A couple day games were on tap today, actually a handful of em, but two young(ish) sinkerballs took the mound and looked absolutely spectacular for very different reasons.
In deep leagues, the name Fausto Carmona has intrigued me for a while and his seven inning, 2 hit, 2 walk performance sealed the deal. After the White Sox massacred Carmona to the tune of 10ER over 3IP, it’ll be a while before Carmona sports a respectable ERA.
When you’re a true sinkerballer, you’re not going to succeed if you’re sinker doesn’t sink and that’s exactly what happened to Carmona on the first. This was the first thing I went to — despite gameday still being iffy — before deciding whether or not Carmona was worth taking a small risk on. Against Chicago, Carmona’s sinker just didn’t sink. His velocity was good as he hovered around 92mph, but boy did that sinkerball stay flat:
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Linear Weights | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 91.75 | 94.1 | -9.19 | 9.48 | 46 | 30 / 65.22% | 4 / 8.70% | 4.2154 | 0.415 |
| SI (Sinker) | 92.67 | 94.1 | -10.45 | 6.19 | 10 | 8 / 80.00% | 0 / 0.00% | -0.1421 | 0.414 |
| CH (Changeup) | 87.70 | 87.7 | -9.73 | 5.00 | 1 | 1 / 100.00% | 0 / 0.00% | -0.2348 | 0.437 |
| SL (Slider) | 86.20 | 88.6 | 1.10 | 7.18 | 31 | 20 / 64.52% | 4 / 12.90% | 1.9400 | 0.438 |
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When Carmona’s sinker only gets down to 6.19 inches of drop, there’s going to be a problem. During Carmona’s successful outings, his four-seamer sits around 6 inches of drop and his sinker comes in somewhere between 0 and 3 inches.
So how did Carmona fare against the Red Sox and their extrapolated 0-162 record?
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Linear Weights | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 91.69 | 92.9 | -6.32 | 6.69 | 13 | 10 / 76.92% | 0 / 0.00% | 0.0872 | 0.413 |
| SI (Sinker) | 91.91 | 93.2 | -10.06 | 2.68 | 58 | 34 / 58.62% | 2 / 3.45% | -2.8801 | 0.412 |
| CH (Changeup) | 86.05 | 86.9 | -8.37 | -0.69 | 13 | 7 / 53.85% | 3 / 23.08% | -0.3609 | 0.438 |
| SL (Slider) | 85.61 | 88 | 1.94 | 0.65 | 25 | 13 / 52.00% | 3 / 12.00% | -1.1112 | 0.438 |
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That’s what I like to see. Carmona really pounded his sinker down in the zone and got great movement on it. His velocity was there, the movement was there and the placement was there. Carmona left a few pitches above the belt, but kept the majority of ‘em at the belt or lower. Almost everything was around the zone as well and he induced a lot of weak contact. He tossed around 60% of his pitches for strikes, but I’m more inclined to look at the plots:
The average vertical and horizontal breaks tell part of the story, but it’s always important to take a look at the graph as well:
Carmona got a great deal of horizontal movement in addition to his sink and looked terrific. I’m not claiming that Carmona’s going to be a stellar option, but it’s outings like this that make it worth using your last roster spot to take a chance on him. Leave ‘em on your bench for one more start and see if he continues to get solid movement on the two-seamer and go from there.
In addition to Carmona, Trevor Cahill also took the mound against the Blue Jays. The Jays were without Jose Bautista (forgot to pull out) and Yunel Escobar (mild concussion) so I’m not going to put too much weight on the statistics as Aaron Hill did bat clean-up in this tilt.
Cahill’s stuff was better in every aspect and he absolutely hammered the zone en route to an 8IP, 3H, 0BB, 7K performance.
| Pitch Type | Avg Speed | Max Speed | Avg H-Break | Avg V-Break | Count | Strikes / % | Swinging Strikes / % | Linear Weights | Time to Plate |
| FF (FourSeam Fastball) | 91.80 | 91.8 | -9.90 | 6.75 | 1 | 1 / 100.00% | 0 / 0.00% | 0.0000 | 0.415 |
| SI (Sinker) | 88.98 | 90.7 | -10.87 | 0.20 | 54 | 39 / 72.22% | 2 / 3.70% | -2.0420 | 0.422 |
| CH (Changeup) | 81.17 | 83 | -7.95 | -1.28 | 17 | 7 / 41.18% | 2 / 11.76% | -0.5745 | 0.459 |
| CU (Curveball) | 77.79 | 79.7 | 4.78 | -9.28 | 33 | 21 / 63.64% | 5 / 15.15% | -2.3275 | 0.484 |
The interesting part about Cahill so far in this young 2011 season is his curveball: Cahill’s curve was applauded coming out and he’s back to getting dirty movement on it and a very solid 15% Swinging Strike rate.
Cahill got most of his sinkers well below the 0-plane and looked terrific:
After throwing about 22% curveballs in his first outing, Cahill further increased his CB% against the Jays. They were without their pop and better teams will hike his pitch-count up so he’s not getting through 8 IP with around 100 pitches, but this is still very intriguing.
If Oakland’s pen were weaker, I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked him to up his sinker count to around 2009-2010 levels and induce contact as the season progressed. However, Oakland has one of the best bullpens in the majors this year, so I’m inclined to believe that they’ll let Cahill go for the strike-outs if it’ll help his effectiveness.
He won’t bring these K-numbers every outing, but I’m definitely a believer. I’m not foolish enough to believe that he’ll post a similar ERA, but I do think he’ll post decent strike-out numbers in 2011.
