SB Nation Tampa Bay Editor's Pick

David Price and his Balls that are Fast

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 15, 2010 10:00 AM EDT

And now from Sticky Bandit, our second FanPost of the Week.

David Price can throw the ball really really hard. In his last start, David threw a final four-seam fastball that hit 100 MPH to strike out the last batter to end the inning. His four-seam fastball has a whiff% of 10.1% and can be extremely effective when he is hitting his locations. What can be more effective than a 100 MPH fastball anyways? How about a 95 MPH fastball with a lot of movement?

via www.nypost.com

David Price is having a very fine season so far this year and does not seem to be slowing down, in fact, he is sort of speeding up.

via www.fangraphs.com

The velocity chart shows that Price has been living in the 94-97 zone in his more recent starts; Up from 92-94 zone earlier in the year and 90-92 from last year. I recall, at the end of last year, that Tommy Rancel wrote a post about Price's late season success due to an added two-seam fastball. So I wondered how much Price was still using his two-seamer and how successful is he when using it?

	IP	FB%	GB%	LD%	TF%	FF%	CU%	FIP
April	28.667	45.5%	39.0%	15.6%	27.1%	42.8%	16.5%	3.45
May	38	29.7%	51.4%	18.9%	18.7%	45.0%	18.2%	4.77
June	33	34.7%	48.4%	16.8%	15.0%	61.0%	16.3%	2.87
July	34	44.7%	38.3%	17.0%	17.5%	60.1%	12.7%	3.29

note: FF is four-seam, TF is two-seam, CU is curve ball

Price is still throwing his throwing his two-seam fastball even with his recent love affair with his four-seamer. After throwing it a hefty 27% of the time in April, he threw it only 19% of the time in May and 15 % of the time in June. It is tough to tell from these numbers what is causing Price to have success though. He has had 3 out of 4 months with an FIP lower than 3.5 and only one "poor" month with a 4.77 FIP in May. It seems he threw his slider and change up more often in May and that probably caused his mediocrity. Price has been pretty consistent with his curve ball throwing it around 16-18% except for July, when he threw it only 12.5% of the time.

	IP	BB/9	K/9
April	28.667	2.83	8.16
May	38	4.26	5.68
June	33	3.00	9.27
July	34	3.97	8.74

The strikeout and walk numbers seem to show that since he has started using his four-seam fastball more, he has been striking out a few more, as well as walking a few more. The one bad month was due to a combination of striking out less and walking more. So what is up with Price's fastball usage?

On the season Price has thrown his two-seam fastball 17.8% of the time and has a 11.2% whiff% with it, which is better than his four-seam. Looking at the individual starts, Price either goes with a mixture of two-seams and four-seams or primarily throws his four-seam fastball. So lets split the starts by his season average of 17.8%.

	IP	FB%	GB%	LD%	TF%	FF%	CU%	FIP
>17.8%	70.3	36.9%	46.0%	17.1%	27.1%	47.8%	14.7%	3.37
<17.8%	75.334	38.1%	44.0%	17.9%	10.2%	59.5%	17.1%	3.62

So with an about even amount of starts with each situation, Price appears to be better when he is mixing it up with his two-seam fastball. Is it that he is throwing a better two-seam fastball or simply that a different look on a fastball make his four-seam fastball better as well?

	IP	BB/9	K/9
>17.8%	70.3	3.07	8.96
<17.8%	75.334	3.23	6.57

It looks like the two-seam fastball really helps Price alone and in setting up his other pitches for strikeouts. He is striking out almost 2.5 more batters per 9, while even walking slightly less. While some of these starts are close to the 18% two-seam usage mark, most are outside a few percentage points of range to make it at least a bit relevant. This doesn't necessarily mean that more two-seam fastballs means more success though, so lets see if there is a trend.

via img59.imageshack.us

Okay, so maybe it does. Price's best games have come when he is throwing his two-seamer over 27% of the time. But I suspect that this is true of his curve ball as well; It would make sense that throwing more a good mix of pitches means he is able to locate them and hitters will be guessing.

via img811.imageshack.us

While his best games did not occur when he throws the curve ball more often, he still showed more consistent success when it was used more.

note: This trend occurred for the for the four-seam as well, but this was due to his two best games using a lot of four-seams. Removing outliers shows an upward trend, while removing outliers for these 2 charts shows the same trend they showed before. These charts are not too important due to the small sample size.

It may look good for Price to go out there and blaze 98 mph fastballs, but his success this year does not seem completely dependent on this. I would like to see Price mix it up more in the future like he did earlier in the season, while still using his deadly 98 mph four-seem. More Strikeouts, less walks, more ground balls= more rays wins. Go with the two-seam David.

Stats from Fangraphs.com and Texasleaguers.com.

This post was written by a member of the DRaysBay community and does not necessarily express the views or opinions of DRaysBay staff.

Tweet Comment 21 comments | 14 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

Nice

by Sveet on Aug 10, 2010 3:55 PM EDT reply actions

tl;dr

I KEED I KEED

rec’d

by rglass44 on Aug 10, 2010 4:22 PM EDT reply actions

awesome

I love White Men Can't Jump. Now try and take me seriously.

by pudieron89 on Aug 10, 2010 4:27 PM EDT reply actions

although on first glance I thought this was titled "David Price and his Balls that are Sticky"

I love White Men Can't Jump. Now try and take me seriously.

by pudieron89 on Aug 10, 2010 5:44 PM EDT up reply actions

Niccccceee

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 5:45 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions

FPOTW nominee

The x-scale on the last 2 graphs are not consistent, won’t that mess up the best fit line and correlation?

by kurby on Aug 10, 2010 5:03 PM EDT reply actions

They are both just FIP correlated to the percentaged thrown per game

so each point is just a game of curveballs or game of two-seams, no correlation between the two

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 5:14 PM EDT up reply actions

Agree that it definitely looks like he's much more consistent when he mixes and matches more

He still has the ability (as shown) to simply blow people away on any given night, but he’s also more likely to have a miserable start if he doesn’t keep hitters off balance. Makes intuitive sense, and it would be interesting to see more across the board how a pitchers FIP correlates with more even or spread out pitch usage. Great piece and go Price!

by Matt Slowinski on Aug 10, 2010 5:47 PM EDT reply actions

If he can control his rocket ball its great,

if not it seems like he gets in trouble more with walks than people hitting him hard. Its like the stars align when someone hits his 98 for a HR.

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 5:58 PM EDT up reply actions

So, hopefully that's an issue of command which should only get better as he pitches more and more

I just can’t help but be very optimistic about Price, it’s such a treat to have him on the Rays’ roster

by Matt Slowinski on Aug 10, 2010 6:14 PM EDT up reply actions

agreed

hell, look what one year did for him

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 6:18 PM EDT up reply actions

Wow

I just wrote a 1,000 word post on David Price and his fastball too. Literally just came on here to post it. It will be interesting to contrast to yours, as the majority of mine is focused on his speed changing.

by Mulva on Aug 10, 2010 6:05 PM EDT reply actions

I feared this would happen

We shall raise hands in victory next week together as one post

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 6:07 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions

Haha

Well, I’ll wait untill tomorrow before posting as to not overkill. Good article, and an interesting point that I was thinking of but didn’t examine in mine.

by Mulva on Aug 10, 2010 6:14 PM EDT reply actions

reply fail

I hate when I do that.

by Mulva on Aug 10, 2010 6:15 PM EDT up reply actions

I look forward to reading it then

good that its different at least, that would have been a disaster

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 6:17 PM EDT up reply actions

I really really hope Price can regain that slider of his

He could be like Francisco Liriano if he did

by PGP on Aug 10, 2010 6:41 PM EDT reply actions

Rec'd, and I have a question.

The reason why I’m asking this is because you’re primarily attempting to compare the two-seam and four-seam fastballs, and looking at the writeup, I"m kind of getting lost at the conclusion where more two-seamers is better. You mentioned that the data from May indicates that the reason why Price was significantly worse because of more strikeouts and fewer walks, which you’re saying was because of his increased usage of his curve and change-up.

If this is the case; where changes to your result metrics of comparison (FIP, K/9 and BB/9) are more attributable to other factors outside of your scope, did you scrub that data out when you did the 2-seam fastball data splits? As a guess, if you took that data out it would probably reflect an even bigger split since he threw more 2 seamers in May then June and July, but if the other two pitches played a more significant factor in damaging his strikeout/walk rates and FIP then it does in the other months where he’s only throwing the pitches about 10% of the time combined, would it make sense to smooth that data out to prevent it from impacting the analysis you’re trying to do?

So I should just change my sig to
I hate everyone of color, along with invalids, the old, and the retarded?
by firemangreg on Jul 21, 2010 2:59 PM EDT up reply actions

by kericr on Aug 10, 2010 7:11 PM EDT reply actions

I was just trying to look at his results versus fastball usage

I wanted to look at it game by game, but I’m just too lazy. What your saying makes sense, I was just making slight assumptions based on the run values from fangraphs. The slider and change up have been his least effective pitches, while still not being that bad. He could have had terrible control of his fastballs those months to use the slider and change so often, but I’m just making the assumption to take a look at the results, in a pretty simplistic way. All of it could be completely circumstancial and irrelevant, but it seemed sensible when the results were what I expected.

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 7:54 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions

Word. It'd be cool if you or someone else could drill down on this more. There might be more cool info to discover.

So I should just change my sig to
I hate everyone of color, along with invalids, the old, and the retarded?
by firemangreg on Jul 21, 2010 2:59 PM EDT up reply actions

by kericr on Aug 10, 2010 10:06 PM EDT up reply actions

In May he had 2 really bad starts back to back,

at the end of the month in that Houston game then at home against the White Sox. Get rid of those 2 games his FIP for the month is 2.98 for 4 starts even though the strikeout and walk numbers are pretty similar.

I looked at the starts using Joe Lefkowitz Pitch f/x and it looks like it really was his slider and change ups giving him problems. He gave up 4 runs in those 2 starts. 2 on change ups, 1 on a slider, and 1 on a 2-seam.
In the Houston game, he threw 11 2-seams and had 3 swinging strikes; 40 4-seams and had 5 swinging strikes. 15 sliders and 1 swinging strike, 1 HR; 13 change ups and 0 swinging strikes, 1 HR. Hilarious that he won this game.
In the Chicago game, he threw mostly 4-seams and 2-seams. Only threw the 2-seam 23 times for 12 strikes with 3 swinging, with the 1 HR. The 4-seam got on 2 swinging strikes on 61 pitches. 9 change ups and 5 sliders this game. Threw a lot of balls overall and got squeezed bad it seems. Otherwise, he looked pretty good in May as well.

Those were his 2 worst starts all year and in one he got squeezed bad. The other his change up and slider were just terrible. I could look up more good starts later to see how those turned out, but I’m guessing it will be similar results.

by Sticky Bandit on Aug 10, 2010 11:33 PM EDT up reply actions