Dave Cameron at Fangraphs has a nice article analyzing Hampton's performance so far this season. Cameron decided to examine Hampton because he ranks (unexpectedly) in the top 10 of strike out pitchers so far this season, right behind Lincecum. He provides some pitch F/X graphs if you are interested in that type of thing. His conclusion: Hampton has several pitches, not much velocity, but lots of movement. As stated in the article:
Hampton throws five distinct pitches - a four seam fastball, a two seam fastball/cut fastball, a curve, a slider, and a change-up. He mixes them extremely well, alternating speeds and keeping hitters off balance. His two seam fastball and change-up have similar movements, adding to the deception. His curve and slider are distinctly different, and he’ll use the slider more against right-handed batters. The change-up is almost exclusively used against right-handed bats, and is the main reason that he’s actually been better against RH batters than LH batters throughout his career.
There’s not much velocity in there, but in terms of being able to vary his arsenal and keep hitters guessing, Hampton has a really good repertoire of pitches. He’s not going to keep striking hitters out at this rate, but for as long as he can avoid the Disabled List, he’s going to be a solid starting pitcher for the Astros.
0 recs | 3 comments
This is cool stuff…I love hearing about what people are doing with pitch f/x. And it’s good news that Hampton has managed to figure out how to work with his arsenal despite his age. I really hope he’s able to keep it up over the course of the season.
I can’t wait until they have a Defense F/x…they can have little radio chips in those buttons on the tops of ballcaps that track positional data of players in the field…
AstroAndy - April 17, 2009
From what I've read
Hit/fx, it’s infancy stages now, tracks were defenders are positioned prior to contact, so it will allow for something like Pinto’s PMR to become even better because we’ll have full data about the speed of the bat, the vector it took, and be able to estimate the spin, all while understanding exactly what path a defender would have to take to the ball. I can’t wait until the work out all the kinks and get it on-line.
Stephen Higdon - April 17, 2009
Wow, really?
that’d be awesome…I thought hit f/x was going to be limited to using batted ball trajectory data…having initial fielder positioning would be great, although if they’re limiting the data to just the position at time of contact, you lose information about defensive shifting during the course of the pitch.
AstroAndy - April 17, 2009
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