What Was That Pitch?

This is sort of, um, what’s the right word — stunning? John Walsh at Hardball Times (full disclosure: I contribute to THT) has done some terrific work with the new Enhanced Gameday pitch-f/x data that is all the rage:

What I want to cover is how to identify the pitches of any pitcher’s repertoire, given the fabulous pitch-f/x data that several others and I have been working with this season. What does he throw? How hard does he throw each kind of pitch? What sort of movement is he getting?

In addition to describing basic pitch types and what they look like in the data, John examines the repertoires of 17 current big-league pitchers. I find the side-by-side comparisons of “similar” pitcher types (e.g., sidearmers Chad Bradford, Cla Meredith, Peter Moylan, Pat Neshek) particularly intriguing.

I need to chew on this a lot more — I mean, a lot more. John has provided something here that promises to be useful to researchers and, eventually, casual observers of baseball. Fascinating stuff…