The Twins' Favorite Pitches, and How They Fit Into a Single Category

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Twins' new school pitching philosophy looks an awful lot like an old school philosophy: throw fastballs.

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When baseball people break down pitch types into categories, they tend to use three: fastballs, breaking balls, and offspeed pitches. This distinction is decades old, long predating modern, data-centric pitching analysis. It’s a natural one, because it centers on the thing that makes each type of pitch effective: speed, movement, and deception, respectively.

There’s another natural way to subdivide pitch types, though. It’s rarely used, but equally valid, and perhaps more in line with the way we think about the craft in the age of biomechanics and high-speed video. You can separate pitches into three broad, slightly messy, but telling categories:

• Those that move to the “arm side”, or in on a same-handed batter: Sinkers and Changeups
• Those that move to the “glove side”, away from a same-handed batter: Sliders and Cutters
• Those that move mostly in the vertical plane, with lateral movement mostly incidental: Four-seam Fastballs, Curveballs, and Splitters

There are multiple reasons why the taxonomy of pitching has historically favored the first model. For one thing, it’s neater. There are individual examples of pitches within the familiar categories that actually depend on a characteristic other than the one implied by the name of their category for their effectiveness, but they’re rare. The membranes which divide armside, gloveside, and vertical offerings are much more porous. For another thing, pitching (and pitch types, and especially the tendency to classify pitches that walk near a borderline between two possible ones in certain ways) is always evolving, and until relatively recently, breaking things up according to the direction of movement didn’t fit the way most pitching coaches or public commentators thought about things.

Consider the advantages, though. So much about a pitch can be explained by whether it primarily moves to the arm side, the glove side, or vertically. Glove-side movement tends to be hard on same-handed batters, but not opposite-handed ones. Vertical movement creates swings and misses, but isn’t good for managing contact quality or inducing ground balls. Arm-side run is the surest way to generate weak contact, but only misses bats if it comes with some other extraordinary characteristic, and can have wide platoon splits.

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[Cory Engelhardt]

This was fascinating. Thank you for this. 

[Dman]

Very nice!  high quality content for caretakers.  Other guys are missing out.

[jdgoin]

What I find interesting is neither the Rays or Brewers are not on any of those lists on the more extreme ends. My guess here is the Rays try to maximize matchups and each of those clubs focus on squeezing every bit of what a pitcher is good at rather than remake them. In the Lopez and Pagan cases it doesn't seem like it was a pitch quality issue. The issues run deeper.

[Parker Hageman]

I like how you subdivided some of the movement types. The breadth of fastball categories (or at least our understanding of how some fastballs perform) has grown exponentially over the last few seasons with the rise of tech.

The Twins have favored pitchers who have "ride" -- fastballs that carry with arm-side run.  Fastballs that are 14 or high vert and have 10 inches of arm-side run. They also prefer these guys to throw from a lower arm slot (like Ryan and Varland) to increase the vertical approach angle (i.e. making it look more like the ball is rising) but guys like Ober have similar traits from a high slot and plays very well. 

No matter the movement type, the Twins' fastball preference is up in the zone. They threw fastballs in the upper third 49% of the time -- the most in baseball. Because of that, they had one of the lowest in play rates (34.2%, second behind the Mariners). 

There's another wave of fastball shape that is going to garner some attention (already has in some circles) but it's the cut-and-carry fastball. 

The Cubs are on the forefront of the cut-and-carry fastball. They are teaching pitchers this type of movement that appears to have cut fastball properties out of the hand but the ball carries instead of cutting. The deception to the hitter is that their brain tells them its going to run in or away from them but just stays up. 

 

 

[jdgoin]

1 hour ago, Parker Hageman said:

I like how you subdivided some of the movement types. The breadth of fastball categories (or at least our understanding of how some fastballs perform) has grown exponentially over the last few seasons with the rise of tech.

The Twins have favored pitchers who have "ride" -- fastballs that carry with arm-side run.  Fastballs that are 14 or high vert and have 10 inches of arm-side run. They also prefer these guys to throw from a lower arm slot (like Ryan and Varland) to increase the vertical approach angle (i.e. making it look more like the ball is rising) but guys like Ober have similar traits from a high slot and plays very well. 

No matter the movement type, the Twins' fastball preference is up in the zone. They threw fastballs in the upper third 49% of the time -- the most in baseball. Because of that, they had one of the lowest in play rates (34.2%, second behind the Mariners). 

There's another wave of fastball shape that is going to garner some attention (already has in some circles) but it's the cut-and-carry fastball. 

The Cubs are on the forefront of the cut-and-carry fastball. They are teaching pitchers this type of movement that appears to have cut fastball properties out of the hand but the ball carries instead of cutting. The deception to the hitter is that their brain tells them its going to run in or away from them but just stays up. 

 

 

Sounds similar to a backup SL. Hitter thinks it’s a SL but it doesn’t do what it “should” do. Perkins always told me it was the most effective pitch he had, even if it was an accident.