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Talk Arrieta here

Tracer Bullet

By Tracer Bullet,
in Chicago Cubs Talk

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David GOAT

David

Old-Timey Member
Posted
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This is North's blog (but this one was written by Doogs from PSD)

 

http://www.cubsrelated.com/2016/04/a-look-at-jake-bot-v2016.html

 

Opening day happened yesterday, and it was glorious! Jake Arrieta was great, the lineup was great, the bullpen was great, we're great! Was there anything to worry about though? Things can look good and still be scary, what if Arrieta's velocity was way down! I saw some fastballs at 93MPH!

 

Spoiler Alert: Jake Arrieta looked amazing. Let's go pitch by pitch and see how everything compared to last year.

 

Changeup

Now to something truly noteworthy: his change up. Arrieta doesn't throw his change up a ton, and last night was no different. He only threw it three times, and last year he only threw it about 4% of the time. Nothing was different about it horizontally, but vertically. Vertically something amazing has happened. The pitch more than DOUBLED its vertical movement from 2015. Last year it had 2.39 inches of drop, but last night it had 5.45.

 

Okay, hold up. This doesn't mean the change up dropped more. What it means is that it dropped less, but that's the significant part. All of his change up, 4seamer, and sinker have backspin. Pitches with more backspin theoretically rise more. And when gravity is accounted for, the pitches with more backspin just drop less. However, this could be to Arrieta's advantage, since his change up had MORE backspin last night and looked similar to his 4seamer (11.3 inches) and sinker (9.4 inches). Batters could have a hard time differentiating amongst these pitches as a result. Be careful not to interpret this as the pitch having more downwards movement because that's not correct. The correct intereprtation is that, wow, he could have another pitch that is hard for batters to pick up.

 

Additionally, because Arrieta's change up had more backspin, the drop will occur closer to home plate. Last night's changeup had the same amount of vertical backspin as Hendricks, and Hendricks has the highest change up whiff rate in MLB. The difference between the two is obviously the velocity. Arrieta's change up, with the same movement, breaks closer to home plate. And because it now breaks closer to home plate, it looks like a fastball or sinker longer to the batter's eye.

 

More at link.

  • 2 weeks later...
Brian MVP

Brian

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted
did you guys see this exchange

 

[tweet]

[/tweet]

 

Some reporter tried to get him to give the 'I thought I'd be out of baseball' answer last night and asked him how he thought he was feeling about 3 years ago around now, but he said he thought he would be pitching like this and I guess he wasn't lying.

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