Friar Watch

Jake Peavy Jake continued his strong start with yet another 10 strikeout performance. A lot of us felt that last year Jake was just not able to finish off hitters, he couldn’t get that swing and miss with two strikes. I’ve speculated before that his lingering injuries affected his movement, especially on his slider. This year the movement is back and he’s getting those missed swings. For example, take a look at his swinging strikes from last night:

That looks a lot like good movement to me. Look at those pitches out of the zone. Most of those are sliders, breaking out of the zone on a right handed hitter.

One thing we’ve speculated on in the past is whether a guy who pitches with a lot of movement fools the umpire as well as the hitter. From looking at Jake’s called strikes it seems like that might be the case:

Yikes. Either there’s something wrong with the Gameday system or Jake was definitely getting some calls. We’ve looked at swinging and called strikes, what happened when the Cardinals put the bat on the ball?

Green = foul
Red = In Play, Out
Blue = In Play, Base Hit

The Cards got some pitches in the heart of the plate but they couldn’t do much with them. Again, I’d say that’s a sign of good movement.

One last graph, this one is pitches that were called balls:

Looks pretty fair, with the exception of that one ball that’s practically right down the middle. The balls that are low look borderline but keep in mind the strike zone is an average for all Cardinal hitters. Most of those are actually out of the zone, as measured by Gameday.

What do all these charts have in common? Jake just wasn’t missing high or low, only off the plate. Again, lateral movement on the fastball and slider. Jake has been fun to watch this year, I expect to see him starting the All Star Game for the NL.

Kevin Cameron: Cameron pitched the last two innings and looked good for the most part. He’s still having control problems, he walked two, but that cutter continues to be a really effective pitch for him.