Twice a 15-game winner for the Orioles, and once an 18-game loser, Rodrigo Lopez has returned to the majors in 2009 as a starter for the Phillies. His job may not last long, if Pedro Martinez gets healthy and stretched out quickly. For now, he's in the Phillies rotation and set to make his third start of the season against the Cubs on Monday.
Lopez throws four pitches, a four-seam fastball (F4), a two-seam fastball (more tail than sink, F2), a slider (SL) and a change-up (CH).
In the spin movement graph, I've included dots for the league average for three of his pitches.
Lopez' slider has a decent amount of movement, sinking more than the average righty's slider. It is a little slurvey in that regard. He doesn't get too much movement on his fastballs, but he throws the two-seamer more often, maximizing what movement his does get.
Flight paths show almost no vertical difference between the fastballs (1st base view).
With just two starts in 2009 and a single outing from 2007, this next set of graphs will be a bit noisy.
Lopez throws a lot of strikes (except with the four-seam fastball) and seems to get a lot of called strikes. The whiff rate on the change-up is simply awful, that's not even good for a fastball. His best pitch for missing bats, the slider, is not very tough, relative to other sliders.
| cfx | # | Swing | Whiff | B:CS | IWZ | Chase | Watch |
| CH | 31 | 0.548 | 0.059 | 1.3 | 0.677 | 0.300 | 0.333 |
| F2 | 97 | 0.454 | 0.046 | 1.0 | 0.639 | 0.286 | 0.452 |
| F4 | 59 | 0.322 | 0.105 | 2.9 | 0.458 | 0.125 | 0.444 |
| SL | 38 | 0.421 | 0.250 | 1.4 | 0.579 | 0.250 | 0.455 |
Lopez looks like he keys in on pounding the zone and inducing contact. On balls in play he's had decent results, not a lot of luck (good or bad). He has avoided the long ball, which is a bit of good fortune, but we're just talking about 18 or so innings of work.
| cfx | # | nkSLG | GB% | FB% | LD% | HRFB% | IFFB% | HRLD% |
| CH | 31 | 0.273 | 64% | 18% | 18% | 0% | 50% | 0% |
| F2 | 97 | 0.273 | 64% | 32% | 5% | 0% | 43% | 0% |
| F4 | 59 | 0.500 | 50% | 13% | 38% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| SL | 38 | 0.500 | 40% | 50% | 10% | 0% | 20% | 0% |
No pop-ups on the four-seam fastball, not very impressive. It sticks out as his worst pitch. Run values, both "actual" (based on batted ball results; single, double etc) and "expected" (based on batted ball types, grounder, line drive etc) aren't surprising and, since he hasn't gotten too lucky or unlucky, they don't differ very much. That's also a factor of being a strike thrower.
| cfx | # | rv100a | rv100e |
| CH | 31 | -3.03 | -1.26 |
| F2 | 97 | -3.69 | -3.13 |
| F4 | 59 | 1.59 | 1.29 |
| SL | 38 | -1.01 | -1.35 |
Good two-seamer, so-so slider and change-up, poor fastball. Lopez does seem to be able to put it all together, but he doesn't look like a pitcher that can afford to fall behind.
3 comments:
Harry,
You’ve probably explained this numerous times, I just haven’t been able to find it from googling… Just looking for how you define Whiff (I think it’s swings and misses/swings), Chase (I assume swing at out of zone/ pitches out of zone?), and watch (called strike in zone / pitches in zone?)? Thanks for helping a fledgling pitch f/xer.
You just about had it
Whiffs = misses/swings
Chase = swing rate for pitches out of the zone
Watch = takes on pitches in the zone (simply the inverse of swing rate). The umpire call is not included in the Watch metric, it is based on a strike zone definition that is two feet wide and set to the top/bottom for the specific batter. Each specific batter's zone is the average of all the operator set zone values for that hitter, across all at bats. It is not the top/bot for that at bat (too much variation there).
Thanks
Post a Comment