mvn
Posted November 20th, 2009 by mvn
Tags: Atlanta Hawks, Basketball
1%

Balfour’s Fastball Is Adaptive

For most of you internet connected Rays fans, you know that Grant Balfour has lost a little juice on the fastball and had a subpar season compared to his stellar 2008 breakout. The fastball is his best pitch and sometimes his only pitch in certain situations. And it was also the second best fastball for a reliever in the Majors during the 2008 season. One of the main reasons for his success was his ability to get an above average rate of whiffs. The average fastball only whiffs about 5.9%. In 2008, Balfour got an outstanding 11.4%. Then it fell to 8.8%. Why?

As mentioned earlier, Balfour didn’t have quite the same velocity this past season coming from 2008. About one mph less on average depending on what source you use. But instead of looking at averages, looking at the frequency of his fastball velocities might add a little more comparison on his 2008 fastball to his 2009 fastball.

grant balfour fastball freq 08 09

A clear movement to the left by the line graph in 2009 as Balfour quintupled the amount of fastballs thrown at around 93 mph. Of course park factors come into play here as the Trop is known to slow down velocities by a mph or two (although not proven yet), but realistically Balfour’s fastball velocity has decreased on average.

Surprisingly, the whiff rate on the fastball didn’t diminish in all aspects.

grant balfour fastball whiff 08 09

And splitting this same graph up in three separate groups, we see not too much of a decline over last year.

MPH 2008 2009
90-93 1.8% 6.2%
94-96 12.6% 10.9%
97+ 7.2% 4.3%

A hefty increase for the lower velocity group, a moderate decrease in high end velocity group, and a somewhat large decrease in the highest spectrum of the group which is effected the most by small sample size (only 23 in 2009 compared to 97!).

To compare Grant Balfour’s season based on fastball whiffs alone is not enough. Maybe looking at fastball velocities to run value might work or checking out where some of Balfour’s fly balls went. But looking at those last two graphs/tables, it seems that Balfour doesn’t have to rely on high velocity alone and is able to adapt to his slight drop in the power game.

Share/Bookmark

  • Share/Save/Bookmark
  Written by mvn

Related Articles

Balfour’s Fastball Is Adaptive For most of you internet connected Rays fans, you know that Grant Balfour has lost a little juice on the fastball and had a subpar season compared to his stellar 2008 breakout. The fastball is his best pitch and sometimes his only pitch in certain situations. And it was...

Fastball Velocities By The Months Here is a month by month comparison of the Rays pitchers fastballs plus there fastball percentage. The yellow indicates an increase of June velocities from May. Small sample size but I noticed most of the pitchers who threw a fewer percentage of fastballs in June from May, actually either gained...

Grant Balfour Has Been Better Than Suggested Grant Balfour has been scorned a little for his high ERA at 7.00, 5 points higher than last season at 1.58. We at the Rays Party don’t always look at traditional statistics but rather sabermetrics and even pitch f/x if available. Well a couple things to point out that makes...

A Game Of Inches Doesn’t Favor Balfour That seems to be the theme here for the Rays in 2009, losing by inches. The walk Grant Balfour gave up hurt since he allowed a home run after, but the walk didn’t cause the home run. I was surprised Maddon didn’t pull Balfour out in favor of a LOOGY...

Fastball, Fastball, Fastball; Rays Pitchers Mantra An article by Raysbaseball.com beat writer Bill Chastain discusses the mantra of Rays assistant to the pitching coach Brian Anderson of “the fastball is King.” He makes some sense out of an old baseball adage “Everything comes off the fastball,” said Brian Anderson, former Major Leaguer and currently an assistant...

Is Aardsma The New Balfour? I just ran over the box scores yesterday and was surprised to see that David Aardsma had 16 saves this season. That is only five behind the leaders of the Majors. That was not as surprisingly as just figuring that David Aardsma was the closer for the Seattle Mariners! Apparently...

Another straight, effective fastball If you don’t know him already, you should try and learn a thing or two about Mark DiFelice. In a nutshell, he’s a reliever for the Brewers who, after a long career in various levels of the minor leagues, has been mowing down hitters with nothing but an 82-mph fastball....

What To Look For In Kazmir Tonight A change in mechanics to change his old mechanics caused Scott Kazmir to go on the DL last month. An obvious dip in his fastball velocity over the past few seasons with him down to around 89.6 average to 91.7 last season. Fastball velocity isn’t everything. It is however for...

An aging Mariano? Here are two interesting numbers for you: 91.9 and 91.4 91.9 mph is the average velocity of Mariano Rivera’s fastball and 91.4 mph is the average velocity of Mariano’s cutter. These numbers are for this season and are noteworthy as they both signal a significant downturn in Rivera’s overall pitch...

Body Language And Fastball Strikes Hurt Shields In Near Loss (For Him) This isn’t the full game recap, but I wanted to point out what helped James Shields avoid another loss. Normally Shields would typically lose a close game that he would only allow a few runs and get a run or two less in run support. Tonight was the exact opposite...







  • NFL Draft: Excellent review!Very well written write-up. I love to blog but only on good subjects.I also like NFL...
  • Emilyix: Your fantastic story related to this good topic goes parallel with the thesis topic. Thence, you must...
  • KULDEEP SINGH MANKU: super hit…h .yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar…̷ 0;………R...
  • jackson: That’s Marlina Moreno- Charger Girl. Definitely not a key to YOUR preseason.
  • falcons: Lebron James



Sculu Arcade