Silva's Change(ing) Whiff Rate

A big part of Carlos Silva's early success was his change-up. Still thrown for strikes, hitters are no longer having trouble making contact with it. The same seems to apply to his sinker and, to a lesser extent, his slider. Given the low frequency of sliders (as few as 5 in one game) it's hard to make much sense of that.

The first chart shows Silva's overall rate, the second covers his three primary pitches (SL=slider, CH=change-up, F2=sinker). He's thrown about a dozen four-seamers this year, but I'll put those aside due to the absurdly low sample (they are in the overall #'s though).





I don't expect sinkers to miss many bats (benchmarks here), but change-ups and slider? Um, yah!

I understand ... wait, let me channel Lou ...

Look, you have to understand Silva is what you would call a strike-thrower.

OK, I'm back. The only Cubs pitcher who has thrown his 2010 change-up in the zone as often as Silva is currently in Iowa (despite being the team's best third down option). While still effective, Silva's change-up is no longer the ridiculous pitch it was in April.

The upside is a nice improvement in ground ball rate against Silva's change (from the low 40s to the upper 60s), so those whiffs aren't all that costly. I should also point out his pop-up rate against the change-up went from low-teens to zero.

Location comes to mind. He's gone from whiffs and pop-ups to contact and grounders -- could that be explained by location?















I dunno, location looks alright. I haven't found evidence of a change in speed/movement, so I'm left with better scouting/pitch recognition as Silva made the rounds. Or just plain old regression or randomness. We'll see, but I'm probably more concerned with Silva's recent lack of swings-and-misses than anything else at the moment.