FanPost

Royals Pitchers with Plus Pitches

John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports

I helped Moose's and Hosmer's favorite reporter, Eno Sarris, find all the pitchers who had plus pitches in either ground ball rate or swinging strike rate. With the full list of pitchers, I just decided to go ahead and post how all the Royals stacked up.

His benchmarks for ground ball rate and swinging strike rate were used on pitches from the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The Pitches Plus are pitches which are above average by both metrics. Well let me get to the list:

Pitcher Count All Plusses Pitches Plus CU SI FT FF CH SL FC
Greg Holland 1563 7 3 2 0 0 1 2 2 0
Kelvin Herrera 1557 7 3 2 0 2 2 1 0 0
Yordano Ventura 1528 7 2 2 0 1 1 2 0 1
Aaron Crow 1282 5 1 2 0 1 1 0 1 0
Francisley Bueno 178 5 1 0 0 2 1 1 1 0
James Shields 5460 5 2 1 0 0 0 2 0 2
Luke Hochevar 1043 5 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 2
Aaron Brooks 87 4 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 0
Luis Mendoza 1576 4 1 0 0 0 1 1 2 0
Chris Dwyer 46 3 1 2 0 0 1 0 0 0
Danny Duffy 1540 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1
Louis Coleman 787 3 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0
Michael Mariot 396 3 1 0 0 2 0 1 0 0
Wade Davis 3051 3 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2
Donnie Joseph 123 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
Jason Vargas 4055 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
Jeremy Guthrie 5005 2 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0
Tim Collins 1287 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
Bruce Chen 2306 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Casey Coleman 34 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Everett Teaford 13 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Wilking Rodriguez 33 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
Jamey Carroll 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Justin Marks 55 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

  • One item the Royals can exploit is flyball pitches, at least in spacious Kaufman Stadium.
  • Vargas, Guthrie and Chen only have a couple of plus type pitches, or in Chen's case one.
  • Ventura looks like he is going to nice little pitcher if he can stay healthy.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.