Jeremy Bonderman: The Struggles Revisited

In my last post, I discussed Jeremy Bonderman and what percentages, on average, he's throwing his fastball, slider, and change up as well as how it compared to his 2007 campaign.

Well, I fully intended to use the Gameday and PITCHf/x data from his start on May 16th in Arizona where he looked good -- Jeremy Bonderman Circa this time last year good. Bonderman had some control problems in the game but finished with a line of: 6.0 innings, 3 hits, 3 earned runs, 5 strikeouts, 4 walks, and 1 homer allowed. However, the start was marred by some defensive lapses (2 foul balls that dropped and an error) which led, ultimately, to his undoing.

Well, as Billfer noted, the data for that game is not available as what was probably worse than the Tigers corner infielders not catching foul pops was the umping by the ump the players voted the worst in the major leagues not once, but twice (yeah, link stealing from Bill ... so wrong. But his linkage database is the cause for much envy around the internet, I swear it!), CB Bucknor.

Anyways, conspiracy theories about how CB Bucknor sneaked into every clubhouse in the major leagues to steal all the good bats that are leading to the Baseball Commish looking into their breakage-rates, as well as, causing runs to be down significantly from the past few years, or how he's a socialist leading the Socialist Red Wings to the Stanley cup are still unfounded and, therefore, set aside, I looked at Bonderman's start on May 22nd against the fledgling Seattle Mariners.

But, before we get to that . . .

If you recall the player card for Jeremy Bonderman at the time of my last post had his percentages looking like this:
67.87% Fastballs
19.39% Sliders
12.72% Change ups

Well, his player card has updated info and now his percentages are sitting at:

65.63% Fastballs
18.35% Sliders
16.02% Change ups

How does his start against the M's on the 22nd compare? Well, here's what I gathered:

The first hitter batter Bonderman faced didn't register results, so I have just 87 of Bonderman's 90 pitch evening. The results, shook down, as such:

61 fastballs
23 sliders
3 change ups

So, with the available data, he was, percentage-wise, like this (divided by 87, not 90 since I don't know what the other 3 pitches were and I want to be accurate here):

70.1% Fastballs
26.4% Sliders
3.4% change ups

He used both his fastball and slider more than what his percentages from my last post and from what his updated player card show them being. Maybe he didn't have the feel for the change up at all? Maybe he felt he is feeling the frustration of mixed results at best this year and is reverting back to what he feels comfortable with? Maybe I'm just making up reasons to speculate because I honestly have no idea what a one game sample can tell us. Without the data from that game in Arizona, it's hard to be certain but he did look to be throwing more 4-seamers against the D-Backs as well as a lot of late, sharp breaking sliders.

However, his start against the M's, Bondo was topping out at 91 and working in the 88-91 range all game long and 82-83 with the slider with one hitting 80 and being classified as a curveball and a couple hitting 84 on the gun. His change was consistently in the mid-80's which may be acting more like a batting practice fastball than an actual change up.

This is obviously a small data sample to be working with (just the 1 game; damn you and your evil ways CB Bucknor, damn you!), but it's something worth following up on regularly -- especially if the results keep steering from the norms he's set control wise in the past.