We were all hoping to see a marked improvement in Daisuke Matsuzaka on Tuesday night. While we saw some encouraging signs, and his start resulted in a favorable outcome, he ended his night with 3 walks through 6+ innings-- still an unacceptable number of walks in that span.
So with today's promising start, let's examine the Pitch F/x of both games and see if we can glean any improvements or changes in his repertoire in comparison to his previous struggles.
To begin, lets look at his velocity and movement numbers from his start versus the Atlanta Braves on 6/19/09. He only lasted 4 innings and walked 4 before going on the DL.
Avg Speed Max Speed Avg H-Break Avg V-Break Number Strike %
Four Seam 91.7 93.3 -7.72 9.17 26 61%
Changeup 83.2 84.3 -10.9 5.9 6 66.70%
Slider 82.2 84.3 4.3 1.84 14 50%
Curveball 81.4 82.2 3.57 -2.13 3 0%
Cutter 90.2 91 -1.59 7.13 15 66.70%
Two Seam 91 91.1 -9.47 7.33 3 66.70%
Now, how does this same breakdown of his pitches look from Tuesday night?
Avg Speed Max Speed Avg H-Break Avg V-Break Number Strike %
Four Seam 91.4 93.6 -7.10 9.75 55 60%
Changeup 82.2 83.8 -11.64 4.82 5 20%
Slider 83.9 89.4 3.1 2.09 13 38%
Curveball 80.8 81.2 5.00 -1.81 2 50%
Cutter 88.5 91.2 -0.70 6.27 13 69%
Two Seam 91 92 -8.67 7.28 4 75%
His speeds all look the same and there isn't much change in his movement numbers. However, you can see a considerable difference in the number of four seam fastballs he threw. While his actual numbers of changeups, sliders, curves, cutters and two seamers all stayed the same, he threw an extra 29 fastballs. His rate of 4 seam fastballs rose from 39% on 6/19 to 60% on Tuesday night.
Matsuzaka started again yesterday against the Baltimore Orioles and while he gave up three runs, his control numbers looked great. He struck out 5 hitters and only gave up one walk. Regardless of the amount of actual runs that crossed the plate, that control improvement is a huge boon for future success.
Now let's see if he reverted to any bad habits, or if we see something else that is different form that 6/19 start:
Avg Speed Max Speed Avg H-Break Avg V-Break Number Strike %
Four Seam 91.1 93.3 -5.12 8.86 50 66%
Changeup 82.4 87.8 -7.25 4.32 12 58%
Slider 84.5 89.2 4.6 2.16 33 69%
Curveball 78.4 80.3 12.22 -4.36 3 100%
Cutter 88.7 90.8 -0.37 6.75 11 63%
Two Seam 91.3 91.3 -3.01 7.83 1 0%
His number of fastballs is down again--merely 45%, but the use of his slider skyrocketed. He was hitting the zone with all his pitches and his strike percentage for sliders was the best we've seen in a long time.
One curiously interesting discrepency was his horizontal movement. While his Tuesday start had very similar movement when compared to his pre-DL start, his fastball and changeup from Sunday did not break as far away from right handers as before. (For now, we'll ignore any examination of his curves and two seamers, due to a small sample size).
Did Matsuzaka make adjustments to start getting more pitches over the plate? While the changes we see in his four seam fastball and changeup seem considerable enough to be noted, there was no similar change to those pitches' vertical movement. This could suggest he's trying to use these two pitches to establish more called strikes in a larger part of the strike zone, rather than using them to get swinging strikes on the edges.
It would behoove us to wait one more start and then, if the horizontal movement change persists, see where these specific pitches are crossing the plate. A trend that shows them closer to the middle of the zone, rather than clustered around the outside of the corner opposite to a right handed batter could begin to give us some proof of a change in control and/or tactics.
I'm not ready to call him fixed yet, but perhaps the Sox finally impressed upon him what he needs to do to win--stay ahead in the count and control your walks. If so, we could finally see the Matsuzaka we had hoped for based off his excellent NBL career.
Unfortunately, the media will probably still leverage this as the fault of the World Baseball Classic, since that's easier than actually taking the time to examine his body of work.