Tim Lincecum is a great pitcher but he has been in a bit of a funk as of late. David Pinto over at Baseball Analytics takes a look at his change up and suspects that what is causing him to be hittable is his change up.
Once June came around, Lincecum started leaving the pitch relatively up:You should check out the full post because there are some awesome heat maps.
Tim Lincecum, change up location, June 2011Tim appears to be throwing the pitch the same way, as an examination of the spin showed no obvious changes. With the pitch up in the strike zone, however, batters are making contact.
I do have a few things that I wonder however is that in June he has to date only thrown 14 change ups in this sample which I have to wonder if that is a big enough sample to draw any sort of conclusions from. (Update 2:20 pm Per David Pinto via Twitter: this was only for change ups put into play, previously batters were 0 for 31 on his change up, with 15 K. No walks or HBP.)
From watching him I would think that his problem has come a lot more from not being able to locate his fastball and with this pitch not a weapon hitters having the ability to sit on the breaking pitches.
Regardless cool graphs and something interesting to check out.
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