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

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