Tomo Ohka - Older and Better

Tomo Ohka faces the Cubs on Saturday, as the Indians try and recover from Friday's loss. The Cubs came back to win, despite being down 7-0 against Cliff Lee.

A brief history

Ohka is a 33 years old and appeared in 34 games over five years in Japan before being sold to the Red Sox in 1999. Cleveland is the eighth franchise for the right-hander. Ohka went from Boston to Montreal and made the move to D.C. when the Expos became the Nationals.

After a stint with the Brewers, Ohka was back in Canada in 2007 as a Blue Jay. Released by Toronto that June, Ohka was picked-up by the Cardinals. He never got past Memphis, and in mid-July the Mariners signed him to yet another minor-league deal. Tacoma was his final stop there, although he did at least make it through the season.

The White Sox were the next gambler, and Ohka spent 2008 in Triple-A Charlotte, having signed as a minor league free agent. The Indians signed Ohka to his next contract, he was eventually assigned to Columbus. After nine starts in Triple-A, Ohka was summoned to the majors at the end of May.

sources: Baseball Reference and Wikipedia

PITCHf/x

Ohka throws a bunch of pitches, delivers close to over-the-top, and tends to put some cut on his fastball. His slider can go from sluttery to slurvey.

Change (CH) 81.8 mph (blue)
Curve (CU) 75.1 (coral)
Two-Seam Fastball (F2) 87.6 (dark red)
Four-Seam Fastball (F4) 88.4 (yellow)
Splitter (FS) 81.0 (red)
Slider (SL) 83.0 (black)

Here is Ohka's spin movement plot (values are in inches, catcher's view).



Ohka is a different pitcher than he was two years ago. First, his pitch mix has changed. Keep in mind, these are small samples, less than 750 pitches are available in PITCHf/x for Ohka.



That's a big change. How about the results? Using run values derived from the pitch-by-pitch data, Ohka is a below average pitcher overall, but has kicked a few things up a bit in 2009.

I'm going to start with rv100 (run value above average per 100 pitches, negative numbers are better for pitchers) over the two partial seasons available, and then convert that rate stat to a counting stat (straight up RVAA) for both seasons. Finally, the RVAA for 2009 alone.







Other than the whopping change in pitch mix, Ohka's slider and change have improved.

Slider
Liners have turned into grounders, a few more whiffs

              2007     2009
GB/FB/LD  33/34/33  54/41/5
Whiff        0.102    0.132

Change
Grounders and liners have become flies, SLGCON plummeted

              2007     2009
GB/FB/LD  40/20/40  25/75/0
SLGCON       1.100    0.250

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Stay hot, Cubs. Ohka may be a nice break from Cliff Lee, and a quicker route to that lovely Cleveland bullpen.