In his four starts of the 2012 season, ‘ best offspeed pitch has been his changeup, yet with 89 two strike counts in his favor, he’s thrown only 3 changeups. It feels like it’s happening more and more, and it’s something we’ve uttered his entire career, but the pitcher gives up too many hits two strikes. Looking at selection and location, there’s no reason to wonder, he’s predictable. Take a look for yourself.
| Four-seam | Cutter | Curveball | Changeup | |
| 0-2 | 62% (13) | 19% (4) | 14% (3) | 5% (1) |
| 1-2 | 70% (23) | 15% (5) | 12% (4) | 3% (1) |
| 2-2 | 69% (24) | 20% (3) | 9% (7) | 3% (1) |
| Total | 67% (60) | 13% (12) | 16% (14) | 3% (3) |
Early in the game Wednesday, I found myself impressed with Hughes’ curveball, and after he was hit hard by the Rangers in the third inning, I heard Michael Kay say the pitch looked flat. This had me reaching out to PITCHf/x of course, and sure enough the pitch had a well above average 10 inches of additional downward break and 6 inch movement away from right handed hitters. While this doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good pitch, it certainly disproves the notion that the pitch was flat. For Hughes, the movement horizontally is pretty standard, if not somewhat better than 2010, and the vertical break down has increased quite a bit. Of course, only one curveball was hit hard against the Rangers, a double off ‘s bat on a pitch left in his hotzone. Control was the main problem here, and that includes two hit-by-pitches as well, but there were also two 2-strike counts where Hughes gave up hits, and that leads us back to his selection.
I’ve been doing a daily PITCHF/x post for a few weeks now, and I rarely if ever see a pitcher progressively throw less offspeed pitches while gaining favor in the count, and of course Phil Hughes breaks the mold here. As you saw in the chart above, Hughes throws his four-seam fastball 62-70% of the time with two strikes and non full-count situations. Not that I want to argue similarities, but when I covered this afternoon, he threw breaking pitches around 55% of the time, if not more. While Verlander’s secondary pitches are undoubtedly more missable, part of the reason why he earns strikesouts is due to his selection. When hitters fall behind in the count, they’ll usually shorten their swing and try to foul off anything questionable, and our 2011 MVP/Cy Young winner will throw something the hitter hasn’t seen, a strong curveball or a slider. For Hughes, he keeps throwing four-seam fastballs that hitters have seen already, and they promptly foul them off or wait for him to miss his spot. Speaking of fouling off pitches with two strikes, thats the reason he’s building up such high pitch counts early in the game.
"Let's go fastball here."
It’s hard to watch a pitcher like Hughes struggle. Most of us have watched him progress from the minor leagues to the big leagues, to his almost no hitter, to his brilliance in the pen in 2009, to his 18 win performance in 2010, and now to a vagabound pitcher who has no place in this rotation. What makes this all the worse is that we read the movement is good, we see strikeout numbers (9.6 K/9 in 2012) and the control numbers (3.4 BB/9), but the results are dreadful.
“(Hughes) is guy who has tremendous confidence in his fastball,” Martin said. “For him to be successful, he’s got to locate. A.J. had the same problem every once in a while. He’d get into a hitter’s count — he’s confident in his fastball as well — it’s just when you leave one over the middle of the plate, especially those 3, 4, 5 guys, they’re not going to miss it. They’ve got a tremendous lineup. You’ve got to be able to pitch them tough. You’ve got to be able to pitch them backwards. Even when we tried to pitch them backwards, they were still on it.”
Hughes is confident in his fastball you say? Either is being sarcastic here or entirely missing the point by blaming the fastball over the plate in “hitter’s counts”, when the bigger problem is when they’re thrown in pitcher’s counts. Control issues happen now and then, and clearly there was some issue in Texas, but fixing a player’s selection should be easy, and it’s hard to understand what’s holding them back.
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I like the analysis, Mike. Elsewhere in the interview, Russell said that Phil had been spotting his glove in the pen before the game, but that he was overthrowing during the game, causing him to miss location. He wants to be aggressive and precise, not predictable and sloppy.
Am I mistaken or isn’t it the catcher’s job to make the pitch selections. Couldn’t manager/pitching coach say to Martin/Hughes you WILL go with Martin’s choices for this game or these number of innings. Seems like if that is the issue it could be easily fixed.
We had this discussion here actually, and it’s a good point. In the end, it’s Hughes’ pitch to throw and he’s often shaking off Martin. I went ahead and looked at other catcher’s stats with Hughes and it appears he actually throws more fastballs with Cervelli, Romine, Stewart.
Great stuff on Hughes both here and in the previous post on him.
I remember reading a few years ago that the look of Hughes’ curve out of his hand was so different from his fastball that it was easy for hitters to pick up. It was a fascinating analysis, in that it kind of proved why one of his secondary pitches was not doing well even though it had great movement.
Unless he completely learns how to mix his pitches and surprise batters, this guy needs to go back to the bullpen. Sad but true.
Here’s his release point for 2012. His curveball is indeed higher, but thats pretty typical. You’d need more of a distance for a hitter to be tipped off.
Mike, you amaze, thanks for the research. I know traditionally the pitcher can override the catcher, but if he is told his future rides on NOT overriding him, and to see what happens perhaps he could be convinced to try it. We can’t afford two more starts each by Garcia and Hughes as they are pitching now.
Agreed on emphasizing to Hughes that he must let Martin call the game without interference.
Moving that point one step further, where the heck is Larry Rothschild in all this? One of the jobs of the pitching coach is coming up with a plan to attack that day’s opponent. A big part of that is Rothschild and Martin calling the right pitches and breaking up predictable sequences.
Now, if Martin/Rothschild aren’t calling for things other than the fastball because they don’t think Hughes’s secondary pitches are good enough to put hitters away on two-strike counts, that’s something of an indictment on Hughes’s talent and perhaps tells us that it’s not stubbornness but a lack of aptitude.
Either Hughes has to start pitching backwards — showing the curve and/or cutter early in counts and trying to get them out (via K or weak contact) on a sneaky fastball or he just has to move to the bullpen where having only one pitch isn’t the handicap it is in the rotation.