Friar Watch

After getting smacked around last night David Wells said it felt like the Dodgers knew what was coming:

Even if the Dodgers seemed to know what was coming, Wells wasn’t advertising. “I don’t tip (pitches),” he said. “If I did, I wish one of those guys would come forth and tell me so. That would be the admirable thing to do.”

Don’t hold your breath Boomer.

One way a pitcher can tip off a hitter is if his release point is different for fastballs and breaking pitches. MLB’s Gameday data should show us if Wells wasn’t consistent in his release point so let’s take a look:

White is fastballs, red is breaking pitches. Once again, the green squares are the average strike zone of all batters faced by Wells. It looks like Wells was extremely consistent in his release point so he wasn’t tipping anyone there. It seemed the real problem was when Wells fell behind and grooved a fastball the Dodger hitters were looking for it. I haven’t looked at Wells’ other start but last night’s graph shows a lot of pitches up in the zone, I don’t think that’s a recipe for success for Boomer.