Zito's Arm Slot

Barry Zito has been working out his issues by changing mechanics since he signed with the Giants. Recently, he's been getting away from the overhand delivery and working from a lower arm slot. As a result, his curve, fastball and change-up are getting different movement. The arm angle is impacting the slider, but the PITCHf/x spin movement numbers don't show much of an effect.

Using his last three home starts, it looks like Barry when from a "new" delivery on June 3, back to the old one June 13, and another variant of the new delivery on the 18th of June. What will we see tonight?

First, here are the three spin movement clouds, superimposed, to give you a little bit of an idea of what's going on. As always, each of these images have a larger version, just click it.



It is hard to see, but the key thing, beside the arm slot's overall effect on movement, is the fact that the change no longer drops out below the fastball.

Pitch by pitch, now, above, from first and spin movement.

First, the slider, which, in spin movement, changes little, but it has a new flight path.





Change-ups





Fastballs





And the Curve





The curve still has some serious drop, but, what he threw on the 18th had around six inches more "sweep" than the overhand version, while only losing a couple inches of sink.