Frankie, Cracked

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Nice in-depth look by BP contributor Will Woods here at Frankie's pitch sequencing during the Cuzzi game endgame. (Should be subtitled, "Living without a Fastball.")

[Zvon]

Long read but well worth it.
Fascinating article.

[smg58]

But if Whiteside doesn't know how to read pitchers when he's batting, how does he survive as a catcher?

[metirish]

Great read , I thought Woods did a good job of setting the stage and talking us through K-Rod's outing that day. I was feeling a little pumped actually.

Is Whiteside the goat here or is Frankie that smart a pitcher?, if he is that smart then I don't think I have been giving him the credit he might deserve , 'cos he never seems to have a fastball.


Thanks for the link.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Woods spins a nice yarn (and adds a neat bit of insight about pitch sequencing at the highest level he's achieved in competitive baseball):

Randomness in pitch sequencing isn�t so highly valued at every level of baseball. At the Division III college level, where I was a backup catcher for three years at Tufts we had a much different set of rules, which is to say that we had rules in the first place. The only thing D-III pitchers share with big-leaguers is the general axiom that if they execute their pitches just the way they want to, the batter has no chance, but at that lower level of play, pitchers are just trying to pitch to their own strengths, rather than keep the hitter guessing. With that in mind, we had great success calling pitches based mostly on the batter�s reaction to the previous pitch. Jackknifed on inside heat? Get-me-over curve. Fights off a fastball away? Smoke him inside. Ahead on the changeup? Slow him up even more with a curve. Ripped an inside fastball foul? Inside changeup (now there�s a pitch call you�ll hardly ever see in The Show). With a little variation, the pitches would essentially call themselves, and no one at that level had the means to discern a pattern; we were just trying to throw the pitch for which the batter might be least physically prepared. We weren�t outguessing them.

I know the handspeed and athletic ability among MLB hitters are leaps and bounds beyond those of Bowdoin and Oberlin hitters, but I think there's still something usable here for the major-league battery.

And I remember thinking the same damn things as Woods surmises the Giants thought during Sandoval and Uribe's at-bats. (I mean, I get that relievers probably don't do as much oppo research as their starting comrades, but... that many fastballs to a guy like Uribe?)

As to who gets credit/blame? K-Rod threw some nice, but hittable pitches (I do remember that at-bat, all the more clearly for the article's prompting). They're definitely Whiteside's horns to wear.