Looking at the Data
A plus pitch is likely to cause a significant portion of batters to fail to make contact when it's swung at, which is what the contact rate (Con%) measures and is the converse of the whiff rate. But it's not good enough that a pitcher can miss bats on swings if he can't consistently throw the ball for strikes. The control that pitcher has of the pitch can be measured by looking at how often the pitch is called a ball (B% or, conversely, S%). Looking at the percent of pitches that are swinging strikes (SW%, not to be confused with Sw%, which, in my symbology, is the percent of pitches swung at) also hints at the quality of the pitch and fortunately can be diluted by a surplus of balls. Consequently SW% may be a better indicator than the contact rate. Johan Santana's changeup is second behind A.J. Burnett's curveball in Con%, but edges him out in SW%. There's now data for 162 of Santana's changeups, so not many if any grains of salt need to be taken. Anyways, I've made a cutoff of 50 pitches for Contact rate sorting. Also, if a pitcher throws a pitch, say, less than 15% of the time and is getting a lot of swinging strikes with it, either he can't control it or he gets those whiffs because he rarely uses it and batters aren't expecting it. Of course, if it wasn't for Santana's fastball and consistent windup and delivery on all his different pitches, he wouldn't get all those swings at his changeup. The ridiculously consistent release point is seen by the quarter of an inch difference in release point (X0, Y0) between the change and fastball. However, the values are not straight out of the hand and shouldn't be fully trusted. After looking at what pitches Santana uses in a certain count (go here to see that info and the complete data), Santana's out pitch is by no surprise his changeup, going to that pitch over half the time with 2 strikes unless he's in a full count.

But not every quality pitch gets many whiffs. Many induce weak contact and for those there's the BA and SLG stats. Really those stats should be named BABIP and SLGBIP since only balls hit into play and home runs are averaged out. Perhaps the pitcher is just getting lucky, but a low BA and SLG over a considerable period of time is going to mean that pitch is hard to make solid contact with even if it is easy to make any type of contact with it. For groundball or flyball pitchers it's possible to see what pitch is the culprit for these tendencies. For Brandon Webb it's his sinking fastball alone that's responsible for his high GB to FB ratio (although sample size issues apply), while all of Derek Lowe's pitches induces an unusually high amount of groundouts. I have also added some command indicators with Com being the main one and shows the average distance from the closest edge of the strike zone. Be aware that the data is not 100% correct. I'd guess that I correctly discern the pitch type for 90-100% of the data points with the degree of accuracy fluctuating from pitcher to pitcher (e.g. Contreras is probably closer to 90%, while Hamels is probably 100% accurate... the fewer the data points and types of pitches the easier it to discern pitches.)

There are stats for 130 pitchers with only half a dozen or so being relievers. Follow the links for various sortings. I'd recommend just looking at the data in excel. The Contact Rate and Speed sortings are slow to load.

Links for data sorted by:  Name (complete dataset; .txt file, can be neatly copy and pasted into an excel sheet)  |  Contact Rate  |  Fastball Speed

Last Updated: 8/8/07
Stats Glossary: T: arm the ball is thrown with; pitch: type of pitch thrown; %: percent of the time that pitch is thrown; count: number of data points for that pitch; BA: batting average on that pitch type hit into play including home runs; SLG: slugging percentage on balls hit into play; S%: percent of pitches thrown for said pitch; Fish: Dan Fox stat; how often the batter swings at the pitch when it's out of the strike zone; Con%: contact rate ((fouls + hit into play balls)/(pitches swung at)); Sw%: % swung at; SW%: % of pitches that are swung and missed at; B% % that are balls; CS%: called strikes; F%: pitches fouled off; InP%: % hit into play; GO: percent of times groundouts result when that pitch is thrown and hit into play; ect., ect. for fly outs (FO), pop outs (PO), line outs (LO), singles (1B), doubles (2B), triples (3B), home runs (HR). iMPH: speed when initially measured, 55, 50, or 40 feet from home plate as denoted; fMPH: speed when the ball crosses the plate (along with X and Y, taken for all pitches regardless of initial point of measurement); break: maximum break of the pitch in inches between initial and final measurement; pfx: horizontal movement inches or spin, difference between that pitch and if that same pitch was thrown with no spin but same speed; pfz: same as pfx, but vertically; pf: total length of movement; angle: angle of the break; X, Y: coordinates of the ball when it crosses the plate in feet... for X, 0 is the center of the plate with edges being roughly 0.7 and -0.7 feet, negative being the left side of the plate from the catcher's perspective... for Y the strike zone obviously changes a bit, but roughly between 1.5-3.6 feet above the ground; X0, Y0: initial coordinates in feet, could be called the release point. Counts: what pitch is selected in the designated count (e.g. 1-2: 1 ball, 2 strike count); %vsL: pitch selection vs. left handed bats; %vsR: pitch selection vs. right handed bats; Inning: pitch selection in designated inning; #1: pitch selection for the first pitch of an inning and best to be ignored for relievers; BadBall: another Dan Fox stat, percentage of time swings at ball out of the strike zone make contact, so the lower the better for the pitcher; S: command indicator, S-E being the average distance from the closest strike zone edge for strikes and S-C being from the closest corner; B: command indicator for balls; Com: average for all pitches; SW: average distance for swinging strike out of the SZ; %SWOZ: how often swinging strikes are out of the strike zone; %IZ: percentage of pitches in the strike zone. Note, the smaller distance of measurement results in smaller break numbers and different pfx values, pfz values, break angles, and less accurate "release points". Also, if a cell reads "###" that means there's no data to display.

How to nicely import these charts into excel:
Open a blank worksheet in excel. Go to "Data" menu... then to "Import External data"... then to "New Web Query", and a window should pop up. Copy and paste the url address of this page into the "address" box and click "Go". The page should load, then click the arrow next to the desired chart and click import. At that time the data should load into the worksheet.

Also, here's data from the Futures Game

For more information on and analysis of the pitch f/x data...
-mlb.com has news and info here on the pitch f/x system and how to interpret the data.
-Dan Fox of bp.com has more accurate and much more in depth analysis of the pitch f/x data for Matsuzaka, Felix Hernandez, and Chad Gaudin, to name just a few. His content alone is well worth the small price of subscription.
-Joe P. Sheehan also has some great content for the Baseball Analysts, as do John Walsh and John Beamer of the Hardball Times.
-Mike Fast has a complete listing of articles and whatnot here.

If you spot any errors in my data or possible errors, have any suggestions, have hate mail to send me, or anything else, please contact me at ultxmxpx@yahoo.com.