Micah Owings

Tonight the Cubs face the rookie starter for the D-Backs, Micah Owings. According to ESPN, he throws 3 pitches, mostly fastballs. His two off-speed pitches are used pretty evenly against lefties, but one of them almost exclusively against righties.

Using his last 3 home starts (1 with about 3 dozen missing pitches), it isn't too hard to find his three pitches. But it looks like grouping by velocity alone can be misleading, especially when there isn't as much clear differentiation in terms of velocity or break.

First, his velocity line


I decided to split into <80 and then >86.5, leaving the rest as the "middle" speed.

While my numbers come close to ESPN's, they don't quite match (keep in mind my much smaller sample).



Pretty close. But this is closer, perhaps.



Are those fastballs or change-ups? According to ESPN, he doesn't throw many changes to RHH (2%), relying more on the slider, while LHH get a pretty even mix of the two.



Looks like a serious lack of change-ups to me. How 'bout the lefties?



Almost looks like two change-ups - a real slow ball, and one that's practically a fastball but with some drop. Something else to watch for tonight, and to look at with more data.

Up next: Part III of Rich Hill