Josh Beckett of the Los Angeles Dodgers tossed the first no-hitter of the 2014 MLB season on Sunday. Over 9 innings of work, the 6’5″, 230 lb. righthander threw 128 pitches, striking out 6 Phillies’ batters and facing 30 batters in all, just 3 over the minimum.
Boxscore statistics can only tell us so much about Beckett’s gem. Here are some graphics that can help us in analyzing the underpinnings of Beckett’s success on Sunday:
All of the data used in producing these graphics were retrieved from the excellent baseball research resource, http://www.brooksbaseball.net. The site lists Beckett as having featured a fourseam fastball, sinker, changeup, curveball, cutter, and splitter at at least one point or another throughout the 2014 campaign (note, however, that Beckett did not throw his splitter during his no-hitter).
Interpreting the Graphs
During the no-hitter, Beckett’s average velocity on each of his pitches was essentially the same as it has been all season. He garnered more horizontal movement on each of his pitches though, which leads me to believe that both his “stuff” and command were sharper than normal. It is neat that analyzing this type of data can allow one to quantify abstract ideas such as the effectiveness of a pitcher’s “stuff” and the command which he holds over his pitches. Perhaps the most telltale sign that Beckett was at the top if his game is that he was keeping his pitches down in the zone, which is illustrated in the third plot. Notice that the average location of each of Beckett’s pitches (except for the cutter, which he threw only 8 times on Sunday) was noticeably lower than it has been all season.
Further Reading
I have only scratched the surface on what can be done with this sort of PITCHf/x data. Dr. Alan Nathan has developed volumes of neat research on the physics of baseball. FanGraphs has a lot of statistics and graphics that are developed using PITCHf/x data. Finally, as I mentioned above, BrooksBaseball is also a tremendous resource.
Jon's Jibber-Jabber 