Tribe and Twins: Rubber Match
April 20, 2008Waiting For Next Year’s Flickr Group
April 20, 2008It’s no secret that one of the biggest concerns with the Cleveland Indians thus far is the ineffectiveness of would-be “ace” C.C. Sabathia. His walk rate is uncharacteristically high, his location has been average-at-best, and he simply has been unable to get batters out.
Thankfully, there are people out there like Josh Kalk who do excellent work studying pitching data, and provide us all with charts like this:
Could Sabathia be worn down? Is there something mechanically wrong? Sabathia says no, and indeed if we look at his PITCHf/x numbers they seem to back that up. His fastball is averaging a tick over 94 mph, almost exactly what it was last year. His slider still has a lot of bite and his changeup is still excellent (he is still exclusively throwing the change to righthanded batters).
If the issue is in fact mechanical, this could be great news for Tribe fans as if it were injury or anything mental, it would be a lot tougher to overcome. Let’s hope that if this is the case, the coaching staff can rectify the issue pronto. Just imagine what opposing team will have to contend with once we toss Sabathia, Carmona and the revitilized Lee at them any given week.
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2 Comments
Nice find Scott. Now we just have to hope the Indians are aware of this problem.
Run it up the flagpole!