Game Three in Phoenix: Matt Garza vs Ian Kennedy

The Cubs won game two against the Diamondbacks on Friday, evening the four-games series.

Updating the one of the major themes for today's Cubs starter is our first order of business.

Matt Garza has modified his power approach to include more power sliders. Which is a nice way of saying he's not relying on his fastballs anymore. The trend is evident in his pitch mix, particularly against righties going back a few years.

Including sliders in the "soft" group, where they belong, the trend towards fewer fastballs (of both varieties) becomes more evident.

Setting aside the change-up, we can break-out the hard stuff and the breaking stuff to see the relative usage of those pitches over time.

Less preference for the curve against lefties, but a growing preference against righties. More four-seam fastballs in general, which is more of a power pitch than the two-seam (if you're splitting hairs).

Who knows what this all means, Garza has changed his mix/approach, talked about it in way that did or did not jive with the actual trends on the mound...he's an interesting guy, so every day could bring a surprise.

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The Diamondbacks are countering with Ian Kennedy. What I'm calling a "slider" below is quite possibly two pitches, one thrown earlier in his career and one in the more recent years (cutterish). He may even throw both, but let's pretend they're all sliders. Or slutters.

Sticking to 2010 and 2011, the former being his first real full season in the majors, we can detect some slight changes in approach in this young season.

2010

2011

2010

2011

Kennedy isn't breaking out the change too much--yet. He's also throwing fewer sinkers and more curveballs to lefties. Meanwhile, it's more sliders and fewer curveballs to righties. Again, it's early.

2010-2011

2010-2011

There's an apparent difference in pitch location against righties this year. That's also subject to change radically before Memorial Day.

2010

2011

Go Cubs.

Wet Cubs Head to Dry Arizona: PITCHf/x Preview

scroll down for the latest: game 2 preview

The Cubs and Diamondbacks get together for a four-spot in Phoenix on Thursday. Both teams are 10-13 and looking a little shaky. If there's anything beyond home field advantage working for the Diamondbacks, it will be the four right-handed pitchers they'll send out during the series. The Cubs will miss the only Arizona left-hander, Joe Saunders, who they faced earlier this month.

The Cubs have managed a 5-11 record against right-handed pitchers in 2011, with the same number of wins against southpaws in nine fewer games. Small sample sizes are one thing, but that's becoming downright scary. It speaks to the lack of production from Carlos Pena and Tyler Colvin. Kosuke Fukudome is hitting and getting on base, but the Cubs other lefty bat, Blake DeWitt, is mostly MIA.

The rain out on getaway day allows the Cubs to move Casey Coleman into the slot that would've been filled by James Russell, or facsimile thereof.

We'll go one game at a time.

Game 1: Ryan Dempster vs. Barry Enright

Enright has been consistently meh this season. Into the fifth each time, but no more than 18 outs a game, he's giving up 4+ runs a game and got tagged for 12 hits in his most recent start.

Here's refresher (and a previous preview) on the fastball/sinker/slider/change/curve throwing righty.

His overall pitch mix for your enjoyment, but we'll get into some more recent, granular and relevant numbers, too.

Gotta click these, no squinting (all of the images click-to-enlarge in the same window).

Enright is able to hit the low-and-away corner against righties (his glove side) regularly.

Zooming in on 2011, Enright's pitch selection seems to be trending. Check-out the splits by game.

Here's how he approached the Cubs, and each time through the order (2+).

Notice the change-up pattern, expect an inversion of the splits from April 5 if the trend holds. The curveball may be back in play, too.

Taking a look at Dempster the same way, who threw against the snakes the day after the Enright game.

More on game day.


Game 2: Carlos Zambrano vs. Armando Galarraga

Game 1 was awful. Demspter got one out, had no control and got lit up for seven runs.

Let's put that out of mind (for now) and start thinking about Armando. He beat the Cubs in Wrigley on April 6, so we can dive into that as the day goes on (trickling the updates when I have time, so keep coming back, oh loyal reader). I didn't run a preview for that start, so let's begin with what he throws. Sinker/slider in a nutshell.

Click to enlarge, as usual.

Pitch selection, through the years.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Looks to be chucking more four-seamers this year. It's early, though.

Hitters should take the Dixieland approach. Look away.

Here's how Galarraga approached the Cubs last time. He faced Fukudome four times, with nothing but a four-seam fastball that Kosuke went after on the first pitch.

I love how he threw six straight sliders to Sori on the first go-round.

More later, mabye.

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Up next:


Game 3: Matt Garza vs. Ian Kennedy

Game 4: Casey Coleman vs. Daniel Hudson

Cubs Look to Avoid Sweep Against Jhoulys Chacin

Jhoulys Chacin got Rockie fans somewhat excited after his dominating performance two weeks ago in Denver. The Cubs look to avoid the home sweep and break through with a run against Chacin today.

In the previous pregame report on Chacin my charts were a little mussed up. Here are some updated versions.

Now that we're familiar with Jhoulys, here's how he pitched the Cubs last time. Straight-up tallies (as always, everything here is based on my own pitch type classifications), covering all counts, first pitches, and two strike pitches.

batter	Total	Change	Curve	4seam FB	2seam FB	Slider
Alfonso Soriano	10	0	1	1	1	7
Aramis Ramirez	11	0	0	9	0	2
Blake DeWitt	5	0	0	5	0	0
Carlos Pena	20	2	5	9	2	2
Darwin Barney	16	1	0	9	0	6
Geovany Soto	8	0	0	3	0	5
Marlon Byrd	11	2	1	3	0	5
Matt Garza	10	0	0	9	0	1
Starlin Castro	14	1	0	7	0	6
Tyler Colvin	9	2	1	4	0	2
All Cubs	114	8	8	59	3	36

batter	First pitch	Change	Curve	4seam FB	2seam FB	Slider
Alfonso Soriano	4	0	0	1	0	3
Aramis Ramirez	4	0	0	4	0	0
Blake Dewitt	1	0	0	1	0	0
Carlos Pena	4	0	1	3	0	0
Darwin Barney	4	0	0	3	0	1
Geovany Soto	3	0	0	2	0	1
Marlon Byrd	4	2	0	1	0	1
Matt Garza	2	0	0	2	0	0
Starlin Castro	4	0	0	2	0	2
Tyler Colvin	3	1	0	2	0	0
All Cubs	33	3	1	21	0	8

batter	Strike 2	Change	Curve	4seam FB	2seam FB	Slider
Alfonso Soriano	2	0	0	0	0	2
Aramis Ramirez	3	0	0	2	0	1
Blake Dewitt	0	0	0	0	0	0
Carlos Pena	3	0	1	0	1	1
Darwin Barney	4	0	0	2	0	2
Geovany Soto	3	0	0	1	0	2
Marlon Byrd	3	0	1	1	0	1
Matt Garza	2	0	0	1	0	1
Starlin Castro	3	0	0	0	0	3
Tyler Colvin	3	0	0	1	0	2
All Cubs	26	0	2	8	1	15

Rox v Cubs 4/26/11 Preview: Jorge de la Rosa

Just the graphs for now, will add some notes before game time if I have a moment.

Garza's Pitch Selections as a Cub

Matt Garza makes his fourth start for the Cubs in about 90 minutes. To date, he's shown an increased use of his change-up and slider to right-handed batters. His pitch selection against lefties has been incredibly balanced.

Despite what Fangraphs reported, Garza is not throwing more two-seam fastballs. Less, actually. Across the line, Garza has shifted his pitch mix from 2010, which was representative of his 2007-2010 average:

             2010     2011
Change-up    5.4%    11.1%
Curveball    9.0%    12.1%
4-seam FB   46.1%    38.2%
2-seam FB   25.6%    16.1%
Slider      13.9%    22.5%

Pitch classifications by the author, PITCHf/x data from MLBAM and Sportvision

Rogers in the Neighborhood: Rox v Cubs Game 1

The Rockies come to town to finish up the slate of Cubs/Rockies games for the year. The Cubs will avoid Ubaldo Jimenez once again. They'll finish the series Wednesday in a rematch against Jhoulys Chacin. Jorge de la Rosa gets the middle game with Esmil Rogers kicking things off tonight.

That's two new starters for the Cubs after seeing Chacin, Jason Hammel and Alan Johnson in Denver.

Mr. Rogers has a live arm despite average size. At 6'1" and less than 200 lbs., the 25-year old righty from the Dominican averages 94.5 mph with his fastball when starting a game. He's capable of hitting 98 out of the bullpen on a warm summer night.

Plenty of dark orange up there. Rogers' curve and slider tend to bleed together, but they can be distinguished. Once you separate them out (note: I do note use MLBAM's pitch classifications, these are all by yours truly), an interesting pattern emerges: Rogers throws curveballs to both left- and right-handed batters, but the slider-to-the-righty is the cousin of his change-to-the-lefty with neither being shown much to the other side of the family.

Rogers has the stuff to attack the plate against right-handed hitters. Click-thru and look at the zoomed flight paths and you'll notice how his average pitches (with a notable exception) cross the meat of the plate. Even when facing lefties, Rogers will not nibble away at his hand-side corner, he goes after them.

These plate location heat/density maps hammer home the willingness of Rogers to throw strikes.

Despite the lack of two-seam fastballs, Rogers is a ground ball pitcher. He has swing-and-miss stuff against righties, but isn't quite the bat misser against lefties. Actually, Rogers throws a change-up that doesn't miss bats, but the slider and curve are tough to hit.

I imagine a platoon approach to creating an opposing line-up would be very effective on days when Rogers doesn't have his good curveball. Considering the viciousness of Rogers' slider, today may be a good day to put Tyler Colvin in for Alfonso Soriano.

Make-up game preview: Aaron Harang

Storms pushed Tuesday night's game to Wednesday night, with an already scheduled day game on tap beforehand. Dustin Moseley will slide into the early start against Matt Garza. James Russell/Jeff Samardzija will be responsible for most of the night cap. Aaron Harang will take the mound for the Padres.

Harang is a San Diego native in his first season back home with the Friars. Well known to most Cub fans from his years with the Reds, Harang is no longer the front-line starter of five years ago. He's still 6'7" with a more over-the-top delivery than Moseley and Tim Stauffer, so he'll give hitters a different look relative to the first two games of the series.

Harang has that nasty slider that misses bats and picks-up ground balls, but his other offerings are underwhelming and yield a lot of fly balls. His four-seam fastball is his next best offering, perhaps close to the slider in terms of quality. Harang's sinker/curve/change are not as effective as Moseley's and Stauffer's, at least in recent years.

Harang is off to a good start in 2011. Three games, six innings and run each. Harang's walk and strikeout rates moved in the wrong direction in 2010, but his three starts in 2011 are inline with his career marks. That means two things; first, he's not pitching as well as it looks (batted balls will start to drop/clear fences outside of Petco) and second, absolutely nothing since it's just three games.

Harang had bad luck on balls in play in 2010, maybe, so his 5.32 ERA was probably not as red a flag as it appeared. Despite his W/L records in 2008 and 2009, Harang was an effective pitcher despite his hitter-friendly homer park. Now residing in Petco, Harang could easily rebound to pre-2010 levels. It would be much more unlikely that he'll come back to the 2006-2007 version.

Harang is essentially a two-pitch guy against righties. They happen to be his two best pitches, so that's not such an awful thing. Lefties get the full set of five pitches.