FanPost

A look at how our starters tire

So for tomorrow's THT article I wrote about how fatigue effects pitcher's fastballs.  At the risk of scooping myself I wanted to share how the Crew's starters fastball speed declines as they go through the game.  I have left out Sheets as he is an integral part of the THT article so you will just have to wait until tomorrow to see how he fatigues.  All bins are in groups of 10 pitches (so the first bin is 1 to 10 pitches the second 11 to 20 etc) and each bin has been divided by the first bin and multiplied by 100 to get a percent.  This percent is how much more or less that group is than the baseline.  Since most pitchers throw around 90 MPHs a 99% means the pitcher lost nearly 1 MPH compared to the start of the game.  Anyway here goes.

Suppan_medium

via baseball.bornbybits.com

Steady Jeff you always know what you are going to get from him.  After a few pitches to get warm he stays at a pretty constant rate until about 100 pitches.  Notice that he dips in the 30's 60's and 90's and then rebounds in the 40's 70's and maybe 100's.  I wonder if those pitches tend to be thrown to the bottom part of the order and he is conserving his energy for later in the game?

Parra_medium

via baseball.bornbybits.com

Wow Manny is all over the map.  It appears like his best fastballs are right in the beginning but it is hard to tell exactly how quickly it is dropping.  This irregular pattern is very unusual for pitchers and may indicate that Parra doesn't have a lot of control yet as far as adding and subtracting from his fastball.  Whatever the case, by about pitch 90 Parra has lost between 1-2 MPHs off the fastball so having a quick hook with him seems to make sense.

Bush_medium

via baseball.bornbybits.com

Wow Dave just Wow.  Dave's best Fastballs come early and a pretty rapid decline shortly follows.  For a right hander who throws a pretty straight fastball in the low 90's this is not a good sign at all.  I wonder if he really belongs in the bullpen where he could max effort for a short period of time?

Villy_medium

via baseball.bornbybits.com

These are just from Villy's starts and I don't have enough data on McClung or YoGa to make a plot for them.  Carlos seems to be ok until about 50 pitches and then sees a pretty fast decline.  It sure seemed like when he was starting he would get into trouble around the 5th or 6th inning and maybe this loss in speed is why.  The closer his fastball is to his change the worse it is for his change so maybe long reliever/guy who can go multiple innings is the best place for him as well.