Here’s what Ian Kennedy’s start last night looks like in my pitch by pitch table. I’ve been tabbing every Yankee game so far this season, and while I have resisted the urge to start analyzing the data, a couple of things seems clear, fewer pitches are good, first pitch strikes are better. Home runs and walks are trouble. Grounbreaking stuff, huh?
One other thing I’ve noticed, although I admit it’s a terribly small sample, is that very often in poor starts, walks and strikeouts seem to come in clusters. I wonder, and will try to analyze whether that has something to do with the fact that similar hitters tend to be clustered in the lineup, or that pitchers seem to find some sort of short lived “zone,” that produces similar results. In good starts, Ks and BBs tend to be evenly distributed. My half baked hypothesis is that good pitchers impose themselves on the game outcomes, poor pitchers let the game batter them around and are heavily luck dependent.
Could be a load of crap, time will tell.
On to Kennedy, and here are a few things to know: Red boxes are homeruns - see the 7th inning for plenty of examples. Green boxes are strikeouts, orange boxes are walks. Yellow boxes are hits (the type of hit is denoted by the number in the box, I won’t bore you with that key.) Grey boxes are outs.
10 baserunners over 6 innings isn’t exactly going to light the world on fire, but it was encouraging, especially when you consider how efficient he was early in the game. IPK threw first pitch strikes to 18 of the 27 batters he faced, and through 5 inning had throw only 71 pitches.
Generally, I like to see starters average 15 pitches per inning or less, since that will get them through 6+ if you assume a cap of 100 pitches per start, which is prudent with a young guy like Kennedy. So to be at 14.2 was pretty good.
His efficiency broke down in the 6th, when he needed 21 pitches to get through the inning, however, he did pitch around two hits and walk without surrendering a run. Luck probably played into that, but luck plays into everything in baseball so I won’t hold that against him.
The bullpen which so far has been a bright spot really came unglued in the 7th, giving up 3 homers. I’ve been cautiously eyeing a seat on the Billy Traber bandwagon, but no more outings like last night, k?
Posted by schteeve
