Barry Zito Watch

I'll use this post to note that I'll be splitting my time between here and Beyond the Box Score. My first post went up this morning, investigating Barry Zito's 2010 success. Please, head on over and take a look. For now, I think I'll be posting my analysis of starters at BTB while saving my analysis for relievers here at RPBlog. Here's a snippet from the post:

…we shouldn't be satisfied in chalking up Zito's performance to luck. First, that doesn't really tell us anything. Second, we don't know if that's true just yet. So let's dig a litter deeper, shall we? With the help of PitchFX data from Brooks Baseball, we can see if Zito's pitches are behaving any differently this year than last. Typically, I start off by looking at overall velocity across all pitches. In this particular case, however, it's clear that pitch speed isn't explaining Zito's 2010 boost. See the chart below:

Continue reading at Beyond the Box Score...