Tim Lincecum Pitch FX Breakdown

After looking at the results of last nights' game, I decided to do an analysis of Tim Lincecum. Little did I know that Kyle from Driveline Mechanics would also be analyzing Tim. Kyle's excellent site focuses more on the scouting side of things notably mechanics, so I decided that going forward with my PFX analysis might help things.

First, I decided to focus only on starts at home, so that I could rule out inconsistencies in the accuracies of the PFX data between different parks. I came to this conclusion after reading around about the data needing adjustments and after Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus did me the honor of looking at one of my previous posts and suggested to focus on one park in order to eliminate any inconsistencies between parks.

That game me about 600 pitches to analyze which I happily did.

First, let's look at his frequencies of his pitch types and also the results of those pitch types.

Pitch Type	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
CH	96	16.3	16.3	16.3
CU	41	7.0	7.0	23.3
FA	367	62.4	62.4	85.7
SL	84	14.3	14.3	100.0
Total	588	100.0	100.0

Pitch Type

Event	CH	%	CU	%	FA	%	SL	%	Total	Total %
Ball	30	31.25%	15	36.59%	124	33.79%	20	23.81%	189	32.14%
Ball In Dirt	5	5.21%	0	0.00%	1	0.27%	7	8.33%	13	2.21%
Called Strike	8	8.33%	12	29.27%	75	20.44%	6	7.14%	101	17.18%
Foul	11	11.46%	7	17.07%	73	19.89%	13	15.48%	104	17.69%
Foul (Runner Going)	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	2	0.54%	0	0.00%	2	0.34%
Foul Bunt	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	1	0.27%	0	0.00%	1	0.17%
Foul Tip	1	1.04%	0	0.00%	2	0.54%	0	0.00%	3	0.51%
Hit By Pitch	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	1	0.27%	0	0.00%	1	0.17%
In play, no out	7	7.29%	1	2.44%	17	4.63%	1	1.19%	26	4.42%
In play, out(s)	11	11.46%	5	12.20%	45	12.26%	10	11.90%	71	12.07%
In play, run(s)	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	7	1.91%	2	2.38%	9	1.53%
Swinging Strike	21	21.88%	1	2.44%	19	5.18%	22	26.19%	63	10.71%
Swinging Strike (Blocked)	2	2.08%	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	3	3.57%	5	0.85%
Total	96		41		367		84		588

Looking at these will give you a rough idea of what he throws. As you can see, he throws mostly fastball, changes, and a slider. He does throw a curveball which must be interesting coming from that arm angle. He throws 34% balls and a total non-contact strike % of 28%. Contact strike % is about 18% while the batters put the ball in play a total of 18% of his pitches at home. It's interesting to me that he throws this many balls. Just purely my belief is that if he starts to get better control of his pitches (say decreasing his ball % to around 28-30%), he'll be that much more effective as his stuff is amazing.

So getting that baseline info regarding the frequency of his pitches, I broke down his release points next. We all know that he comes from over the top while both Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus and Kyle from Driveline Mechanics say his mechanics, while unorthodox are extremely, if not perfectly, fine.

His release point is nice and consistent. In the chart on the left, he really doesn't waver much at all in any one position. This total shape is one that is preferrable, a shape that is the same shape as the baseball. When you zoom in you see that really the only thing is different between the pitches is that he tends to release the ball a little higher than the other pitches.

One point about this though is that the release point that is being measures is not the true release point. The release point that is being measured by gameday is where the ball is in space 50 feet from home plate. Depending on the height, stride length, arm length, etc the true release point from home plate of the pitch varies from pitcher to pitcher. Taking in this 50 foot rule into effect. Most curveballs thrown by MLB tend to rise ever so slightly immediately out of the hand. This is what I think is going on here. You can see that the difference is 4 inches, so when you combine his mechanics and his "release point", the curveball appears to be released a little higher than it actually is so I consider the curveball release point to be in line with all his other pitches.

Next I looked at his pitch location and his pitch location by the end result.

His fastball tends to stay a little elevated. When you have a fastball as good as his, this is a plus. He can elevate that fastball to get hitters which plays out in the second chart. All of those high fastballs end up as foul tips for the most part. All of the fastballs low in the zone end up as swinging strikes for the most part. This also leads me to believe that he has an electric fastball that very few hitters an get solid contact on. His curveball tends to stay up though, which could be an issue. The great thing though is that he keeps his change low and on the inside corner, really allowing him to keep hitters off balance on the corners.

Most of the balls that resulted in the base hit were where you would expect them to be, in the low/middle part of the zone but not at the bottom.

His movement as you imagine is amazing.

One thing that I see is that he really doesn't know where the slider is going when he releases it. Sometimes it moves like his curve and sometimes it moves like his change. And this shows in the vertical movement versus speed as well. His change and his slider are both ending with roughly the same speed and so they are clustered together around the 78-79MPH range. That is really the only drawback (although it is certainly working for him) that I see. I would like to see a little more definition in the slider grouping on the charts but the results really show that he is doing well. I do like that all his pitches are non-contact strikes around 31-33%. I really like this consistency which shows that his stuff is very good.

Summary:

Many people have a misconception about what are good mechanics (both for results and for health purposes). The general idea about having the arm in a certain arm slot with the same 1-2 O'Clock position according to the camera view is simply not the only thing that is important with pitching. The most important thing from a health point of view is that mechanics are consistent and efficient.

Lincecum has both of these aspects. While his release point is different from other pitches, they are the same for all of his pitches, never wavering much more than the width of the baseball. This doesn't give the hitters any extra information as to what is coming. His movement on the pitches have also been consistent. The groupings (with the exception of the slider) means that he knows how the balls will move when he releases it. I think this is true control. Knowing how to control the ball out of your hand is really the key to pitching. Anyone can throw a curveball. Not everyone knows how it will move and where to put it so the hitters won't hit it.

Finally, his command of the zone, as shown by the Pitch location charts is also exceptional. He knows that if he elvates his fastballs in the zone he will be able to get either a non-contact strike or a foul ball. He doesn't have to worry about HR being hit. Similar to that, he knows by throwing the change low and inside to the right handed batter, he's able to keep everyone off balance and sets them up for his fastball up in the zone.

As long as he keeps this going, he will produce at an elite level for years to come. San Fran fans are lucky.