2020 Starting Pitching Discussion

Criznit said:

I am a dummy - I had no idea they were sending him out there on Saturday... WOW...I love it!!!

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Who knew??? It is an exciting development -- we'll hopefully all enjoy!

xmasbuck said:

looking forward a little more to see mckenzie - hope he doesnt pull a greg swindell

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I was at Swindell's debut vs. Clemens! (Tony Armas hit 2 dingers in that disaster)

Benway said:

I was at Swindell's debut vs. Clemens! (Tony Armas hit 2 dingers in that disaster)

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there have been worse debuts than swindle's, but didn't we lose like 25-3

I love watching these video overlays of Bieber. It’s crazy to think that even after watching CC, Cliff Lee, and Kluber twice win a Cy Youngs here, Bieber, barring injury, will be better then them all. I can see him easily win the award 4 times minimum. He’s in that Pedro, Clemens, Maddux, Randy Johnson mold of multiple Cy winners that challenge For the award every year.

Tonedef75 said:

I love watching these video overlays of Bieber. It’s crazy to think that even after watching CC, Cliff Lee, and Kluber twice win a Cy Youngs here, Bieber, barring injury, will be better then them all. I can see him easily win the award 4 times minimum. He’s in that Pedro, Clemens, Maddux, Randy Johnson mold of multiple Cy winners that challenge For the award every year.

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Whoa their chief. Slow it down.

Tonedef75 said:

I love watching these video overlays of Bieber. It’s crazy to think that even after watching CC, Cliff Lee, and Kluber twice win a Cy Youngs here, Bieber, barring injury, will be better then them all. I can see him easily win the award 4 times minimum. He’s in that Pedro, Clemens, Maddux, Randy Johnson mold of multiple Cy winners that challenge For the award every year.

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Interesting overlay there.

It is one of the better ones I have seen that demonstrates why it is so easy to pickup a CB for a MLB hitter. The hump in the flight path

Tonedef75 said:

I love watching these video overlays of Bieber. It’s crazy to think that even after watching CC, Cliff Lee, and Kluber twice win a Cy Youngs here, Bieber, barring injury, will be better then them all. I can see him easily win the award 4 times minimum. He’s in that Pedro, Clemens, Maddux, Randy Johnson mold of multiple Cy winners that challenge For the award every year.

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So the scouting report on Biebs last year was SL/FB, because that is what he did.

So teams this year are looking for SL/FB when they go to the plate, and they are getting a lot of CB's. Not trying to demean or minimize what Biebs is/has done, but if you think that his current level of success will continue once the league figures out his new formula, you should probably think again.

JDailey23 said:

Whoa their chief. Slow it down.

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Forget it -- he's rolling.

jup said:

So the scouting report on Biebs last year was SL/FB, because that is what he did.

So teams this year are looking for SL/FB when they go to the plate, and they are getting a lot of CB's. Not trying to demean or minimize what Biebs is/has done, but if you think that his current level of success will continue once the league figures out his new formula, you should probably think again.

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That makes perfect sense, but at this point in the season, how have MLB clubs not yet figured out the new pattern?

No. I’ve seen enough of him this early in his career to see that he is the real deal. Injury is the ONLY thing that can stop his future dominance and I will beat that drum until he gets Cy Young number 4, which should be in about 6 years. He’ll get his first this year.

JDailey23 said:

Whoa their chief. Slow it down.

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jup said:

So the scouting report on Biebs last year was SL/FB, because that is what he did.

So teams this year are looking for SL/FB when they go to the plate, and they are getting a lot of CB's. Not trying to demean or minimize what Biebs is/has done, but if you think that his current level of success will continue once the league figures out his new formula, you should probably think again.

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nah, I don’t know pitching like you do, but I know dominance when I see it. The way that the Indians have groomed pitchers, I have no reason to doubt that once the league adjust to Bieber, the team will in turn make another adjustment.You’d probably know better, but Shane doesn’t seem to be someone stuck in his ways and is open to coaching and adjustments. Everything I’ve seen from him shows me he has a Kluber-type mentality that allows him to, for the most part, keep his emotions in check. That bodes well for someone with his ability to stay calm in situations like yesterday in the 6th when he had a runner on first and third with no outs. He could easily have cracked since the runner on 3rd was Newman who got on by a lucky infielder grounder, but with an already high pitch count.he did the ho-hum K, K, FO. Inning over. And yes, against a better team, it may not have gone that way. Then again, he’s done against good teams also.

jup said:

So the scouting report on Biebs last year was SL/FB, because that is what he did.

So teams this year are looking for SL/FB when they go to the plate, and they are getting a lot of CB's. Not trying to demean or minimize what Biebs is/has done, but if you think that his current level of success will continue once the league figures out his new formula, you should probably think again.

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Tonedef75 said:

nah, I don’t know pitching like you do, but I know dominance when I see it. The way that the Indians have groomed pitchers, I have no reason to doubt that once the league adjust to Bieber, the team will in turn make another adjustment.You’d probably know better, but Shane doesn’t seem to be someone stuck in his ways and is open to coaching and adjustments. Everything I’ve seen from him shows me he has a Kluber-type mentality that allows him to, for the most part, keep his emotions in check. That bodes well for someone with his ability to stay calm in situations like yesterday in the 6th when he had a runner on first and third with no outs. He could easily have cracked since the runner on 3rd was Newman who got on by a lucky infielder grounder, but with an already high pitch count.he did the ho-hum K, K, FO. Inning over. And yes, against a better team, it may not have gone that way. Then again, he’s done against good teams also.

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Not expressing an opinion on Biebs ability to achieve in the future, or change, or adjust. Just talking about what is happening right now.

Major league scouting report are put together certain ways and that leaves them susceptible to certain outcomes. What is happening for/with Biebs right now is one of them. Hitters work off historic tendencies, when the season is 5 starts old, that isn't very "historic" in baseball terms. So what the scouting reports are telling hitters, won't be as clear today as it will be a month from now. And that will change the dynamics of the matchup. Not saying Biebs won't be successful because of it, just saying the advantage he holds today by the change he made will start to evaporate as the season progresses further.

jup said:

Not expressing an opinion on Biebs ability to achieve in the future, or change, or adjust. Just talking about what is happening right now.

Major league scouting report are put together certain ways and that leaves them susceptible to certain outcomes. What is happening for/with Biebs right now is one of them. Hitters work off historic tendencies, when the season is 5 starts old, that isn't very "historic" in baseball terms. So what the scouting reports are telling hitters, won't be as clear today as it will be a month from now. And that will change the dynamics of the matchup. Not saying Biebs won't be successful because of it, just saying the advantage he holds today by the change he made will start to evaporate as the season progresses further.

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I am struck that scouting is that far behind (months), especially in a season where you will only play 9 other teams in the regular season...

LL3 said:

That makes perfect sense, but at this point in the season, how have MLB clubs not yet figured out the new pattern?

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So scouting reports are usually done off of some kind of heat map that tells hitters where pitchers use certain pitch types in what zones and counts. But it takes a long time to fill up an entire strike zone with enough data to give reliable heat maps.



Now I don't want to make this to complicated so 30 thousand foot view.

Left => all pitches Biebs has thrown in 2020,
Middle => RH only 2020,
Right => RH only 0-2 count 2020

So what seems like a large sample set 603, gets narrowed to 24 pitches when you are looking at a particular type hitter in a particular type count. And how do you generate a heat map off those 24 pitches. Even more so when you start looking by pitch type where you have 8 FBs, 10 SL and 6 CBs.

Point being, scouting reports tend to be broken into

Last YEAR,
Last THREE MONTHS,
Last 3 STARTS

for sample size purposes.

Hitters don't have time to watch film of every pitcher the way we watch on TV. So they get these scouting reports on paper, work from them and then see what is happening in the game itself. And the scouting reports are still back in 2019 as far as generating any reliable type heat maps.