Let’s forget Jason Motte for a minute. Here’s what’s important about today’s game: Brad Penny is the latest Dave Duncan convert, or at least it seems to be that way. Last season, Penny threw his splitter/change-up about 7.5% of the time. The average speed of the pitch was about 86 MPH. The pitch had about -8 inches of horizontal spin deflection, and 7 inches of vertical spin deflection. This isn’t a pitch to be confused with a sinker. The pitch he was throwing today (mostly those little yellow dots) were 89 MPH on average, with -7 inches of horizontal spin deflection (tail) 5 inches of vertical spin deflection. So the pitch has more speed, lots of tail and more sink.
These pitches are clearly distinguished from his 4-seam fastball, and he threw it 37% of the time. He induced 13 ground ball outs. Welcome to the Cult of the Two-Seam Fastball, Brad Penny.
[...] Penny looked great in his Cardinals debut, deploying his brand-new sinker to get 13 groundball outs to four of the flying variety and earning the Dave Duncan Seal of [...]
I was pretty happy to see Penny get quality results today. The outcomes matters less right now. Hopefully he believes into the 2 seam system. I like Penny’s upside this season
[...] Motte and his Fastball Ways April 9, 2010 by stevesommer05 Like Erik, I’m sure we all want to momentarily forget Jason Motte; however, I was curious how the [...]
[...] week Dave, in his piece on Real Groundball Rates, and Erik, in a piece on Brad Penny’s first start, referenced Dave Duncan’s ability to get his pitchers to generate a great deal of groundball [...]