You can see all the charts and data Brooks Baseball provides here. I'll go over the ones that are easier to understand (for me, at least) below. For all images, click for a larger version.
This chart gives the speed of each of Samardzija's pitches. As you can probably see, he started off almost exclusively with fastballs to get himself adjusted. Then, he alternated fastballs and breaking pitches (sliders and changeups, according the MLB Gameday) over the rest of the appearance.
He was in the 96-98 MPH range with his fastballs, topping out at 99. His breaking balls were all right around 84 MPH. If he can keep that 10+ MPH difference between his fastball and his changeup, he'll be quite effective.
Next, here is a plot of balls and stikes. The blue points, labeled "X", are balls put in play.
As you can see, Samardzija pounded the zone pretty well for most of the outing. The extreme outlier was a pitchout/wild pitch. This graph is from the catcher's point of view, meaning that that pitch was high and outside to the left-handed batter.
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2 comments Last one added 11 months ago — Leave a Comment
Ricky Butts 11 months ago
Nice article, very interesting.
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Bob Warja 11 months ago
Good stuff. But I think we ought to take a breath before we annoint Jeff as the next great pitcher. As Cubs fans, we tend to overdo things, and I see even Lou really likes him. Don't get me wrong, he looks good - but it's too small of a sample size to derive anything from it.
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