Jo-Jo's pitch f/x.

This post ended up 3 times longer than I thought it would and I learned a lot more about Jo-Jo's comparisons than I ever thought I would.  If you want to focus on Jo-Jo, I go more into depth on him in the end.

Jo-Jo throws a fastball, curve, slider, change, and splitter.  I'll go into depth in a bit.

Now if you scroll down to the bottom of Jo-Jo's pitch f/x page, you'll see a thing called Uniqueness.  Basically, Jo-Jo's pitches, movement, and velocity are pretty similar to these pitchers.  Check out his Top 5 comps: Nolasco, Gallardo, Garland, Parra, Buerhle.  Not too bad.  Couple league average pitchers and then some #3 or #2 starters in there.  When you go down some more you see Davies and Ridgway, which isn't particularly great.  But the top 5 is a nice group to be in.

Let's compare Jo-Jo to the young pitchers, Nolasco, Gallardo, and Parra.

Fastballs

Jo-Jo and Gallardo's fastballs at about 91 MPH about 1 MPH slower than Nolasco's and Parra's.  Parra probably has the best fastball, but it's really close.  They all have pretty average, or slighty above average fastballs.  Gallardo has a little extra vertical on his fastball while giving up some horizontal. Jo-Jo and Parra, both lefties, throw their fastballs noticeably higher than the two righties. About 57% vs 47-49% of the time.

Curveballs

Nolasco, Gallardo, and Jo-Jo all have good curveballs.   Gallardo probably the best. [EDIT: In fairness to Gallardo, he has the best curveball.]  Parra throws kind of a slurve and it's an okay pitch, maybe below average.  Gallardo throws his the most (33%+ of the time) and Nolasco throws his around 28% of the time.  Jo-Jo, however, throws his only 8.8% of the time, which is less than half as much as Parra's.

The curve might be Jo-Jo's best pitch, yet he doesn't throw it often.  Either he doesn't have confidence in it or he just can't throw it for a strike.  He may be hiding it poorly as well, as it may drop too early, letting batters pick up on it.  The velocity difference with the fastball may also be too much.  I think ideally you want something in the 11-16 MPH range, which both Nolasco and Gallardo have, while Jo-Jo's in about 19MPH difference.  Other sources say the slowest is the best, so I don't really know.

Here's the difference in velocity and movement in each of their fastball/curveball combinations:

The negative horizontal means the curve is moving in on a righty, relative to the fastball.  The positive means it's moving away, relative to the fastball.  Negative vertical for the drop.  Positive MPH for how much faster the fastball is.  The vertical difference is more important for a curveball than the horizontal difference.

Gallardo's "rise" on the fastball pairs up nicely with his 12-6 curve.  Ton of vertical movement and good speed difference.  This is his signature pitch: a hard-breaking curveball.  Nolasco gets the most movement overall, with a ton both ways.  Jo-Jo has the 2nd most drop and a nice chunk of horizontal movement too.  Parra depends on the slurvy nature, and it's still less than Nolasco's.  Parra has the worst curve by a noticeable margin, but it's still probably average.

Slider

Jo-Jo might have the worst slider since it's the slowest, and the others are similar. Let's take a closer look.  The slider is a little hard to analyze from pitch f/x, but we'll try.  Reyes, Nolasco, and Parra all throw their sliders about 11-13%% of the time.  Gallardo uses it about 6% of the time, though it was around 10-15% last season.

Here's the movement and speed difference between the fastball and slider:

Same as last time.  Negative on horizontal is on righties, pos is away from righties.  Vertical negative means the slider is lower than the fastball and the MPH is how much faster the fastball is.  I had a little trouble really deciding on who has the best slider so I put Smoltzie's in there as a reference.

For a slider, the horizontal difference becomes more important than the vertical difference.  Smoltz's slider is really an amazing pitch.  A ton of horizontal movement relative to his fastball, yet still has so much velocity.  Out of the youngins,  Jo-Jo's slider, relative to his fastball, has the greatest differece in movement and velocity.  It's more curveball-like than the others, with more movement, and a greater speed difference.  It's better than I had initially thought it was.  Might be a plus pitch.  Nolasco's probably got the best slider out of the youngsters. Gallardo and Parra's are a little cutter-like, with Gallardo's slighty better.  I can't say if those sliders are better than Jo-Jo's, since they're differenty types of sliders.

Changeup

Jo-Jo throws his the most at 14%, with Parra a close second with 13%.  They use it primarily vs righties, and rarely vs lefties.  Nolasco and Gallardo use it around 9-10% of the time vs lefties and virtually never against righties. 

Here's the fastball/changeup differences:

Negative horizontal in on righties, pos away from righties.

Speed difference is probably the most important aspect of a changeup.

Nolasco has the best changeup and it looks like it's a circle change instead of a straight change like the others throw.  The circle change has more movement than a straight change, but it usually has less speed difference.  Nolasco's has good movement (even for a circle change) and good speed difference.  Maybe he should throw it more.

Gallardo's lack of speed difference hurts his changeup even if it has some movement.  It's a new pitch he added this year so it may improve.  Average speed difference between a changeup and fastball is about 10 MPH so it looks like everyone other than Nolasco has a slightly below average changeup.  Jo-Jo probably has the worst changeup, though it's not too far behind the other two.

[EDIT: I think I misread the chart the first time, but Gallardo looks like he has the worst change.  Parra and Jo-Jo's are pretty close.  Both are either average at best, but probably slighty below average.]

Splitter

Parra doesn't throw a splitter.  Gallardo added his for this year.  Jo-Jo throws it about 6.5% of the time while Gallardo and Nolasco just throw it about 5% overall.  Like the change, they throw it 9-10% of the time vs lefties and almost never vs righties.

Here's the differences between the fast and split:

Negative horizontal is in on righties, pos is away from righties.

I think pitch f/x doesn't record 2-seam fastballs and Gallardo's might be a two-seamer.  I'm not really sure.  The fact that he only uses it on lefties makes me think it's a splitter.  Jo-Jo has the edge here as he has the most vertical movement and least speed difference.  It's not too significant though since nobody throws it a ton.

Nolasco

He's the oldest and has the best stuff.  Best control too, as he's walked 37 in 171 innings.  7.7 Ks per 9.  Home runs are a little high, especially since he plays for Florida.  Throws 90% fastball (57%) and curves (33%) vs righties.  Throws a lot more sliders (20%), changups (9%), and splitters (10%) against lefties.  They give him some trouble so he should probably use his change more.  Good big league pitcher.

Gallardo

Lives off of the fastball + curve.  Throws one or the other 83% of the time.  Last year about 66% fastballs and the rest split between his slider and curve.  Uses the slider at about 10% vs righties, but gives it up and uses more splitters/change vs lefties.  This year, his fastball lost a little speed, but his curve and slider gained significant movement while sacrificing some speed.  Small sample size on 2008 so a little hard to tell.  His walk rate is pretty average, but he has the best strikeout rate.  He's the youngest here and the second best, so he has good potential as his curveball is pretty devastating.  

Parra

His problem is walks.  Has a nice K rate, though not as nice as Gallardo's.  He doesn't have one dominant pitch and he mixes them up pretty nicely vs righties.  Uses a lot more a lot more curveballs against lefties.  He uses his slider the most in 2 strike counts, about 30% of the time, and then his change and curve about 10-15% of the time in 2 strike counts.  Little better than average pitcher and will improve if his stuff and/or control does.

Jo-Jo

Walks.  Jo-Jo is the worst here.  It shows in all their minor league stats too.  He had the worst walk rate in the minors, but his K rate in the minors was about the same as Parra and Nolasco, at about a K an inning.  Gallardo was slighty better, at maybe around 10Ks per 9.

His poor control leads to the walks and means he gets hit hard when he misses the location.  His OPS+ of batters face is about 125, while Parra's is about 97 and Gallardo and Nolasco are even lower.  So missing the corner and getting too much plate leads to Jo-Jo getting beat up.

He's still young enough to improve, but control is really holding him back since his stuff is pretty close to par with the rest.  Maybe he has confidence and headcase issues too, like Morton, just not quite as extreme.

Jo-Jo actually does well against lefties, but the righties eat him up.  He throws his slider a lot against lefties (30%) so they probably have trouble picking it up.  Against righties, he has to use his changeup more, which is average at best, and maybe worse.

Let's look Reyes's comps to see what he can do outside of fixing his command.

Surprisingly, Parra throws his fastball just as much vs righties as Jo-Jo does, yet has better success.  His fastball is slighty better, but I guess he's hitting his spots more.

Nolasco and Gallardo, against opposite handed batters, throw less fastballs and more junk in general.  Buehrle, another one of his comps and a lefty, throws a lot of junk and only about 28% fastballs vs righties.  Jo-Jo throws fastballs 59% of the time vs righties. He could try using his slider and/or curve more, while throwing less fastballs against righties.  I don't know if he has the command to do this though.  Splitters are another choice, but very few pitchers can throw a lot of them.

[BIG EDIT: Corrections on Buehrle.  His pitches are tough to classify.  I don't think he actually throws a splitter, because it shows up so often.  I think it's a 2-seam or sinker.  Just it has a lot of movement, which makes it look more splitter-like.  The cutter and slider are probably mixed together in the slider category as well.  If you look at it that way, he's not really comparable to Jo-Jo.

Buehrle has a lot of decent or good junk (change, cutter, slider, curve, sinker/2-seam) to go with his fastball.  It's easier to throw less fastballs when you have a two fastball-like pitches (cutter, sinker/2-seam) to throw for strikes as well.  Jo-Jo doesn't have that option, but Jo-Jo's curve is better.  Buehrle's fastball sucks too.  It's worse than Jo-Jo's, but Buehrle can locate it better.  I still think Jo-Jo should try to use his junk more vs righties if he can, especially the curve. Just Buehrle isn't a very good comparison cause they don't have the same stuff I initially thought they did.]

Jo-Jo has the stuff to be a good big league pitcher.  I'd like to see him use the curve more.  It could be his best pitch.  He needs to work on his confidence, approach vs righties, and especially control.  Easier said than done of course, but he's still pretty young and has time to work it out.