The latest on Sasaki's fastball | I have no conclusions, lol（海外の反応）
It’s me again. If you missed my previous threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dodgers/comments/1tk04k6/another_look_at_sasakis_fastball/
Sorry for my tardiness: on a weekend getaway. Quick catchup on what I’ve been doing (ignore this paragraph if you already know): After the successful Angels game, I remembered there were criticisms of his fastball. So through Baseball Savant, I tracked his velocity, spin rate, induced vertical break, drop (which might be redundant to IVB as it really just seems like the inverse of it), and horizontal-break for his fastballs only. I compared the Angels game to three others: His two most recent ones (Giants and Cardinals) and his worse one (Nationals.) It seems that the only difference in any of these games is that his drop was increased and his h-break was increased in the Angels game. Velo and spin rate were basically the same. (Also, the Average line, is his average for the Angels game only, including this batch of charts.)
So after the most recent game, I saw he got banged up in the first, then chilled out after. So in the first image, you’ll see the Angels game (still in the “Dodger blue”) compared to three lines for the Brewer’s game: What he did in the first inning (red colored because it was bad), after the first inning (light blue, because I know people are color blind and green for good might be difficult to make out), and the game as a whole (gray).
The second image, I replaced the Cardinals game with the Brewer’s game (light blue). the Cardinals game was basically identical to the Nationals game (his worst), so I figured it was easiest to just nix that.
So what does it all mean? I don’t know, lol.
Compared to the other games: He had the most IVB / least drop. Velo and Spin was about on par with his Giants game.
Within the game itself: I don’t know if I see much noticeable difference other than his velocity improved after the first inning by about 0.5MPH, but less consistently so (as noted by the height of the bell curves.) Everything else is kind of that same though, and even the velo isn’t that different.
The one edge he really maintains is in that Angels game with that horizontal break. He didn’t come close to catching that this game. I did notice though that his fastball allowed 2 hits in the first inning, 0 afterwards. 6 balls in the first inning, 4 afterwards. Small sample sizes can be wild though.
Either way, kudos to him for recovering and shutting it down afterwards. I’ll be very curious to see if that H-Break ever returns. I won’t make this a regular thing with him each time. I’ll probably let a few more starts come through before making another one of these, but thought I’d just follow-up to see if whatever change in his fastball in the Angels game persisted (which I’d say…it did not.)
Obviously, far more goes into the quality of a start than this stuff, this is just a thing look at it. But also at the same time, a part of me wonders how much something as small as the h-break on his fastball might hep setup his other pitches better, or even maybe generate more consistent success in his fastball on its own in general.
Idk, will see you in a few weeks, perhaps (or sooner if in his next start he’s lights out again with a similar H-Break, lol.)
Source: r/Dodgers
