FanPost

West and f/x


Jake Westbrook has now had 5 fairly successful starts as a Cardinal. In those five starts he's had ERAs of 3 vs Houston, 3.86 vs Florida, 4.5 vs San Francisco, and recently a much less impressive 6 vs Pittsburgh. WHIP-wise, Westbrook started out with a very impressive .83 and .86 as a Cardinal. Since then it's been mostly around 1.17 but vs San Fran he walked 2 batters and gave up the most hits since becoming a Cardinal. Also, 31 strikeouts in 5 games has been a nice little bonus... especially since he's also pitched 31 innings (over 6 innings per start). He's induced at least 10 ground balls in each start, 14 vs the Cubs 13 vs Houston.

To conclude, Westbrook's ERA as a Cardinal is 4.07 so far. In the month of August his 3.04 FIP is second only to Wainwright, and his 2.57 xFIP is the best in the rotation (5th in the majors). And Westbrook leads the majors in August in GB/FB ratio... the ultimate 21st century Cardinals pitching holy grail.

I'm not really sure how to look up WAR for his first 5 Cardinal games but I'm sure he's been quite an asset to the team. Especially once the defense behind him is a little more regular (please no more Lopez at shortstop! or at third! or any Aaron Miles). Anyway, I've compiled some pitch f/x on him from http://www.brooksbaseball.net. Other stats and info from fangraphs.com.

First off, his last start which was probably his weakest start yet.

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10 swinging strikes low in the zone.... most of them actually balls. That's good to see he's still fooling hitters. A lot of called strikes in the strike zone as well. Still there are more pitches in spots that seem pretty dangerous than I would like to see! He's pretty much all over the place in this start.

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Vs. the Giants, he also sprayed the strikezone and all around it, getting less swinging strikes down in the zone.

Also vs. the Giants, here's a spin axis vs speed graph:

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Jake tops out at 92mph and can dial it all the way down to 77mph on offspeed pitches.

Here's the same type of pf/x but for his last start vs the Pirates:

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This time he drops all the way down to 76mph on one pitch and is a tad over 92mph it looks like on the top end. Different spin also.

I don't have a whole lot to say about these but I haven't seen a pitch f/x post recently so I'm hoping to get some discussion started about Westbrook and how he seems to be a great fit for the Cardinals pitching style.

Lastly here are two cool looking graphs plotting spin corrected by release point. They look cool heh.

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Lastly, some links to his other starts: Cubs Marlins Astros