Kevin Hart Refresher

Kevin Hart takes a turn in the Cubs rotation, facing the Braves in a rubber game at Wrigley Field. With a day off Thursday, the Cubs won't need Hart again in the Cardinals series leading up to the All Star Break.

Hart made his name in the Fall of 2007, but struggled in 2008 and spent most of the season in Iowa. He had just been sent back to Iowa, after a brief stint in the Chicago bullpen, but was recalled when Ryan Dempster broke his toe on the dugout rail.

Dempster's injury will cost him about 6 or 7 starts, so someone will be filling in his spot after the break. Hart has a change to state his case for the job today.

Kevin throws a handful of pitches, although the change-ups are rare, possibly splitters or data errors. He's basically sinker/slider against lefties, with curves and four-seam fastballs bumped up in the mix against righties.



From left to right, this table covers pitch type; # number thrown; mph average speed 55 feet from home plate; rv100e runs allowed against average per 100 pitches based on batted ball type (grounder, liner etc.); rv100a same stat but for actual runs expected from hits and outs; IWZ rate of pitches thrown in a two-foot wide strike zone; Swing swing rate on all pitches; Whiff misses per swings; Chase swing rate on pitches out of the wide zone; Watch take rate (inverse of swings) on pitches in the wide zone; SLGCON slugging rate on balls in play; GB% ground balls per balls in play.

pitch	#	MPH	rv100e	rv100a	IWZ	Swing	Whiff	Chase	Watch	SLGCON	GB%
Change	10	88.0	-0.941	-8.774	0.400	0.600	0.333	0.333	0.000	0.000	67%
Curveball	112	79.9	-0.910	-2.278	0.500	0.314	0.460	0.288	0.644	0.250	38%
Sinker	143	93.0	0.681	2.870	0.409	0.430	0.094	0.273	0.344	0.567	73%
Fastball	210	93.3	1.183	1.901	0.519	0.477	0.136	0.231	0.286	0.646	50%
Slider	282	87.4	-0.088	0.413	0.451	0.519	0.362	0.348	0.265	0.583	50%

Hart throws everything hard, even the slider. I don't think it's a cutter, lacks backspin, but it's thrown as fast as one. The ground ball rate on the sinker is very nice, and he appears to be a bit unlucky on balls in play (rv100e-rv100a is a decent estimate of luck). His fastball isn't very good, too straight perhaps. He misses a lot of bats with the curveball and slider, and the curveball is his most effective pitch.

Flight Paths



Pitch Locations

The light, white lines indicate reference points for the strike zone. Click to enlarge (applies to all images in this post, and most posts).







I can't imagine the middle-in fastballs do him much good, but the ones just up and out of the zone are probably OK. Hopefully those groups overlap frequently .... I need to create a heat map .... or learn how to first.