Kris Medlen Pitch f/x

This is the pitch f/x data from Medlen's major league debut against the Rockies where we got shutout at the Ted 9-0.  Wow, I actually forgot how terrible that game was.  

Medlen pitched well the first three innings and then completely imploded in the 4th:

I had most of this data on my computer back in December.  Never got around to publishing it till now.

I think for the pitch f/x data I might have filtered out the 4th inning since he was all over the place.  Interestingly enough, Kris Medlen's 2 seam had more velocity on this day than his 4 seam, but small samples of course.  His fastball has good vertical movement and below average horizontal movement.  I think I filtered out the 4th inning from this data.

You might want to skip down a bit to the pretty flight path graphs if this stuff below doesn't make sense.

I like the movement on this 2 seam and it's especially good when you compare it to his fastball.  It's weird how Medlen's fastball favors vertical movement more than a standard fastball while his other pitches tend to favor horizontal movements.  For most pitchers, you tend to see them favor one or the other based on their arm angle.  I'd like to see how Medlen grips his pitches.

This graph below is similar to the above table.  Basically, imagine you are the catcher and a ball is thrown at you with no spin and no outside effects like wind/air.  That ball would land dead center at (0,0).  At (-3.64, 10.59), the vertical of 10.59 inches on the fastball means it moves 10.59 inches higher than you'd expect from no spin pitch and the -3.59 inches means it's moving to your left (the catcher's left).  This is due to the grip and the resulting spin.  Picture yourself as the catcher and it should make some intuitive sense.  I believe a typical 4 seam fastball is around -5 horizontal and 9 vertical.  Guys with fastballs that are straight as an arrow will be something like -3.5  horizontal, 6 vertical.  Craig Hansen is the first guy who comes to mind for me.

Thanks to Harry Pavlidis for his modified spreadsheet that I used for these flight paths.  If you didn't like the first part, this should be a lot easier to digest.  Note the line is where the ball crosses home plate.  I think these get bigger when you click them. Here's the first base view of Medlen's pitches:

I'm so rusty with this that I'm not sure if this is good or not.  His curveball's vertical movement is pretty good relative to that fastball, but I'm not sure if the hump is too exposed.

Bird's eye view.  Again, the line is where it crosses home plate.

I like the horizontal separation in his pitches.  It looks like he's someone who should pitch the sides of the plate to take advantage of his horizontal movement as opposed to someone like a Ben Sheets with a 12-6 hammer curve or Rich Harden with the disappearing circle change.  Someone really needs to teach Medlen a pronated cutter.  That pitch would help him more than anything and he'd get separation like Roy Halladay does on his Cutter/2 Seam combo.  Now if he could just throw 4 mph faster with impeccable control...  I do have a Roy Halladay data set from his duel with KK last year.

Home Plate (Catcher's View)

Yeah someone teach him a cutter please.  He already has good control so Medlen would be nasty, nasty with a good cutter.  This was my addition to Harry's spreadsheet and I think I need to work on the proper sizing for this view to make it more convincing.

Overall, I like Medlen's stuff.  Nice and simple with good horizontal movement.  His control is pretty good too so I think he'll be a good big league pitcher.  Oh and I just realized that since this data is old and I'm so out of it, for all I know he could already be throwing a cutter.  Maybe I'll review the current Medlen some other day.