When Greg Maddux said "chicks dig the long ball," I don't think this is what he had in mind.  As mentioned in Saturday's game recap, Bronson Arroyo gave up home run no. 40 in a classic Bad-royo outing, allowing 3 taters in one-plus innings of "work" at Coors Field.  He became just the 19th pitcher to allow 40 long balls and the first since Eric Milton in 2005.  Sort of like losing 20 games, allowing 40 home runs is a perverse badge of honor in that a truly terrible pitcher would never be given the opportunity to face so many batters.   The 40 HR club is a distinguished fraternity - four HOFers plus seven other former All-Stars make up the list, and the performances in general are not disastrous.   

Arroyo's 2011 is not typical for the 40 HR year, unfortunately.  Whereas half of the 22 prior 40 HR seasons had an ERA+ above average, Arroyo's 74 is the second-worst, ahead of only Milton's monstrosity.  Arroyo also sets himself apart from the pack in throwing just 175.7 innings to date, the lowest by at least ten innings.

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After a long intermission, today I'd like to continue the Scouting Reds Pitchers series (at least for today!) and take a look at the Reds' closer, Francisco Cordero.  

So far this season, Cordero has a 1.77 ERA and is 8 of 9 in save situations.  And he's currently sporting a best-since-2007 walk rate of 2.66 bb/9, and is allowing a career-best 55% ground balls.  He's had a great start.  But I continue to be worried about him.  The main reason is his strikeout rate, which has declined from ~10 k/9 from 2003-2008 down to 7.9 in 2009, 7.3 in 2008, and just 5.8 k/9 this year.  His 2011 numbers are also deflated by a very lucky .207 BABIP.  His FIP is 3.94, which is right about where it was last year (fewer k's and bb's, more hr's).

Cordero is in the final guaranteed year of his contract with the Reds, as the Reds hold a $1 M buyout of his $12 club option.  I'd be surprised to see them pick up that option; I've long been of the opinion that the Reds will be lucky to have Cordero survive in the closer role through the life of the guaranteed portion of the contract.  But let's take a look at what he's doing.

Pitches

Below is a plot showing his pitches in 2010, as well as one for 2011.

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Finally, we turn our attention to Mike Leake.  Leake was in the conversation for rookie of the year with his brilliant first half last season, but as the summer went on he seemed to lose steam.  Ultimately, he was shut down for the final month of the season.  He enters spring training as the most likely of the six contenders to start in AAA, but is by no means out of the picture yet. 

Pitches

Leake basically has five pitches, with an occasional four-seamer tossed in for good measure.  On the left side of the plot, you see his sinker, which is his most-used pitch and is a good one (see below).  He also has a change-up.  You can see that the two pitches have almost the exact same break--even considering the extra drop due to the slower speed of the change-up.  I have to think they are very difficult to tell apart.

Across the top of the plot you see his cutters, and then over to his sliders (which seem to include a number of pitches misclassified as curve-balls) and his curve ball.  You do see a small number of four-seam fastballs in his plot, which Leake seems to mix in on occasion.

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The last pitcher that I think will make the rotation is Travis Wood.  The big surprise last spring was that Wood lost the competition for the #5 spot in the rotation to Mike Leake.  But he did what he could do: went down to Louisville, pitched very well, and then pitched superbly when he was called up mid-season.  Let's see what he throws:

Pitches

Why doesn't MLBAM's pitch algorithm just work?  I know it's a difficult task, but this is pretty bad: there are numerous, obvious problems in the classification of pitches once again.

Let's start at the bottom-left and move up.  At the very bottom you see his curveballs.  At least some of them are a spiked curve as opposed to the traditional grip, based on the photo here.

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Just a few years ago, Homer Bailey was the #2 pitching prospect in baseball.  He threw breathtaking heat and had a killer curve ball--or so scouts raved.  But after making his debut in 2007, Homer is still fighting for a rotation spot entering the 2011 season.  There's reason for optimism: his peripherals showed tremendous improvements last season, and he's still doesn't turn 25 until May.  He is out of option years, so he has a leg up on Travis Wood and Mike Leake in terms of making the 25 man roster...my guess is that he debuts in the rotation.  So let's look at what he throws and when he throws it.

Pitches

Bailey throws more pitches than I realized, which makes him more interesting to try to tease apart than anticipated.  He throws a two-seam and four-seam fastball (though he seems to prefer the four-seamer).  He also throws a slider (which you probably knew, but I didn't), as well as that curveball.  One interesting thing I found (well...I found the picture, Mike Fast helped me ID the pitch) is that he at least occasionally throws a spiked curveball, even if he usually uses a more traditional grip.

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With some trepidation, today we'll look at Bronson Arroyo.  I'm scared, because Bronson's far less traditional than other pitchers.  He throws a ton of pitches, varies his arm angle, pitches backwards, etc.  I don't know if I'm up to the task of "scouting" him.  But I'll try!

Pitches

Arroyo throws everything except the kitchen sink.  He's definitely the kind of pitcher who will push MLB advanced media's pitch ID algorithms to their limits.  But let's walk through this.

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Today we turn our attention to Johnny Cueto.  Cueto had a big year last year, and at least in terms of his ERA seemed to take a step forward in his development (though his peripherals might disagree...).  But today, I'm not here to tell you how good he--I'm trying to describe how he goes about being however good he is!  Let's look at his pitches.

Pitches

As Mike Fast pointed out in my last piece on Cueto, MLBAM was consistently not classifying Cueto's cutters correctly.  They are right in the middle of the plot, and I've outlined them in the graphs.  It looks like most of the cutters are misidentified as sliders, though some may also be mistakenly labeled as change-ups.  This means that the stuff below on pitch selection, etc, is going to be screwy, as I don't have the facilities to correctly classify those pitches and get the data.

In any case, beyond a cutter, Cueto also throws two-seam and four-seam fastballs, a change-up, and a slider.  The slider looks a bit "low" in the graph, but that's because I'm showing the gravity one--helps make his change-up pop out more.  It's a normal looking slider.

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I ordered mlb.tv this year, which means that for the first time since 1996, I will have the access to watch (by my wife's reckoning) an absurd number of Reds games.  One of the things I'd like to do with that subscription is to learn a bit more about pitchers and pitches.  So, I thought it would be fun to do a small "scouting" breakdown series on important Reds pitchers, based on pitchf/x information (all garnered from TexasLeaguers and Joe Lefkowitz's PitchF/X Tool, which are wonderful resources).

Today, I'll begin with the Opening Day starter, Edinson Volquez.  I'm going to focus on starts from September/October 2011 for graphs to reduce the "clusterfudge of dots" issue, but will go with full-year stats to describe pitch outcomes.  

Also, one quick note... I highly recommend reading John Walsh's pitch identification tutorial for help interpreting and understanding the graphs below.  It's old, but still one of the best ways to get up to speed.  It's worth the time.  If you haven't already gotten into it, pitchf/x can open a whole new world when it comes to understanding pitchers.

Edinson Volquez

Pitches

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