No Analysis Necessary: Mike Minor’s Struggles
June 1, 2012 at 1:01 pm by Kevin Orris under Atlanta Braves
At least once or twice a week I come across a pretty cool chart or statistic that Braves fans would find interesting. Sometimes I tweet about it, but most times I keep it to myself. It’s not because I’m selfish, but because this space has almost always been used for providing data with analysis. Today, I am bucking that trend.
Below is a series of heat maps and statistics pertaining to Mike Minor. I hope you enjoy them.
- 44.2% of Mike Minor’s 998 pitches this season have been in the strike zone. Francisco Liriano is the only other qualifying left-handed pitcher to throw fewer pitches in the zone at 43.0%.
- 44.1% of contact made against Minor’s 998 pitches has resulted in a fly ball. That ties him for ninth among qualifying left-handed pitchers. His 34.6% groundball rate is third lowest in baseball.
- 36.1% of Minor’s 998 pitches have been located in the vertical middle of the plate. That ties him with Chris Sale for seventh highest among qualifying left-handed pitchers.
- Minor has located pitches in the horizontal middle of the plate just 19.1% of the time. Jamie Moyer is the only pitcher with a lower percentage (19.0%).
- TruMedia has a metric called paint (Shortest Distance to Edge of Strike Zone; Measured in Inches, Positive=In Strike Zone, Negative=Out of Strike Zone). Mike Minor’s -1.2 is tied with Liriano and Drew Pomeranz for the lowest among qualifying left-handed pitchers.
- TruMedia also calculates Well Hit Average (Well Hit Balls / AB). Batters have posted a 0.221 WHAV aginast Minor this year. That is fifth highest among qualifying left-handed pitchers. When throwing his fastball, opponents have posted a 0.280 WHAV.
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“Minor has located pitches in the horizontal middle of the plate just 19.1% of the time. Jamie Moyer is the only pitcher with a lower percentage (19.0%).”
Anytime you are compared to jamie moyer in a “throw it over the plate” kinda way, you know you are having a bad season/life.
i think that’s saying minor actually doesn’t throw over the middle of the plate, horizontally, anyway. that’s the one positive statistic in that group. he’s throwing the ball over the vertical middle too much, and you can see his pitches are up relative to last year’s, which helps to explain why he’s giving up so many more fly balls (44.5% of the time, compared to 35.5% in 2011). i’d guess there’s something very slightly off mechanically that’s causing him not to finish pitches the way he did a year ago, keeping them up in the zone, where they get hammered, apparently.
Here’s another couple of career comparisons to Old Man Moyer:
HR/9: Moyer 1.15 Minor 1.29
HR/FB%: Moyer 10.8% Minor 11.6%
Minor is giving the all time gopher-giver-upper a run for his money.
I know my previous comment has no relevance due to SSS. Still alarming and astonishing the gopher rates MM is serving up. Based on the contact to FB rate, 7.5% of all contact against Minor is resulting in a long ball souvenir for a lucky fan.
They need to do something with minor to save some games because with a doubt he will lose tonight or whenever the game is played against the nats and strasburg! i wrote alla botu it on my blog where i break it all down and give tips! http://baseballpitboss.com/2012/06/nl-east-heavyweights-collide-for-upcoming-weekend-series/
Responding to you here since you are incessant on spamming your blog…
Nah, I think we’re good over here at CAC. Prefer to go with actual stats and metrics going into game rather than a “feeling” or “expectation.” Being that you’re writing the blog for gambling purposes, I would expect a little more. Strasburg may very well be a phenom, but he has never had good luck against the Braves and I belive that Uggla is 6 for 9 against Strasburg with 2 homers and 7 RBIs. Also, the previous win against the Braves was his first against the team in 4 or 5 attempts.
As a gambler, I think you should take things like that under consideration.
Thanks for the offer though..
Strasburg should never have even got that win, it was gifted to him and Rhino Dan is even better at 6 for 8 i believe. I take it that the weather is bad up there if there is talk of a rainout??
Yeah calling for “severe” weather in the DC-Baltimore area. Looks like I’ll be stuck playing MLB 2k12 all night then :(
Yep. Game’s been postponed. Hopefully they skip Minor in the rotation.
Can I interpret all of this in plain language to see if I understand correctly?
Mike Minor has been throwing straight fastballs down the middle of plate and major league hitters are hitting them very hard.
Am I understanding this correctly?
He lacks command. This explains both the walks and the bombs.
Mike Minor has been terrible.
Ok, now that I’ve said that, I’d like to play the “completely unrelated” game. It’s too bad we don’t have a spot on the roster for Ernesto Mejia. He’s 26, sure. But in both the 2011 and 2012 seasons he’s posted a .900+ OPS (.297/.375/.531 and .323/.381/.531 respectively). Strangely, his K% has dropped from ~28% to ~18%, but I’m guessing thats just more SSS… just like everything else I said.
Sorry, it’s a rainout… I’m having to stretch for material here.
Right on, atoms.
Minor has not been good, and time in the minor leagues won’t hurt. But let’s not give up on him entirely based on his last few starts. Glavine got hammered when he first visited the majors too.