How appropriate, the Padres play the Cubs today. Maddux and Marquis - you've seen them here before, follow those links if you haven't for their pitching profiles. We'll look at Trevor Hoffman here instead.
In this post you can see that Trevor throws strikes like a mad man. He leads all pitchers covered with a Ball-to-Called-Strike ratio of 1.41:1 and less than 29% of his pitches are taken for a ball - bested only by Rafael Betancourt.
Hoffman throws three pitches - a fastball, a slider (only to righties) and his dreaded change-up. It is nasty, we're talking 12 MPH off his fastball. He works both sides of the rubber. From the catcher's perspective, he's to the left against lefty batters (who, remember, are to the catcher's right). He takes the opposite, more towards the middle of the rubber, against righties.
You can see what I mean here - his release points (in feet)
Here's the spin movement (in inches) - first for all three pitches, all batters
And now, dropping the slider, and splitting it by release point group
As you can see above, the movement doesn't vary by release point group, but the plate location sure does - the change is mostly kept away.
He doesn't seem to miss much with that slider.
He'll get some work against the Cubs today. Just another Spring tune-up in a Hall of Fame career.
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