Did Nick Blackburn subtract a pitch?

Nick Blackburn’s triumphant return to the mound on Tuesday night was punctuated with a high percentage of groundballs, a downright retro-performance by his standards while lasting the duration of the ballgame. Earlier in the week, Blackburn was in vintage lawnmower form: Of the Tigers’ 33 balls that were put into play, he coaxed 21 of those to remain on the ground. This was a terrific sign for a pitcher who had opponents launching an all-out aerial assault in the prior month, tagging him for six home runs and a hefty .653 slugging percentage.

Sticking mostly with his two-seam fastball with sink action, Blackburn tested the integrity of Target Field’s sod all night long. Assisted by an infield slowed by rain, 19 of the 21 waterlogged grounders were converted to outs. Despite working through the lineup proficiently and using only 94 pitches, Blackburn was seemingly flirting with disaster right up until J.J. Hardy’s game-saving defensive decision as 11 other batted balls became hits.

After the game, Blackburn told LaVelle E Neal that he “threw just a handful of sliders because his slider wasn’t very sharp.” Not only was the slider apparently lacking bite on Tuesday, but it has been missing all season. According to the pitch f/x mapping over the past two years, there is a pitch that is noticeably absent in his repertoire:

What these two charts indicate is that Blackburn is no longer throwing his slider. As a pitcher that relies heavily on movement and command, losing one bullet in his arsenal is potentially problematic. In 2009, Blackburn was in the bottom five in the categories of Swinging Strikes, Contact Rate and Balls in Play. This season, Blackburn is the lowest among all qualified starters across the board:

Blackburn’s pitch results	Swing Strike%	Contact%	Balls in Play%
Average	14%	80%	30%
2009	9%	87%	37%
2010	4%	94%	43%

via Baseball-Reference.com

The natural assumption is that the decline in these marks is a direct correlation to his discarded slider. And that would be fairly accurate. In 2009, Blackburn’s slider - with a 10% whiff rate - was his pitch most likely to receive a swing-and-miss. This season he has been filling this void with more hittable fastballs and changeups thus the higher contact totals.

Blackburn has always been the socialist pitcher who regularly redistributes the outs to his fellow defenders yet his strikeouts per 9 innings has fallen from the concerning 4.29 in ’09 to a spit-takingly low 2.48 in ’10. Although he is not anything remotely similar to a strikeout pitcher (a career 4.4 K/9 coming into this season), Blackburn still needs to maintain some level of respectability in this department. More balls put between the chalk lines also creates more opportunities for hits, which is a nasty precursor for runs. Reestablishing his slider could help elevate his strikeout total and reduce the amount of balls in play.

Span's hand placement.

On Friday, I documented Denard Span’s obnoxiously large groundball rate that has skewed from his typical career marks. After hitting under 54% of his batted balls as grounders in his first two seasons at the major league level, Span has seen this rate jump up to over 60%. What’s more is that the increase in worm-burners has come at the expense of his line drives - that figured has dropped from 26% in ’08 to a league-average 19% rate in ’09 to a new low of 15.1%. The consequence of the displacement of liners is a .242 batting average heading into Monday’s game, thanks to a heavily depressed BABIP of .267.

 

This is a curious trend as the majority of Span’s peripheral numbers have remained intact. He is not chasing more pitches out of the zone or making less contact in general. In fact, his zone discipline may be the best since his arrival with the Twins as he has coaxed a walk in 15.6% of his plate appearances by chasing just 16.3% of pitches out of the strike zone. Similarly, pitchers are throwing him the same mix of pitches that he has faced in the previous two seasons with a healthy emphasis on fastballs, so it is not as if he is getting an influx of breaking balls.  

 

Because of this radical decline in his liners and inflation in the grounders, I went back to the MLB.com video archives to see if there is anything different about his swing. Admittedly, Span’s effortless mechanics and lightning quick wrists leave little to be diagnosed. Whereas Delmon Young and JJ Hardy were virtual trainwrecks and had shortcomings that were easy to spot, Span has very minimal amount of moving parts. His entire mechanics are a simple shift of his hips before breaking his hands at the ball.

 

After staring at several dozen clips of his swings from the past three years, one thing began to jump out that differed this year from 2008-2009 that might explain why Span is having difficulty elevating the ball: Hand positioning. In his first two years, Span kept his hands away from his body, slightly extended and out over the plate. His bottom hand was basically at the same height as his lead shoulder. This season he has brought his hands in closer to his body, tucking his elbow in more and moving his front forearm closer to his chest – a slight yet noticeable variation. Though this may seem like a particularly minor flaw, it can still effect a player’s swing immensely. In Span’s case, it appears to be inciting more bouncers as he is hitting the top part of the baseball because of a downward motion caused by the new hand placement. 

 

To highlight this, below are two images both from Kaufman Stadium in Kansas City (one from ’09 and one from this season) to ensure that the camera angles are as similar as possible. While these are two isolated clips, I can say that this was a trend repeated over and over in the last two seasons. The first picture is from last season (2009):

 

Above we find that Span's lead arm angle is near 90 degrees. The following image from 2010 shows a slight change in his arm bend: 

 

Here's a look at his wrist action as he begins to offer at the pitch:

 

The clip on the left (from 2009) demonstrates how he was able to keep his swing level and drive at the middle part of the ball with this hand location. It is just a simple turn of his hands and he maintains a very consistent plane, one almost parallel to the ground with his right arm extension. In the clip on the right (2010), Span's has a fraction of a fraction of an second longer to go to the point of contact since his hands are closer to his body. Even though he has very quick hands, this new placement could potentially be the cause of the added ground balls as he appears to be hitting the top-half of the baseball more often as his front arm drives downward instead of extending across. 

The interesting aspect here is if this alteration was encouraged by the coaching staff, like hitting coach Joe Vavra and Michael Cuddyer worked on, or if Span himself felt more comfortable with this positioning. In Cuddyer's case, the Twins felt that he could generate more power if he dropped his hands down. So far, that approach has paid dividends for the right fielder (4 HR, .178 ISOP) who has been a historically slow starter. Span, on the other hand, did seem to need much in the way of tinkering. After all, he has hit .305/.390/.422 for his career coming into this season.

It should be reiterated that he has a solid foundation. His plate discipline, wrist action and ability to make contact along with his speed will ensure that he will put up respectable numbers even if he hits a higher than normal amount of grounders. Post-April, Span has gone 7-for-14 with two extra base hits and a 38.5% line drive rate in those past three games. This could be the signs of him either adjusting (moving his hands again) or acclimating to his new approach (knowing which pitch he can drive). As the summer progresses, keep an eye on this stance as well as his ground ball rate. 

Liriano's rubber shifting

In the bottom of the third inning of Sunday's game against the Indians, Fox Sports North commentator and former All Star pitcher Bert Blyleven appeared mystified by what he thought was a new finding: Francisco Liriano was switching his location on the rubber contingent on whether the hitter was left- or right-handed.

During Shin Soo Choo’s at-bat, Blyleven released this nugget: “To be honest with you,” Blyleven confided with the viewers in the third, “I’ve never seen Liriano going to that first base side of the pitching rubber. He’s usually on the third base side…maybe he’s shifting with left-handers and right-handers…we’ll keep an eye on that.”

Following Choo was the right-handed hitting Austin Kearns. Blyleven then noted that “now Liriano, with a right-hander up, you see he’s moving on the pitching rubber…”

“How about that?” Interjected Dick Bremer.

“…over to the third base side.” Blyleven allowed a pitch to pass then added, “You don’t see that too often where a pitcher will move one side [of the rubber] to the other.”

In the ensuing bottom half of the fourth the broadcast threw up a split-screen graphic depicting Liriano’s approach to the left and right-side of the lineup. This was followed by Blyleven’s admission “I didn’t notice that in the other starts for Liriano…maybe it’s something he and Rick Anderson, the pitching coach, have been working on.”

Congratulations. Blyleven may have stumbled upon a discovery that has been an occurrence for the southpaw since '08. According to pitch F/X charts, Liriano has used this approach dating back to his return from Tommy John surgery:

In ’08, Liriano’s release points varied from slight over a half-foot to two-and-a-half feet to lefties but ranged from dead-center to slightly under two-feet to righties. Meanwhile, in this past season, there was stronger visual evidence of this shift:

Last year, Liriano worked the lefties from well-over the half-foot mark to almost three feet away from the middle of the plate. This shows more of a movement down the rubber towards the first base side in the event of left-handed foes. Likewise, his approach to righties were the same as his '08 year -- in spite of some very unfavorable results. Essentially, he kept his positioning static on the third base side and had a release point between dead-center and two-feet to the left of the plate. Here is video evidence of Liriano working to lefties on the first base side then to righties on the third base side in ’09.

As pitch F/X shows in 2010, all of his release points to lefties have been at a foot-and-a-half to two-and-a-half feet to lefties. Instead of working from the middle of the rubber like he had in the past to some lefties, he is consistently staying at the first base side. This has worked extremely well for Liriano as lefties were hitting 2-for-23 (.087) against him in his four starts heading into Sunday’s game. 

 

So for the past two seasons (possibly longer if we could find reliable '06 data or video), Liriano has transitioned up and down the rubber. This is hardly a new development and definitely not something Anderson and him have concocted this season. Still, in Blyleven's defense, while Liriano at times worked lefties from the middle of the rubber in the previous two seasons, this year he has remained consistently on the far left-hand side of the rubber. 

This emphasis may have made him that much more unhittable to same-sided batters as Liriano's ground ball rate has skyrocketed in this young season comparative the the past two:

Liriano vs LHB:	GB%	OPS
2008	56.6	.637
2009	53.3	.637
2010	70.0	.233

Despite what Blyleven would levy on air, Liriano has been moving up and down the rubber regularly since ’08. What is different in 2010 is that he appears to be moving to the first base side against ALL lefties and has avoided pitching from the middle as he did in the previous two seasons, which is working extremely well for him so far.

Denard Span has been grounded

Minnesotans have quickly grown fond of Target Field. You can include Florida-transplant Denard Span in that category as well.

 

While at the new stadium, the Twins center fielder has amassed a .367/.537/.467 batting line in just 41 plate appearances while hitting a home-sickly .154/.237/.212 in 61 plate appearances away from Target Field. After Span opened the year with a 4-for-28 (.142) start in Anaheim and Chicago, his road split was even further exacerbated on the most recent tour of the country as the leadoff man has once again gone 4-for-28 (.142) since the Cleveland series at home concluded.

 

Without question, Span’s absence from the offense is detrimental and has been a reason why the Twins have split the six games between the Royals and Tigers. In the nine games at Target Field, Span averaged a run per game but due to his truancy from the base paths, he has scored just one run in the past six. Not surprising, the Twins gone from scoring 5.4 runs per game in the homestand to scoring 4.6 runs in Kansas City and Detroit (still above average but a drop-off nonetheless).

 

Even though the home/away splits might suggest Span isn’t happy with spending his nights at the Holiday Inn Express in Overland Park, his lowly road numbers appear to be the consequence of a suppressed BABIP in general. After putting together consecutive seasons of producing significantly higher BABIPs than the average, he is experiencing the inverse this year – his .264 BABIP is far below the .287 league norm. This digression from his career norm is a product of an increase in ground balls and their subsequent conversion into outs:

 

Span and the Gounder	2010	2009	2008
Span’s GB%	64.8	53.4	53.9
Span’s BABIP on GB	.130	.287	.257
AL BABIP on GB	.208	.239	.242

*Data from Fangraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com

In his first two seasons at the major league level, he had hit around 53% of the total balls in play on the ground. And up until this year, it has work for the speedy Span. In addition to finding more seams in the defense, he also legged out 23 infield hits (10th most in baseball) to supplement his numbers. This year, his ground ball rate is the third-highest in baseball (behind only Derek Jeter and Michael Bourn). At the same time, the inflation in his ground ball output has come at the expense of his line drive rate, which has plummeted to a career-low 13%. So not only has Span experienced the bitter pains of batted ball hard luck, he’s also not producing the trajectory type that typically winds up as hits 70% of the time. It is quite the double-whammy.

To be sure, there has been nothing wrong with his fundamental approach in 2010. Span has added great value through his patience at the plate, as his keen zone acumen has resulted in a copious amount of walks (16). This has led to a .360 on-base percentage heading into Thursday’s game. In all, his 2010 plate discipline numbers are on par with the rest of his career meaning he isn’t suddenly chasing after bad pitches or missing more than usual. Likewise, his well-hit average of .207 is in line with the league average (.208) so he is putting the ball in play solidly.

With a very good comprehension of the strike zone, quick wrists and strong ability to make contact, Span’s overall numbers are tied to the current fortunes of the bouncing ball.  As the batted ball numbers begin to correct themselves over the course of a larger sample, he should regain his status as one of the lineup’s main run contributors.

How ridiculous is Liriano's slider?

Last night, Fransico Liriano worked through the Tigers lineup like a buzzsaw, using his slider to retire 10 of the 28 opponents he faced - six of which were on strikeouts. There were buckling knees and stupidly silly swings as the slider appeared to race up to the edge of the plate and diving off the table. The only mistake was a slider left up that Johnny Damon laced for a double but aside from that one transgression, Liriano was nearly flawless in Motown - as he has been for the past 23 innings. 

 

Through four starts, Liriano possesses perhaps the game's best slider. Judging from the weighted run value at Fangraphs.com, his 6.55 wSL/C is the tops among starters. Likewise for his Opponent OPS on the pitch found at MyInsideEdge.com:

 

	Pitch Value (wSL/C)	OPS against SL
2009	1.38	.586
2010	6.55	.174

*Data from Fangraphs.com and Inside-Edge.com

 

In general, his results on the slider have been much better than that of the previous season:

 

Liriano’s Slider	Chase%	Miss%	K%
2009	37	42	38
2010	54	46	54

 *Data from Inside-Edge.com

 

While there are several reasons for his overall turnabout, including an improved command of his fastball and working ahead of hitters, his rekindled slider has been his strongest offering thus far. Opponents are offering at more pitches out-of-zone and missing at a higher rate which has led to more strikeouts. His chase rate on the pitch is the highest in baseball (minimum of 100 pitches thrown) as is his miss percentage. To summarize, this is a bar whore of a slider: just all kinds of dirty.

 

Liriano’s Slider	Total Thrown	Vel (MPH) Diff.	Vert. (Inches)
2009	604	5.5	3.97
2010	124	9.1	-1.33

*Data from Fangraphs.com, TexasLeaguers.com and Inside-Edge.com

  

What makes this version so much different than a year ago? In 2009 Liriano was throwing his slider at a higher velocity. This translated to just a 5.5-mph difference with his fastball. With his increased fastball velocity in 2010, he's also toned down the MPH on his slider, decreasing the velocity on that pitch by 2-mph. This has led to a near 10-mph (9.1) separation in his fastball and slider.

 

What's more, Liriano has added more drop to his slider. As you can see in the column above (Vert.) and visually in the graphs below, the Twins lefty is getting more decline out of his breaking pitch:

 

*Data from TexasLeaguers.com - 2009

 

*Data from TexasLeaguers.com - 2010

With everything clicking on all cylinders, it is likely that Liriano and his dirty slider will increase his scoreless inning streak in Cleveland against one of the most offensively-challenged lineups in baseball (scoring just 3.55 runs per game).