He could be throwing it harder tho. It would be interesting to see if he gets called up and makes more starts if there would be a difference or not.

Also with run values, it doesnt take into account that the effectiveness of one pitch may be partially due to another pitch thrown. For instance, you might have a bad slider, but you may need to throw it anyways at times to set up other pitches.

Anything with Niese tho, until he makes more starts at the MLB level should be taken with a grain of salt.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Harry can do to adjust the numbers by park. I mean we could look at Citifield starts only if we wanted to compare one start to another but if Citifield is off for some reason, we still wouldnt be able to compare his movement with everyone else. We really couldnt even compared Niese 2008 to 2009 since Shea and Citi may have differed. I’ll definitely check out your earlier article. I really havent gotten the chance to look at Niese this season yet in terms of pitch fx anyways.

Yep. I love the book blog. I’m the same john lol.

Still 22 pitches is a really really small curveball sample size.

Of course he throws a ton more four seamers (something like a 5-1 ratio of 4 seam to 2 seamers this year), which means he might be throwing much harder on the two seamers rather than the four seamers, where he maybe conserving energy.

It’s something to look at in future data.

As such, run values in this small a sample (especially on the curveball and two seamer) are probably not a good sign of effectiveness for the future, just for that one start.

To answer your questions, there’s really no evidence of a “cut fastball” last year or this year….if he was using such a pitch, then he wasn’t actually using any other type of fastball this year or last (making it kind of pointless).

Sidenote: I mean, the Horizontal movement’s difference between his four seamer and two seamer this year is so much that if he threw each pitch equally as much the four seamer would focus as a cutter. But he primarily throws the four seamer here.

I’m aware of the handful of starts and the park effects on pitchfx (Harry Pavladis is working on that and i’m looking forward to seeing his results), but I’ve compared Niese’s fastballs per start, where the effects should be less. See my earlier article on niese this year, he’s clearly changed his two seamer at the least (It’s possible the four seam improvement is an illusion due to park effects) as it was no where as distinct last year.

LASTLY: Are you the John who hangs out around tom tango’s website as well?

This extra drop is a positive development that Niese didn’t have last year…whereas last year he had a middle of the line fastball that didn’t “rise” or “drop”, this year he has a “rising” four seamer and “dropping” two seamer.

Given the 2008 data, you can see where some people, namely me, would be on about a straight fastball. Given the sample sizes, if this gets the benefit of the doubt as to not being an abberation, the question has to be “what’s he doing differently this year,” in terms of the 4 seamer itself more than his pitch mix, or “what’s he sometimes doing wrong that makes his fastball sometimes go from average to dead fish?”

The data makes it look like he has a chance to be effective mixing his 3 (counting the cut) fastballs, which bodes well.

Another question is, what’s the average differential between 2 and 4 seamers going to be? If any… looking at the two starts you can see a few pitches logged as 2 seamers clocked at 90, which seem high for a guy barely averaging that on his 4 seamer.