Clay Buchholz release point data from last 3 games

Clay seems to have finally begun to settle into his own. In previous posts, I mentioned how dominating he was in his last start. I had to learn more about the reasoning behind this other than the usual claims of "he was on top of his game, he had electric stuff, etc". I decided to use his Pitch F/X data on his release point as a starting point to this.


Below are the release point charts of his last 3 starts. In order they are 4/16 vs NY, 4/21 vs Tex, and 4/26 vs TB.


By looking quickly at this, it appears that vs NY, he was releasing the ball further away from his body which would give the hitters a better look as it leaves his hand. Professional baseball players find this difference of 2-3 inches astronomical as well as having a harder time controlling his pitches. His next start was closer to his body, close to a full foot, but his release point was erratic. This may be one of those times that he was lucky to get away with it. Finally vs TB his release point seemed to centralize to one area which was closer to the body than vs NY.

Now let's look at closeup views of these.




A closer look at these, which are on the same scale, shows just how greatly one's release point can vary from start to start and even within the game. The game versus NY clearly shows his release point 2 feet away from the 0, while the other two games both averaging roughly 1.25 feet away from the zero point. Also notice how in the last start versus TB, each pitch was centered around a certain release point for that pitch. He didn't deviate much from that and even when he did deviate from it, the difference was roughly the equivalent of a baseball.

If you feel that Buchholz is finally starting to turn it around, this release point data seems to be a good starting point. In the future, I will be dwelling further into this.