Jason Marquis' Stuff - Cubs vs. A's preview

A's starter Gio Gonzalez doesn't have any PITCHf/x data, so I'll actually preview a Cubs pitcher. K-means clusters didn't give me good results, but it was informative at hinting towards a variety of takes on his fastball. In the end, I found those differences too small and varied to mean anything. So I took a PFX chart, eyeballed it, chunked it, reviewed it, and came up with 4 clusters and standard pitches. More on the A's game is later on in the post.

Raw:


Eyeballed into clusters:


Here are the #'s on the four groups

#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	SpinDir	SpinRate
1	73.6	1.6	-6.2	193.7	651.0
2	89.9	-9.7	6.9	234.6	1497.7
3	85.9	-1.4	4.1	198.8	539.5
4	82.7	-8.4	5.7	235.7	1185.5

#	B	CS	SS	F	X	HR	Total	%
1	5	5	0	0	0	0	10	1.5%
2	138	76	12	54	77	4	361	55.5%
3	74	28	23	45	47	1	218	33.5%
4	23	4	3	15	17	0	62	9.5%

#	B	CS	SS	F	X	HR
1	50.00%	50.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
2	38.66%	21.29%	3.36%	15.13%	21.57%	1.12%
3	34.10%	12.90%	10.60%	20.74%	21.66%	0.46%
4	37.10%	6.45%	4.84%	24.19%	27.42%	0.00%

#	SwRt	Whiff	B:CS
1	0.0%	-	1.0
2	40.7%	8.2%	1.8
3	53.2%	19.8%	2.6
4	56.5%	8.6%	5.8

Here's plate location by pitch type




These #'s don't jive with ESPN's. But they're using a larger sample and another technique, presumably.

A's vs. Cubs

Gio Gonzalez is a lefty, and he'll face a still depleted Cubs team. Ramirez has been pushed back to Friday (yea right) and Soriano is still on the mend. DeRosa is taking BP, and should play next week. We should get Fukudome, Lee and Soto tomorrow, along with Theriot.

Carlos Marmol will pitch tomorrow. He didn't get in today, as planned, according to Cubs.com.

Carlos Marmol, one of the closer candidates, was slated to pitch on Wednesday, but they ran out of innings.

Someone should tell Lou that they schedule most games in the Majors for 9 innings.

If Gio rings a bell for fellow Chicagoans, it would be because he was a prized White Sox prospect. He went to Beane land in the Nick Swisher deal, and is getting his first Spring start after two scoreless innings of relief.

Here he is last year, looks like Spring Training.



Video found at First Inning - also the source for these stats from 2007, in Birmingham (AA)

Age G W L  IP TBF   H 2B 3B HR  R ER BB   K  ERA  RA9
21 27 9 7 150 611 116 14  5 10 57 53 57 185 3.18 3.42