Pitching Penny, and Hitting Penny

The Cubs wrap-up a seven game road-trip on ESPN tonight. They've dropped two of three against the Dodgers, but a win tonight would send the Cubs home with a 4-3 trip. A loss tonight will make the flight from L.A. seem much longer.

The Dodgers will call on hard throwing Brad Penny. Brad was a member of the Marlins until the trade deadline in 2004, when he was sent to the Dodgers with ex-Cub Hee Seop Choi. Brad has a ring from that 2003 World Series, and was a teammate of Chad Fox and Derrek Lee. He also played with Ryan Dempster earlier in their Florida days.

Penny is coming off his best season as a Dodger, but hasn't performed well in 2008. He's always a tough opponent since he can work late into games, and has good stuff. He can still shut-down an offense on his good days, but his days of dominating an opposing line-up are behind him.

Brad's known for his fastball/curveball combination. He throws overhand and really relies on that power pitch to set-up both the curve and the change-up. The curve drops 16 inches compared to the fastball, with almost 8 inches difference in horizontal movement to go with it.

cfx	#	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm
CH	385	86.5	-6.1	6.2	226	1,083
CU	319	78.4	2.4	-4.9	206	611
FA	1672	95.0	-4.3	11.3	201	1,619

cfx	bats	#	B%	CS%	SS%	F%	X%	HR%	Sw%	Whiff%	B:CS	ISZ%	corner%	SwOOZ%	TaISZ%
CH	L	200	40.5	7.5	14.0	15.0	23.0	0.0	52.00	26.92	5.4	22.00	14.50	43.59	11.59
CH	R	185	40.5	8.6	14.6	16.2	19.5	0.5	50.81	28.72	4.7	40.00	10.27	35.14	21.59
CH		385	40.5	8.1	14.3	15.6	21.3	0.3	51.43	27.78	5.0	30.65	12.47	40.07	17.20
CU	L	179	34.1	25.1	7.3	15.6	17.9	0.0	40.78	17.81	1.4	44.69	14.53	28.28	33.02
CU	R	140	42.1	24.3	5.7	13.6	14.3	0.0	33.57	17.02	1.7	44.29	10.00	24.36	45.33
CU		319	37.6	24.8	6.6	14.7	16.3	0.0	37.62	17.50	1.5	44.51	12.54	26.55	38.12
FA	L	765	35.2	18.4	6.7	22.5	16.9	0.1	46.14	14.45	1.9	41.70	13.59	27.58	21.09
FA	R	907	35.1	15.0	5.7	23.6	20.3	0.3	49.94	11.48	2.3	44.76	12.35	32.53	22.52
FA		1672	35.1	16.6	6.2	23.1	18.7	0.2	48.21	12.78	2.1	43.36	12.92	30.20	21.88
		2376	36.3	16.3	7.5	20.7	18.8	0.2	47.31	15.93	2.2	41.46	12.79	31.63	23.61

He uses a little more breaking stuff against lefties, but is mostly a consistent thrower of the three pitches. There could be a two-seamer lurking in there, but I'm happy with the three-pitch approach, in Brad's case.

How about outcomes of batted balls? Broken down into less and more detail, it is no surprise that Penny's fastball yields more fly-outs and pop-outs than his breaking pitches, and he gets more air-outs from his curve than his change.