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The Hardball Times
found this 6/24/2008
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earthdyedred I knew someone who was close to the Greinke family when Zach was growing up and knew Zach had been drafted by the Royals, but hadn't followed his career. She asked me how it had gone for him, and I relayed that he was good but had gone through a severe depression spell. Unexpectedly to me, she wasn't surprised whatsoever. Apparently, Greinke's parents were more than a little overbearing about their children's success, her example being the parents forcing the kids (at least I think that's what she implied) to follow their throwing program even on Christmas. It just amazed me how little this woman was shocked about Zach's depression based on his upbringing.
I'm just glad for his sake that he got the help he needed. How many players have to sort this out in the minors, or worse yet, don't?
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joshkalk Very interesting story earthdyedred. I have no idea how many players are secretly dealing with issues like this that go untreated and I think probably nobody really knows. It isn't just ball players though plently of regular people go through the same issues.
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walshj58 Hey Josh,
Fine work, as always.
After reading the article, though, I'm not sure why you are so high on Greinke. I understand that he has above-average speed on his FB and also that his FB speed varies more than most. But, I don't see much else in his pfx data that suggest he's one of the top pitchers in mlb. Not that he isn't, of course, but is the 94 mph FB with some speed variation the main reason?
Also, regarding that FB speed variation, do you have a feel for how much of that is intentional? I mean (and I'm playing devil's advocate here), you could also claim that he's been inconsistent with the FB, failing to reach even 92 mph on fully 15% of his pitches. I guess I'm asking if there is anything in his usage that suggests that he's changing FB speeds intentionally.
I suppose data quality is also an issue. Do you have some idea of the variance in speed due to measurement error? In other words, if you used pfx to measure a pitching machine that threw precisely 94 mph every pitch, what would the observed SD be?
I hope I don't come off as hyper-critical -- I think you are doing good stuff and I enjoy reading your pieces. Keep up the good work!
-John
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joshkalk John,
From everything I have read Greinke is changing speeds on his fastball inentionally. But your question is valid how can we generally tell if the pitcher is changing speeds or is inconsistent? I think the answer will be check out his fastball speed in high leverage situations. Maybe I will try to code that up soon.
As far as being high on Greinke what I see beyond the excellent fastball is some very good off speed pitches. His change is much slower than his fastball. His curve produces a large vertical difference from his fastball and a huge speed differential. I didn't show plots of this because I didn't want to make things too long but his release point is consistent for all his pitches and his off speed pitches are generally in the same plane as his fastball. His slider isn't great but for what he uses it for it doesn't have to be great and the lower movement might actually be helping him. What about his off speed stuff don't you like (just out of curiousity)?
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walshj58 Ok, I'll play the skeptic some more :-)
Do we know that a large difference between curve and FB is beneficial? I'm not sure it is. Some pretty unimpressive pitchers have very large FB-CB speed differences: Todd Jones, Livan Hernandez, Kyle Snyder. There are some good ones, too, of course: Oswalt is one (these are from 2007 pfx data).
It's not that I don't like his off-speed stuff necessarily, but I'm not sure how much you can say about it just from the movement and speed plots. I guess I'm saying that his pitches look pretty typical, they don't seem to stand out from the crowd.
Have you used your similarity tool on Greinke? I'd be curious to see who he is similar to.
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joshkalk Well you are right that is something that needs to be checked. I guess I assumed a bigger speed differential would be good but maybe not.
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RoyalBlue Under the radar indeed! Even in an article that is a feature about him, his name is spelled wrong the entire time! For the record, it is Zack Greinke, not Zach Greinke. -
Detroit Michael Josh, in the blurb on THT Live saying that you misspelled Zack Greinke's name, you might want to correct the spelling of "throughout" instead of "thought."
Real change in talent levels
THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball —
... describes the changes in fastball speed for Verlander. Yesterday, Josh shows us the standard deviation of a pitcher’s fastball speed: ...
Seven Series in Seven Days: Kansas City Royals @ Houston
The Crawfish Boxes —
... As far as their pitching goes, the Astros need to avoid facing off against Zack Greinke, who is a phenomenally underrated fantasy sleeper. At just twenty five years of age, Greinke has a bright future ahead of him. CHONE projects him to post a near 3.00 K:BB and dominant 7.82 K/9; yes those are Oswaltian numbers. ...
