Alfredo Figaro Demoted

So, Alfredo Figaro has one bad start and gets sent down. Dontrelle Willis makes 15 before he gets shelved and even then it's only to the DL. Ahh, the joys of terrible contracts that were terrible from the get-go, as well as, playing the odds as Bill points out: we face the Twins soon and they're stacked with left-handed bats, so the left-handed Luke French will be taking Figaro's spot. And, kudos to Kurt who had that before it even happened. But, I digress. My real point in this is to look at Figaro's two starts. I already took a peak at his debut last week, but wanted to see if there was anything discernably different from his debut to his start against the Houston Astros. Plus, I just enjoy toying around with the pitch flight path graphs that Harry Pavlidis graciously gave us.

Before we get to the comparisons, do know that making claims using pitchf/x data from two different ballparks while not accounting for differences in calibration and the system in general, is fools gold. So, these are not to be taken as gospel and should come with a hefty dose of salt as comparing his start in Detroit to his start in Houston is just not a good idea.

But I'm going to do it anyways. As always, click charts to enlarge.

Maybe Jim Leyland's quote wasn't too offbase:

"He didn't throw the ball. Some pitches were 89 m.p.h. I was very disappointed because I thought the one thing he would be was aggressive, and he was totally un-aggressive. ... He pitched like he was looking at the names on the hitters' backs (i.e., showing them too much respect). ... He got after them a little better after the horse was out of the barn."

You can see the near 3 MPH drop on the heater from his two starts. That, my friends, doesn't get affected much (to my knowledge) by the ballpark calibrations. His fastball in Houston seemed to have more tail and a bit less, or the same, amount of downward action. But, that just might be a difference in the camera's calibrations from Comerica Park's cameras. He was more 89-92 in his second start, rather than the 92-95 in his debut -- I'm guessing adreneline helps a lot. He threw 61 in his debut and 67 in his second start.

The curveball seemed to remain consistent. His velocity didn't stray much between the two starts, and had similar, if not equal, downward movement. He did seem to get a tick more sweeping action (left-to-right break if you're looking from the catcher's view) in his second start as opposed to his debut. He threw 28 in his debut and 23 in his start in Houston


His change-up is the hardest to really look at -- he's thrown just 15 combined in his two starts (7 in his debut, 8 in his second start). His second start had a lower release point (1st base view) and the same arm slot (bird's eye view). He seemed to get more tailing action and since he didn't have a big hump in the change-up like he did in his debut, I like the look of it better. Again, his velocity didn't stray that much -- his fastball and change-up velocity differential was about the same in both of his starts.

Let's look at his fastball-change-up from his second start:


Here, we see his heater had more tail on Friday in Houston then his change-up did. However, coming from just at tick above his fastball's release point, his change-up had a great amount of dive. Compared to the graph from my previous post on his debut (seen here), his change-up in Houston had so much diving action, that it might've been too much. It could've been an easy pick up for the batter and was very easy for them to lay off of it. 3 of the 8 he threw on Friday were balls, 3 were in play for outs, and 1 was a called strike. Conversely, in his debut, he threw 7 total change-ups. 3 were called balls, 2 were in play for outs, 1 was fouled away and 1 was a called strike.

Conclusion

Well, I'm not sure that there are many conclusions. The first thing to keep in mind is that this is very limited data, a very crude look at his stuff, and we're using pitchf/x data from two different parks and since we only have two samples, that's not a good thing. So, this is not gospel and the conclusions that are drawn from this are murky at best.

That said, Leyland was right in that Figaro's heater was lacking pop on the radar gun, but it seemed to have some more arm-side movement while having less sink. I'd prefer to give up horizontal movement in favor of more sink. Movement of any kind helps to keep the batter from squaring up the ball, but I would assume (and maybe that's a bad assumption) that sinking action's more likely than tailing action to enduce a ground ball. I like ground balls. They don't become home runs. Aside from that, his change-up's pitch flight seemed better and his curve seemed the same, more or less.

It's too early to write him off, but I don't think I was off-base in my comments calling Figaro a potential middle-of-the-rotation arm.