inconsistent results as at least enough circumstantial evidence of your suggestion to warrant an investigation, but I’m not on Crime-Stoppers, so this doesn’t count.
=oP
What is Wakamatsu’s job if not to deal with this situation? I don’t blame him for the problem, but at some point (and that point is now), he needs to fix it. Tell your pitchers/catcher battery not be stupid with their play-calling. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Kenji or Felix – the two of them need to do a better job. It isn’t that hard.
For a couple years now, Felix has reminded me of Freddy Garcia — great potential, but never really lived up to it.
Freddy was so inconsistent I used to call him “Dr. Freddy” and “Mr. Garcia” because you never knew if the “good” Freddy or the “bad” Freddy would show up.
Frankly, I think Freddy was just plain dumb.
As much as I really want to believe that Felix is the “King,” he has never shown that he can CONSISTENTLY be good start after start after start.
Even the best pitchers have a bad outing once in a while, but with Felix it seems to be about 50% of his starts. His stats may prove me wrong, but that’s how it feels to me.
I know that it took Randy Johnson several years to really get it together and as others have said, I’m afraid Felix will be pitching for the Yankees by the time he’s got it figured out.
Am I the only one who sees disturbing simularities between Felix and Freddy?
Comparing Felix’s pitch selection when Kenji is catching to when non-Kenjis are catching certainly wouldn’t tell us definitively where any fault lies, but it could give us some evidence of whether or not Felix pitches differently with Kenji behind the plate.
It may be that Felix listens more to other catchers than he does to Kenji. It may be that he listens more to Kenji than he does to other catchers. I’m not really interested in casting blame so much as I’m interested in the question of whether or not Felix pitches differently when there are different catchers behind the plate, and how big that difference is if that’s the case.
@skeets35, Maybe some pitchers shouldn’t have the last word. My guess it might even be the majority. I always hope that Jamie Moyer will one day come back as a pitching coach. Talk about control of the game. Even talking to the umpires to be sure that is what they are going to be calling a ball or a strike. He is unreal as we all will probably agree. What do you think he would say to the “King”?
Dave,
What do you make of the fact that Felix’s linear weights on FBs has gone up markedly as he’s used it more? It was negative when he was throwing less than 60% FBs, and has steadily risen. Much of this must be the use of the 2-seamer, but I wonder if the team’s been looking at FBs versus offspeed pitches and noticing the trend. The trend on offspeed pitches in general is muddled, as his change started awesome, continued to be awesome, and is now his best pitch. But his curve went from being a dominant pitch (the old ‘Royal Curve’) to being a show-me, average-at-best offering.
Any thoughts on how usage might impact the linear weights?
Whatever the problem, it needs fixed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_laaxl1EKqQ
I guess the larger question is, do we sign him long term, and hope he “gets it”, like others have (Unit, Ryan, etc…), or do we get the max value out of him now, and cut our losses so to speak?
Although I’m not ready to blame the coaching staff yet, I am starting to get suspicious of them. Because it’s not just Felix that is throwing too many fastballs. Although it might be on the players that they’re not following Wak’s game plan… I don’t lean that way. When the offense or defense doesn’t follow the game plan Wakamatsu has been pretty vocal about it. The only time I’ve heard him complain about pitch selection was when Silva didn’t throw a fastball. I tend to think the coaching staff is overemphasizing the fastball to the pitchers.
Hey, guess what?
It’s not Johjima’s fault.
Which is why we try to ignore our feelings and go with the data. So far this year, four out of Felix’s nine starts have had a net positive WPA, and one was just fractionally negative, so your feelings jibe almost exactly with what we’ve actually seen.
No, he wasn’t complaining that Silva didn’t throw a fastball, he was complaining that Silva didn’t throw his best pitch. It so happens in Silva’s case that is a fastball, but it was pretty clear that Wakamatsu wasn’t fixated on “fastball”; he was fixated on “the best pitch in that situation.” I’m just worried the organization thinks Felix’s best pitch is his fastball, because it clearly isn’t. Especially when he’s facing a lefty.
Felix threw 12 changeups last night. Not sure where USSM got the ‘2′ data. It’s easy to get confused because many of them register at 89-90mph.
His fastball is his best pitch. And it needs to be.
He buries a ton of his changes. It’s easy for the changeup to look good in the data when he’s using it as a ‘kill pitch’. They’re unhittable due to the fact that they’re physically on the ground when guys hit it/or strikeout. But how much “work” is he really doing with it?
Linear weights is a tremendous idea, a promising one. But the data source should be reliable. I think you guys could be on the verge of a breakthrough.
If we’re going to start quoting Crash Davis in regard to Felix, I’m seriously starting to get the sinking feeling that we should be using the “million dollar arm… 5-cent head” line. Either arrogance, ignorance, or stupidity, but 16 straight fastballs HAS TO STOP. Jeezuz.
I’ve never posted on this site before, but I’ve read it for a while, so I just thought I’d throw a comment in on this. One of the most interesting aspects of this story to me is that Felix’s situation is the kind of thing that the mainstream media and beat writers should be all over. We have the technology and data to know that he threw way too many fastballs and it didn’t work, but we have no way of discerning why. Baker kind of alluded to some of the potential confidence issues in one of his blog posts, but it seems no has has asked him a direct question about it. Not that a reporter would necessarily receive a direct or straight answer, but there has to be someone, if not Felix himself, who might be able to at least try and explain why he’d throw so many fastballs.
For what it’s worth the Associated Press kind of vaguely chalked it up to chemistry issues in this article lacking anything resembling an informational substance.
The link to that AP article is [long link to article lacking anything resembling an informational substance]
It isn’t. And it doesn’t.