Tag Archives: Pitch

“What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch, it was a bit of handbags, that’s all.” – Wayne Rooney

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Without looking, do you know off the top of your head who is currently atop the Italian Serie A table?  I bet you would say AC Milan or Inter Milan.  Some of you may go for Juventus.  You would be wrong if you went with any of those three footballing super-powers.  Leading the Italian league so far this year?  SS Lazio with a stunning record of 7 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss.  That loss, by the way, was in their first league match of the season, a 2-0 defeat to Sampdoria.

Now, to be fair, Lazio has only played AC Milan (a 1-1 draw) amongst the league’s usual heavyweights, but still, they are now unbeaten in eight straight league matches, and now have a chance to really prove their worth tomorrow morning when they face bitter rivals and derby foes AS Roma.

Lazio are winning through one of the stingiest defenses in club football right now.  Their keeper, Fernando Muslera, has only conceded six times in nine matches, and again, two of those were in the loss to Sampdoria.  They are certainly not easy to crack open.  They don’t score a ton, to be honest, tallying 13 times in these nine matches, but when you play defense like they do, one or two goals will mostly be enough to win.

Their manager is an interesting story.  His name is Edoardo Reja, and he met his wife Livia while he was rooming with current England gaffer Fabio Capello when they both played for Ferrara.  He has never been considered to be a top manager, but he’s really done a job with this squad so far, and has them leading one of the more prestigious club leagues in Europe.

Five of their next eight matches are at home, before the Italian holiday break.  The big ones are obviously the derby match tomorrow morning against Roma, home encounters with Napoli and Inter Milan, and an away tussle with Juventus.  Lazio could certainly be one of the squads to make some noise during this end of Autumn/beginning of Winter period that’s upcoming.  They will be one to watch, for sure.

Let’s see what we have for television and internet today.  It’s a huge day of matches, to be honest.

8:45 am – ESPN2 – Bolton vs. Tottenham
9:30 am – GolTV – Schalke 04 vs. St. Pauli (Replay)
10:30 am – ESPN3.com – Borussia Moenchengladbach vs. Bayern Munich
11:00 am – Fox Soccer Channel – Manchester United vs. Wolverhampton
11:00 am – Fox Soccer Plus/FoxSoccer.tv – Fulham vs. Aston Villa
11:00 am – FoxSoccer.tv – Birmingham City vs. West Ham United
11:00 am – FoxSoccer.tv – Blackburn vs. Wigan
11:00 am – FoxSoccer.tv – Blackpool vs. Everton
11:00 am – FoxSoccer.tv – Sunderland vs. Stoke City
1:00 pm – Fox Soccer Plus/FoxSoccer.tv – Bologna vs. Lecce
1:00 pm – Fox Soccer Channel – Sunderland vs. Stoke City (Delayed)
1:20 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Derby County vs. Portsmouth
2:00 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Sochaux vs. Auxerre
2:00 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Arles vs. Caen
2:00 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Bordeaux vs. Valenciennes
2:00 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Saint Etienne vs. Lorient
3:00 pm – GolTV – Real Sociedad vs. Racing Santander
3:00 pm – Fox Soccer Plus – Derby County vs. Portsmouth (Delayed)
3:45 pm – Fox Soccer Channel – Inter Milan vs. Brescia
4:00 pm – FoxSoccer.tv – Stade Rennes vs. Lyon
4:00 pm – Telefutura – Columbus Crew vs. Colorado Rapids
5:00 pm – DirecTV – Espanyol vs. Malaga
5:00 pm – Fox Soccer Plus – Blackpool vs. Everton (Delayed)
6:00 pm – Fox Soccer Channel – AFC Wimbledon vs. Ebbsfleet United (FA Cup, Delayed)
6:30 pm – Azteca America – Jaguares vs. Atlas
7:00 pm – Telefutura – San Luis vs. Santos Laguna
7:30 pm – GolTV – Once Caldas vs. America de Cali
9:00 pm – Telemundo – Chivas de Guadalajara vs. Cruz Azul
9:00 pm – Telefutura – Pachuca vs. Queretaro
9:30 pm – GolTV – Millonarios vs. Deportes Tolima
10:00 pm – Fox Soccer Channel – Real Salt Lake vs. FC Dallas
11:00 pm – Telemundo – Atlante vs. Club America
1:00 am – Fox Soccer Channel – Sydney FC vs. Newcastle Jets

Obviously, a lot of us will be focused on the two MLS playoff matches happening today.  Colorado and FC Dallas (the two away teams today) hold one goal aggregate advantages coming into today, so those matches will be highly charged, I would imagine.  With San Jose eliminating the Red Bulls on Thursday evening, MLS is once again proving that their playoffs are not to be missed.  It’s a pretty good day of Prem action, with Spurs-Bolton in the early match, and a sneaky tough Wolves team traveling to Old Trafford to face the still-Rooney-less Red Devils.  The Fulham-Villa match has the air of desperation hanging over it, as both of those squads really need to build up some points before the relatively awful December fixture crush starts.  All in all, though, it’s quite a day of matches available today.  I hope you enjoy some of them.

Thanks as always for your clicks and comments.  We truly do appreciate it.  Sorry for the lack of a podcast this past week, we ran into some time commitments that did not allow us to get together to record.  I believe that we’ll have one this next week, so stay tuned for that.  Have a great Saturday and enjoy the matches.

 


Avoiding the Drop

Searching for Unusual Pitch Selections

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Michael Lewis and Bill Simmons have written that “baseball is an individual sport masquerading as a team one.” Some have reasoned that this is why baseball lends itself to statistical analysis, but I don’t think that’s the reason. Sure, some individual sports, like tennis, are great for analysis, but with others like boxing, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I believe that what sets baseball apart from other team sports is that it can better be classified as a sequential game as opposed to a simultaneous one.

Basketball, hockey, and soccer are good examples of simultaneous games, as concurrent player interaction makes it extremely difficult to isolate any single event from the play as a whole. Football is difficult to categorize, as there are ten minutes of high-octane game action which I’d call simultaneous play, but the rest of the game involves more discreet decision-making. Play calling lends itself beautifully to analytics. As for baseball, most of the game is played in turns. Each defender positions himself, the pitcher chooses a pitch type and location, and the batter decides whether or not to swing. The rest is a matter of execution.

David Gassko wrote an awesome article using game theory to explore the batter pitcher match-up. In his analysis of pitch selection, he used Brad Lidge as his example. Lidge throws a fastball and a slider. Really good ones at that. His task is to mix his pitches in such a way that the batter cannot gain an advantage by anticipating one way or the other. That mix will depend on the batter (it’s often convenient to assume that pitchers have perfect information with regards to the batter; they do not.), the park, the umpire, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m going to focus on the count. The count should only matter in determining the rate at which he chooses to throw strikes. Now, there’s strong evidence to suggest that baseball players don’t act rationally with regards to the count. Dave Allen has shown that batters swing more often 3-2 than they do 2-2. But most pitchers will follow the count in the sense that they throw more fastballs when they need strikes and mix in their harder-to-control off-speed pitches when they can afford balls. Here is Lidge’s pitch mix for his career, data courtesy of FanGraphs.

Lidgeps.jpg

That seems fine to me. I ordered the ball/strike count from from highest run expectancy to lowest, which should theoretically follow with highest fastball percentage to lowest.

A.J. Burnett, like Lidge, mainly sticks to two pitches. He might even adhere more strictly to the count than Lidge. When he falls behind, he refuses to throw a breaking ball. He hasn’t thrown a 3-0 curveball since 2008. But when he has two strikes, he relies heavily on it.

Burnettps.jpg

And the best example of pitch selection based almost entirely on the count comes from Tim Wakefield.

Wakefieldps.jpg

I wanted to find a few pitchers who defy this trend. “Pitching backwards” is a common way to describe such an approach. I looked at a fair number of pitchers, and while some guys depend less on the count in selecting pitches than others, I didn’t think I would find anybody who truly “pitched backwards.” I e-mailed Rich Lederer, and he suggested I look into Bronson Arroyo. You should too.

Arroyops.jpg

I would guess that something funky’s going on here. Arroyo’s changeup probably isn’t like your normal change. But since 2002, Baseball Info Solutions video scouts have been consistent in calling that pitch — whatever it is — a changeup. I don’t know what to make of that. Still, how can he throw his curveball 30% of the time on a 2-0 count and 8% on an 0-2 count? Has Arroyo ever given an interview explaining his thought process? Are there any other pitchers at all similar to Arroyo?

The other way that pitchers can defy convention, other than by pitching backwards, is by not following a trend at all. Certain pitchers will only employ a certain pitch in certain counts.

Bobby Jenks has embraced the idea of the “out pitch.” He’s a fastball-slider pitcher early in the count. When he gets to three balls, he’ll use the fastball exclusively. But when Jenks gets the count to 0-2 or 1-2, he busts out a curve nearly half the time. He neglects the pitch on other counts, but it’s this huge weapon in these scenarios.

Jenksps.jpg

Jenks isn’t alone. Another A.L. Central Closer who embraces his curveball as an out pitch is Joakim Soria. Soria, a four-pitch pitcher, mixes his fastball, slider and change regularly. His curveball, however, he keeps in his pocket until he gets to two strikes at which point it enters the hitters mind.

Soriaps.jpg

If you can think of any pitcher whose pitch selection puzzles you, please let me hear them.

Baseball Analysts

Another Day, Another Amazing Circus Shot On The Soccer Pitch (Video)

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Remember the incendiary back-heel flick goal by Matty Burrows of Glentoran that is the early favorite for goal of the year? Well, the man has done it again.

Top notch. High class. Matty Burrows.

[h/t The Spoiler]

SportsGrid

New Mexico’s Hair-Pulling Defender, Elizabeth Lambert, Is Back On The Pitch

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Playing women’s soccer in the Mountain West Conference just became a much more dangerous proposition.

That’s thanks to the reinstatement of University of New Mexico defender Elizabeth Lambert, who catapulted the conference into infamy with her hair-pulling, spine-punching antics in last fall’s conference tournament.

The brutality, which became an Internet sensation and elicited response from everyone’s moral compass, “The Today Show,” earned Lambert a two-game ban from the university that carried over to 2010 when a slightly bruised BYU bounced the Lobos out of the MWC tourney.

Now nine months later, Lambert is ready to return to the Lobos, who opened the 2010 season with a pair of wins by a combined school of 10-0. The senior is eligible to return on Friday when the Lobos travel to Wisconsin to tangle with UW-Milwaukee.

Where Lambert will take her senior season, we’re not sure. We can’t say for sure if the “sexual aggression” that many suggested was at the root of her outbursts has been alleviated (though this video suggests not).

The overwhelming response in the aftermath of the violence was negative, including myriad hate mail and the publishing of her parents’ home phone number in Southern California. Lambert apologized profusely in an interview with the New York Times, saying that she, “still deeply regret[s] it and will always regret it and will carry it through the rest of my life not to retaliate.”

The summer hiatus seems to have turned the tide of public opinion in Lambert’s favor, as the almost 10,000 fans she has accumulated in various Facebook pages attest (see here, here, and here).

In addition to being added to the pantheon of athletes whose names have become verbs, she’s also earned the right of a pair of “Marry Me, Elizabeth Lambert” groups for English and Spanish suitors. She’s even got an “Elizabeth Lambert for President” group that has almost six times as many fans as the outnumbered “I Hate Elizabeth Lambert” group.

For the storm she generated, Lambert has maintained a relatively normal life. She was named to the MWC All-Academic team last fall, the second time she has received the honor, and spearheaded the team’s charitable campaign for Locks of Love over the winter, to provide hairpieces to financially disadvantaged youth.

The only thing we can hope she didn’t do during the offseason was add her unique brand of discipline to the curriculum of the occupational therapy courses she’s taking.

Photo via

SportsGrid

The Pitch: Football’s 2011 Recruiter Of The Year

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According to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and 247Sports.com, Alabama linebackers coach Sal Sunseri is college football’s “2011 Recruiter of the Year.”

(SI & 24/7: The best recruiting pitch college football has to offer)
In response to his being bestowed such a prestigious honor on behalf of the University of Alabama, here’s Sunseri first comments as reported by 247Sports.com’s [...]
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