If you caught my previews of the first two NLDS games you saw that I did a couple of heat graphs (aka heat maps). I had what I thought was a decent idea for another version of that graph. The attempt is to capture a pitches effectiveness by movement. Without further ado, we have Carp’s curveball’s whiff rate.
The vertical axis is vertical movement in inches, and the horizontal axis is horizontal movement. The picture is from the catcher’s perspective. The basic takeaway is the more straight down the pitch broke, the higher percentage of whiffs he got. The chart doesn’t break out for batter handedness, and I also removed some periphery data points where the sample size skewed the chart. Anyway, what do ya’ll think? is there some value here, or is it simply a pretty picture for the sake of pretty pictures.
