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Edinson Volquez

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hardballtimes.com - 6/22/2008

Player spotlight: Edinson Volquez

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Sunday, June 22, 2008 Player spotlight: Edinson Volquez Posted by Derek Carty at 2:03pm The 2008 success of Edinson Volquez came up during the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable Radio Show when I was a guest last week. Mike Podhorzer of the Fantasy Baseball Generals asked me if I would look at Volquez in the light of PITCHf/x, particularly his dramatically increased ground ball rate.  ...

• sdanne

  +1

  Awesome article. These could very easily be adapted to become non-fantasy posts and get some more attention. Not sure how the whole behind the scenes thing works at THT though.

   

  I often wonder...why doesn't Chien Ming Wang get more love as a sinker-baller? 

  Posted 6/23/2008 respond (flag)

  • Derek Carty

    +1

    sdanne,
    Thanks very much for the kind words.  As far as Wang goes, I'm not sure.  I've always thought of him as a sinker-baller, and I thought most others did too.  The fact that he throws his sinker around 94 MPH and can crank it up to 96 or 97 might distract some.  I don't know.  Leaving him out of my article when I mentioned sinker ballers wasn't to mean I don't consider him one.  His PITCHf/x data pretty clearly shows that he throws a sinker.

    Posted 6/23/2008 respond (flag)

  • kitikami

    +1

    I completely agree.  This information is of absolutely no use to my fantasy league (due to our unusual format), but I found it very engaging.  I don't usually read the fantasy focus stuff, but I saw this headline in the feed on the homepage and was intrigued, and then promptly forgot I was reading a fantasy baseball article until the fantasy application was explicitly inserted into the article.

    Regarding Wang, for the past couple years, when I think sinker-ballers, I think Webb in the NL and Wang in the AL.  I never really knew he wasn't widely praised as a sinker-baller either.

    Posted 6/25/2008 respond (flag)

• SwishMyNish33

  +1

  This question is slightly off topic to the point of the article, but innit you mention xGB%, what do you use to come up with xGB%?

  Thanks

  Paul

  Posted 6/23/2008 respond (flag)

  • Derek Carty

    +1

    SwishMyNish33,

    xGB% is what a pitcher's GB% would look like given a league average LD%, which is something pitchers don't have a whole lot of control over.  Extreme GB pitchers (and I believe extreme FB pitchers, if I remember correctly) are capable of slightly better than average LD%, although this isn't accounted for yet.  When I find some time I might go in and do that.

    Posted 6/23/2008 respond (flag)

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Saturday afternoon linkaliciousness
Lone Star Ball — ... Also at THT, last weekend, there was a piece on Edinson Volquez that looks at his pitch f/x data to determine what it is that he's been doing that has made him one of the best pitchers in baseball so far this season...it is lengthy, and there is a lot of wonky charts and graphs and stuff, but I think it is a real good analysis of how Volquez has been doing what he is doing... ...