Friar Watch

Gameday went on the fritz for a few innings so the data is incomplete but I think there’s enough to draw a few conclusions. First, it looks like Clay came out pumped up and was throwing hard, perhaps too hard. His first 7 pitches were all over 95 mph but he never reached that speed again. Even though he was successful in the first Clay can’t sustain that kind of velocity: he didn’t reach 94 for the rest of the game. That may be a good thing, I think he has better life on his sinker at around 90 mph.

Pitch selection
Pitches 11 through 34 are the second inning. You can see where he started off with sinkers and sliders, then halfway through the inning he throws his first curve ball, the strikeout pitch to Hendrickson. He started the next batter, Furcal, with a curve in the dirt for ball one and then got away from it. But starting in the third inning he began to throw it with two strikes and started getting strikeouts.

It may have been part of a strategy to not use all his pitches the first time through the lineup, something Chris Young did a lot last year. I’ll watch for this in Clay’s next start.

Pitch location
The graph shows pitches that were not swung at. Again, we’re missing about 28 pitches due to a Gameday malfunction.
Blue = Balls
Orange = Called Strikes

Just a reminder, this is from the catcher’s viewpoint. Right handed batters would be on the left side.

Some real inconsistency in the way the pitches were called. Both pitchers seemed to benefit from some questionable strikes. Take a look at Hendrickson’s chart:

And how about Saito?

Fans from both sides were chirping about the calls but it looks like they were equally bad on both sides.