Justin Verlander: 2008 vs. 2009

Justin Verlander was the other Tigers starter I was most interested in comparing 2008 pitch flights to his 2009 pitch flights. Again, thanks to Harry Pavlidis, I can now do this.

The Stats

In 2008, Justin Verlander posted an FIP of 4.18 last year which is better than the 4.84 ERA he carried last year. So, his peripherals weren't as bad as they appeared to be, however, they weren't stellar. He faced 880 batters in 2008 striking out 18.53%, while walking 9.89%. That is nothing impressive, yet isn't completely abysmal. Edwin Jackson's getting mad love (even from me) around the Tigers blog-o-sphere and he's striking out 19.45% and walking 6.14% this year, coming into his dominating start against the Angels today (see: previous post).

Thus far, Justin Verlander has faced 317 batters and has K'd 97 (30.60%) while walking 24 (7.57%). So he's really righted the ship, as his 2.35 FIP suggests.

One knock statistically is that his ground ball percentage has never been good -- topping out at 41.7% in 2006 -- but it's declined this year even more. Only 30.3% of batters are putting the ball on the ground. Now, he's striking out roughly the same amount, but he's been trending downward in the GB% department ever since 2006, and that's not a good sign. One of the things that makes Roy Halladay so valuable is that when he's not striking people out, he's getting them to beat the ball into the turf. A ground ball doesn't become a home run and, more times than not, it becomes just an out -- something that would help Verlander even more given the Tigers improved defense.

The Charts

Here we look at his Pitch Flight charts, starting with his fastball. These are all of his fastballs (2-seam and 4-seam) coded together. I don't think he throws many 2-seamers as it is, so I feel no need to seperate them. Click charts to enlarge.


He seems to be releasing his fastball more from the right side of the rubber if you're looking from the Catcher's view, while also coming from just a touch above his release point from 2008. His 2009 fastball is also tailing to cross the plate at the same point despite starting a substantial amount towards the first base side. Maybe this is just him being on more of the first base side of the rubber, I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd wager that he's coming from a bit more over the top, which allows (to my knowledge) for more tail, and less sink -- something that we see from the chart. For what it's worth, his velocity in 2008 averaged 93.45 MPH and 95.39 thus far in 2009.

Here are Justin Verlander's change-ups. The velocity in 2008 was 83.57 MPH and 83.90 in 2009. So, there's minimal change in the velocity, but this chart corroborates what I thought about the fastball: Verlander's coming from a release point that's more towards the first base side, possibly standing on a different spot on the mound. Whatever he is doing is giving his fastball and change-up more movement. He's starting a few inches inside of his 2008 releast point and the ball is crossing the plate at nearly the same spot, thus, getting more tail on his pitches. He also seems to be getting more sink on his change-up, as well, as it's starting in the same spot and ending lower than his 2008 version.


His curveball doesn't seem to be that different from his 2008 version. I do notice that it seems to have more sweep, as you can see from the bird's eye view. The diving action seems to be the same, but more sweep + same diving action probably has led to more swings and misses in 2009 than what he's had in 2008. His velocities in 2008 were 80.92 MPH and 81.17 MPH in 2009.

Conclusion

There seems to be a lot more changes in Justin Verlander's arsenal then what I found in Edwin Jackson's pitch flight graphs. He's releasing the ball from more towards the first base side, according to the graphs, and getting much more tail on his fastball and change-up while getting more sweep on his curveball. In short, he's getting more movement on his pitches while his fastball has picked back up in his velocity. More movement, plus higher velocity (at least on the fastball, everything else seems consistent to their prior year's velocities) equals a tougher pitch to hit -- or so I'd like to think. I believe that Justin Verlander, despite a Home run per fly ball rate that's likely to nearly double (4.7% this year, his career is 8.1% and last year he was at 7.0%), is much more sustainable then Edwin Jackson's early success this year. At the very least, the difference between Jackson's start to the season and Verlander's is really no contest: JV has been much, much more dominant thus far.