Now, here's his pitch flight path from his two relief outings thus far:
In eyeballing the graphs, his fastball seems to have some more arm-side run and his slider's been getting more sink. Billfer's raw numbers he posted back this up, as well.And now for enough graphy goodness to last you through the night, first, his average release points in relief:
Pretty close cluster together. Consistent release points are a good thing.Here's how his release points look on all 36 pitches in September from Bondo:
Re-confirming the tight cluster of release points.Here's the strikezone plot:
This is from the catcher's point of view (as all the release points are, as well), so he's really working inside to the left side of the plate a.k.a. to right-handed batters. Speaking of that, here's how he's worked right and left-handed hitters:
The number inside of each slice of the pie graphs is the actual number. I forgot to include the percentage for the total pitch selection, but thus far he's gone with 72% fastballs, 28% sliders. Also, I did not correct for varying park factors that could be coming into play. PITCHf/x in different parks is not created equal, unfortunately. So, things can be skewed due to multiple parks we're pulling this data from. All other caveats apply.Like Bill said, small sample alarms are sounding pretty loud. Let's not read too much into this, but given how flat and non-sinking his pitches seemed to be in his start against the White Sox back in June, it's nice to see him making some improvements and hopefully build upon the great 19 starts he had in the beginning of 2007.
I plan to have a similar post on Nate Robertson in the next couple of days. At least, that's the tentative plan.
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Mike,
ReplyDeleteYou do an amazing job of breaking down Bondo with all of your facts, figures, and graphs, but the bottom line on him is this, he'll never be the dominant top of the rotation pitcher many people had envisioned. He doesn't have the required assortment of pitches, the ability to control them, and he's just too damn fragile, both mentally and physically. If I were DD, I'd give serious consideration to trading him this off season. The Tigers have other good prospects in the pipeline who can replace him. In trading him, you're not going to get the quality in return that you would have a couple of seasons ago, but it's time for the team to realize his limitations and show him the door.
Robert, I'm not entirely ready to write him off. I'd like to see where he is at velocity-wise at the start of next year. If he's back to his normal 93-94, then I like his chances of rebounding. If he's not (and I think this is the most likely option) then he definitely is a 4/5 starter. That said, those types do have value.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm not opposed to trading Bondo, I'm not sure now is the time to do it. Why not hang on to him if you're going to get little to nothing in return if you make a deal?