Mike was one of the PitchFX pioneers, at least from my vantage point. I remember reading the 2007 post he made called "Magnus Papelbonus", which ultimately led me to Alan Nathan (or maybe the order was the other way around). Many of the graphs on my website were shamelessly stolen (always with permission) from seed ideas in his THT column or blog. The Spin x Speed graphs were taken directly from the above article. The site previously featured trajectory plots from the batter's point of view that had a clever coordinate transform to visualize how hitters saw pitches breaking. I now use umpire charts with parameter's from Mike's analysis. There are probably, literally, a dozen different things on the website that would not be here if not for Mike Fast. If I had to retitle my website, it would be FastBaseball.net, with the subtitle "Replotting Every Pitch Using Mike's Clever Ideas, More or Less." What I'm trying to say is, Mike wasn't directly the inspiration for BrooksBaseball, but he was close.

I hope my readers join me by wishing Mike (@fastballs on Twitter) good luck at his new job. At least I have an NL team to cheer for now!

Morrow apparently added a cutter midseason in either July or August (according to a tweet from him). Wondering what y'all know about his repertoire? I see ~60% fastball (four-seam mostly), ~30% slider, ~6% splitter (split-change?), and ~4% spike curve in 2011. I'd have to dig deeper, but wondering what others may have done on him, PITCHf/x-wise.

Got to see him pitch a lot this summer, and sat behind the plate with scouts. They think his slider has really come together. He clearly has the stuff to be a top strikeout pitcher, but goes too deep into counts, and gets hit hard when he does get hit. I also felt his high ERA was more a result of poor outfield defense (flyball pitcher) than allowing hard-hit unfieldable balls, but that is only based on my observations and not on a comprehensive study of the pitcher.

Discussion thread for Michael Pineda, recently acquired SP for the NYY.

Basic Pitch Information:
Fastball - 62.2% / 94.7mph
Slider - 31.5% / 84.1mph
Circle Changeup - 6.3% / 87.6mph
Cutter - ???
Two-Seamer - ???
(source: fangraphs.com)

Representative Pitch Data



Notes
Traded from Mariners to NYY on 01/13/12 for Jesus Montero.

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