Friar Watch

Not much to see here, it’s an easy one to break down. The green dots are the strike zone (Gameday data gives a value for the top and bottom of each hitter’s zone), the red dots are Cla’s release point and the circles are where the pitch crossed the plate. Unfortunately I forgot to record the game so I can’t check the accuracy but it seems about right to me.

Pitch 1: 88 mph sinker on the outside corner for a called strike. Bonds was probably taking all the way on this one. Gameday gives a “break angle” of 19, not sure if that’s degrees or some kind of vector but it was the sharpest break of any pitch Meredith threw in this appearance.
Pitch 2: 89 mph sinker on the inside corner, Bonds fouled it off. You can see the release point is a little to the right, that would coincide with Cla letting it go just a little later to get it in on Bonds. Cla’s pitches generally seem to break down and away to lefties, this pitch probably looked like it was headed for Bonds’ wheelhouse until it dropped down, causing him to foul it off.
Pitch 3: 87 mph sinker low and outside, Bonds looked terrible swinging and missing for the strikeout. It looks like Cla was trying to put a little extra oomph on this one, he dropped down an extra 3 or 4 inches.

One thing you can’t see from the chart is the sick movement on all three of these pitches. Cla has said he just tries to limit the damage when he faces lefties but he’s shown he can shut down the best of them when the game is on the line.

I was hoping to compare this to Meredith’s previous strikeout of Bonds in Frisco but MLB doesn’t have enhanced Gameday info for that game. I have no idea why some games have this data and others don’t. Maybe it tas into Questec? I know it works off some kind of camera but beyond that I’m in the dark.