Title: John Patterson  – Dissecting the Game

Purpose: To chart and review the pitch selection, location and tendency’s of John Patterson

By: Matthew Rauseo  

Date: August 20, 2005


John Patterson is in the midst of a breakout season.  Through his start on August 19th he has pitched 147 innings, with a 2.37 ERA, 137 strikeouts, 47 walks, allowing 9 homers and posting a 7-4 won -loss record.  Patterson an extreme fly ball pitcher,  is currently third in the National League in ERA, 6th in strikeout rate and 10th in base runners per innings.  

Going into the season Patterson was considered a perennial disappointment.  A highly touted prospect for a number of years he has struggled to establish himself as a viable option as a rotation regular.  Coming to this year he had posted an undistinguished  Major League record of 6 wins and 7 loses with an Earned Run Average of 4.60 in 129 innings.  While his minor league record was only slightly better, A 41 wins against 48 loses an ERA or 4.00 in 687 innings.  Despite the track record hopes for Patterson had been historically high due to first rate "stuff".  

Patterson started the season off hot, posting a 0.98 ERA in 4 April starts, all of which were at least 7 innings while allowing 2 runs or less.  He struggled in May with a 5.49 ERA, also in 4 starts.  He also spent 15 days on the disabled list, after his second straight mediocre start.  Since coming back from the DL at the end of May he has made 17 starts all of them at least 5 innings in duration, while allowing at most 4 runs, which he did only twice.  The chart below shows Patterson's game by game record, in terms of innings pitched and earned runs allowed.  

Patterson has constantly excelled in run prevention, and has also constantly made it into the middle innings of ball games, as he pitched at least 6 innings in 19 of his 23 starters. However, the one small blemish in Patterson's track record this season is that he has only gone deep into in the game (8 or more innings) 3 of his 23 starts.   

The purpose of this article is to examine Patterson's start on 8/19 versus the Mets to try and uncover an inkling of how Patterson has been successful this season.

  THROWN SWING LOOKING FOUL BALL BIP 1st PITCH AVE  HIGH  LOW
Fastball 75 6 12 20 21 16 20 87 92 83
Curveball 16 2 2 3 5 4 2 72 74 66
Changeup 14 0 1 1 11 1 5 81 83 79

The above chart details Patterson's pitch selection and results. Keep in mind I believe the velocity readings are 2-3 Miles Per Hour off.  He worked off his fastball, and had the most success with it.   There is a lot of interesting data in here, thing thing that I think is most interesting though is how poor Patterson's change-up is.  Not only was his command poor, but their wasn't constant or large spread between his fastball and the change.  To me this tells me that Patterson has some room for growth as well, since the third pitch was used almost exclusively as a "show" pitch since he only got it in the strike zone 3 of 14 times he threw it.  

  Away Middle Inside
High

2

15 4
Middle 18 11 18
Low 15 8 14

Patterson moved the ball around the strike zone well, working in all nine zones.  I'm actually suprised he was in the middle of the strike zone as much as he was.

Inning Fastball Curveball Change Up
1 13 3 4
2 8 1 0
3 13 5 1
4 13 1 2
5 8 2 1
6 13 3 2
7 7 1 4

  Pass.

  FASTBALL CURVE CHANGE INSIDE AWAY HIGH LOW
ANDERSON 7 0 3 5 0 3 4
BELTRAN 10 3 4 10 1 3 5
CAIRO 11 3 2 1 8 4 4
CASTRO 9 3 2 2 8 3 5
DIAZ 7 1 0 1 4 2 3
FLOYD 8 2 0 8 1 3 5
REYES 5 1 0 2 0 1 2
SEO 8 1 1 1 5 0 2
WRIGHT 10 2 2 3 9 2 7

Some interesting stuff here - Victor Diaz was feed a steady diet of fastballs away.  While the Nationals mixed it up versus Beltran, they constantly worked him in.  While Floyd got fastballs on the inner half of the plate.  Cairo and Castro were worked away.  While Wright was worked low and away. Keep in mind, the Inside, Away, High and Low column are not mutually exclusive or all encompassing.  If the pitch was over the middle part of the plate it didn't get recorded here. While a pitch that was high and away would be recorded in both the high box and the away box.


All Material Property of Matthew Rauseo - Please link to www.baseballanlaysis.com if you wish to link or cite these pages