Cubs vs. Matt Cain

Cubs face Matt Cain tonight at AT&T Park. Matt's a big, young, power pitcher. He mixes a cutter in with his four-seamer, and maybe even some two-seamers. He throws a good change-up and slider, along with the occasional sweeping curveball. The slider is the off-speed pitch for right-handed hitters, the change-up for the lefties. Both get a pitch that breaks away.

Spin movement, in inches (negative on the x-axis is to the catcher's left). Click to enlarge.....



In the following bird's-eye and first-base views, you can see the change-up tracks closely with the fastball until about 25 feet out, then, see ya later. You can also see what I mean about the sweeping curveball in the bird's eye view.



Good pitcher, hard stuff, famously unsupported by his offense.

cfx	L	R	mph	pfx_x	pfx_z	deg	rpm	B:CS	corner%	Sw%	Whiff%	SwOZ%	TaIZ%	HR%	NKS	G:AO
CH	160	42	86.7	-4.6	4.0	229	775	5.1	11.39	57.92	24.79	41.38	15.60	0.5	0.400	1.6
CU	69	64	76.8	7.6	-5.0	236	1,016	2.6	12.78	40.60	12.96	28.24	27.69	0.8	0.586	0.7
FA	464	578	92.9	-2.4	10.1	193	1,401	1.9	14.49	48.94	16.47	32.20	24.13	0.7	0.564	0.7
SL	48	200	85.2	4.7	1.6	143	655	3.8	11.29	45.56	24.78	30.00	19.83	1.2	0.500	0.8
	741	884	89.7	-0.8	6.8	194	1,178	2.4	13.48	48.86	18.64	32.61	22.84	0.7	0.531	0.8

Matt's got some control problems, or, at least, he's not very sharp with his command.

		#	CU	FA	CH	SL
L	first	191	8.9	74.3	15.7	1.0
L	ahead	194	12.4	51.0	23.2	13.4
L	behind	185	3.8	70.3	23.2	2.7
L	even	126	15.1	49.2	27.8	7.9
L	full	45	4.4	68.9	15.6	11.1

		#	CU	FA	CH	SL
R	first	225	8.0	67.6	2.7	21.8
R	ahead	263	9.5	55.5	5.3	29.7
R	behind	188	3.2	81.9	4.8	10.1
R	even	165	9.1	57.6	5.5	27.9
R	full	43	0.0	72.1	9.3	18.6

He sure likes the heater, but, unlike the slider to righties, he'll throw that change-up to lefties when he's behind in the count.