Friar Watch

Nothing like an off day after getting swept to bring down your Monday. I didn’t watch the game yesterday and don’t have the heart to look at the Gameday data so no analysis. Let’s just pretend that whole series never happened.

Dan Fox has another great article derived from Gameday data. This time he looks at hitters and which pitches they swing at. Amazingly, a few guys like Jeter and Chone Figgins hit 100% of the pitches in the strike zone that they swing at. Brian Giles is right up there too at 96.2%. No surprise that Khalil Greene, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Marcus Giles are all listed as guys who swing and miss at a lot of pitches out of the zone but hammer anything they swing at in the zone. Bowen and Branyan are at the bottom as far as swinging and missing at pitches in the zone, Branyan only making contact on 61% of strikes.

Tom Tango points to an interesting article in Wired magazine that talks about how great athletes can recognize what’s about to happen sooner than the average person, and how this skill can be learned. It reminded me of how some people have reported that Derek Jeter is the last person on the field to move when the batter swings. I tried to watch Khalil on Saturday to see when he moved but every time I paid attention to him the ball was hit somewhere else.

Chris O’Leary runs a great blog where he looks at pitching mechanics but he also took a look at Tony Gwynn’s swing. Not a terribly detailed breakdown but it does show that T swung the bat a lot harder than people think. Make sure to read through his monthly blog entries for lots of cool insight on various pitchers.