Once a prospect establishes himself as a big leaguer, it's easy to let him fall into the hands of the mainstream media. We specialize in getting out information on guys who are unknowns to the typical baseball fan. But why lose tract of a guy because most fans have become familiar with him?
With the help of PitchFX, we've decided to give some of 2009's rookie pitchers a prospect encore. I'm giddy over Brett Anderson's future.
Another Athletic who broke camp as a member of Oakland's rotation, Brett Anderson has had an outstanding rookie season. We have 2,418 pitches worth of data breaking down how he's succeeded.
Disclaimer: The data below is from www.brooksbaseball.net's PitchFX tool. One of the biggest flaws with PitchFX is misclassified pitches; the pitch classification data below isn't perfect. I've estimated velocity ranges for changeups, curveballs and sliders -- fastball velos should be pretty accurate. For simplicity, I've combined fastballs (Anderson mainly throws a four-seamer). I didn't go back and watch game footage for this report. It's largely based on PitchFX data.
Fastball
Looking at raw velocities alone, I was initially surprised by the lack of swing-throughs Anderson gets with his fastball. His four-seamer has regularly reached the mid-90s between July and September. But the pitch can't have much movement. And there's a good chance that Anderson primarily uses it to set up his breaking balls and attempt get quick outs.
But I thought of something important as I was looking at Anderson's data. What if a pitcher gets a lot of looking strikes with a given pitch? Going by swing-throughs to determine how good a guy's stuff is, I'd miss out on those instances. This could be the case with Anderson. He clearly has stellar command and control. He could be a guy who throws darts with his fastball, catching guys looking with his precision and accuracy. Given the amount of improvement Anderson has shown this season, I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back in 2010 with more movement on his fastball and manages more swing-throughs.
Grade: C
Changeup
I guess Anderson's a good example of why Stephen Strasburg's changeup may not mean much. Anderson rarely throws his changeup (about 6% of the time) and rarely gets swing-throughs with it. It's currently the weakest pitch in his arsenal.
Grade: D
Curveball
Over a quarter of Anderson's offerings are curveballs. You'd think with the number of times he throws the pitch, hitters would eventually catch onto it. But they haven't. He's thrown as many as 43 curveballs in one outing this season, according to PitchFX, topping 30 on 10 occasions (he's made 27 starts).
What's more, Anderson's curveball has improved as the season has gone on. He's throwing it a little harder than his did over the first two months of the season -- tightened it up? He's throwing it a lot more -- added confidence in harder version? And he's getting a slightly higher percentage of swing-throws with it -- especially impressive given that he's letting hitters see it more. Anderson's curve has easily been a plus pitch this season. It may even become a plus-plus pitch.
Grade: A
Slider
From April 10th through June 14th, Anderson generated 5.7% swing throughs with his slider. Since June 20th, he's been at 13.1%. He doesn't throw this pitch nearly as much as his curve (10.0% slider vs. 27.8% curve). But ever since that June 20th start, it has been a go-to swing-through pitch. It isn't as good as his curve, but Anderson's slider is an above-average pitch.
Grade: B
Conclusions
Anderson is a wizard. He has so much going for him that, barring injury, I think he's going to be a guy who could have multiple seasons as the top pitcher in his league -- maybe even baseball.
The improvement he's shown from April to September is outstanding. And at this point it's hard to doubt that he could continue to rapidly improve his arsenal. What's more, Anderson's a thinker with a college baseball coach for a father. On top of having two above-average breaking balls and a fastball that could become a third above-average pitch -- can we really doubt his changeup development either? -- Anderson has plus command and control. We're looking at a guy who may be able to strike out over 200 batters a season while walking less than 50 in his prime. Yikes!
2009 Grade: B-
Ceiling: A+
Discuss this article in our Scouting forum >>>
| Brett Anderson | |||||||||||||
| Date | FB velo | ST | Tot | CH velo | ST | Tot | CB velo | ST | Tot | SL velo | ST | Tot | PC |
| 9/12/2009 | 92-95 | 0.0% | 48 | 82-84 | 0.0% | 3 | 80-84 | 8.3% | 36 | 83-85 | 9.5% | 21 | 108 |
| 9/5/2009 | 92-96 | 1.8% | 55 | 85-87 | 0.0% | 5 | 82-87 | 10.0% | 30 | 84-86 | 0.0% | 8 | 98 |
| 8/30/2009 | 91-96 | 1.8% | 56 | 83-84 | 0.0% | 3 | 82-86 | 3.7% | 27 | 81 | 0.0% | 1 | 87 |
| 8/25/2009 | 91-95 | 3.4% | 59 | 84 | 0.0% | 1 | 82-86 | 11.4% | 35 | 84-85 | 9.1% | 11 | 106 |
| 8/19/2009 | 91-95 | 0.0% | 54 | 85 | 0.0% | 5 | 82-85 | 2.9% | 35 | 84-86 | 28.6% | 7 | 101 |
| 8/14/2009 | 91-93 | 5.3% | 57 | 83-85 | 0.0% | 7 | 81-85 | 11.8% | 34 | n/a | n/a | 0 | 98 |
| 8/9/2009 | 90-95 | 2.9% | 68 | 85 | 33.3% | 3 | 81-85 | 7.7% | 13 | 84-87 | 13.3% | 15 | 99 |
| 8/3/2009 | 91-95 | 5.3% | 57 | 84-85 | 0.0% | 6 | 82-86 | 14.7% | 34 | 84-86 | 22.2% | 9 | 106 |
| 7/29/2009 | 91-96 | 3.1% | 65 | 84-86 | 0.0% | 4 | 83-87 | 17.2% | 29 | 85-87 | 0.0% | 4 | 102 |
| 7/24/2009 | 89-94 | 10.2% | 59 | 83-86 | 0.0% | 7 | 82-86 | 9.3% | 43 | 82-84 | 20.0% | 5 | 114 |
| 7/19/2009 | 86-95 | 0.0% | 57 | 83-85 | 0.0% | 5 | 82-86 | 10.8% | 37 | 85-86 | 40.0% | 5 | 104 |
| 7/12/2009 | 91-93 | 0.0% | 13 | n/a | n/a | 0 | 79-86 | 20.0% | 5 | n/a | n/a | 0 | 18 |
| 7/6/2009 | 91-97 | 6.5% | 62 | 84-85 | 20.0% | 5 | 82-86 | 17.6% | 17 | 85-87 | 11.1% | 27 | 111 |
| 6/29/2009 | 91-97 | 13.5% | 74 | 84-85 | 0.0% | 2 | 83-87 | 0.0% | 21 | 86-88 | 10.0% | 10 | 107 |
| 6/20/2009 | 91-94 | 7.0% | 43 | 84 | 0.0% | 1 | 82-86 | 0.0% | 9 | 84-87 | 14.3% | 14 | 67 |
| 6/14/2009 | 89-93 | 4.1% | 49 | 82-84 | 0.0% | 8 | 79-84 | 23.5% | 17 | 82-83 | 9.1% | 11 | 85 |
| 6/9/2009 | 91-94 | 4.9% | 41 | 82-84 | 0.0% | 9 | 82-85 | 2.9% | 35 | 83-84 | 25.0% | 4 | 89 |
| 6/4/2009 | 90-93 | 4.8% | 63 | 79-83 | 20.0% | 5 | 79-83 | 7.7% | 26 | 81-84 | 0.0% | 13 | 107 |
| 5/30/2009 | 89-92 | 2.6% | 39 | 81-83 | 0.0% | 10 | 79-82 | 3.8% | 26 | 80-82 | 0.0% | 8 | 83 |
| 5/25/2009 | 91-94 | 5.1% | 59 | 82-84 | 14.3% | 7 | 81-85 | 9.1% | 22 | 83-84 | 6.7% | 15 | 103 |
| 5/20/2009 | 91-94 | 0.0% | 45 | 83-85 | 10.0% | 10 | 81-85 | 20.0% | 15 | 83-85 | 20.0% | 10 | 80 |
| 5/15/2009 | 90-93 | 7.3% | 41 | 83-87 | 18.2% | 11 | 81-84 | 0.0% | 29 | 82-83 | 0.0% | 6 | 87 |
| 5/4/2009 | 89-91 | 4.2% | 24 | 83-87 | 8.3% | 12 | 81-85 | 5.6% | 36 | n/a | n/a | 0 | 72 |
| 4/28/2009 | For some reason www.brooksbaseball.net does not have data available for this start. | ||||||||||||
| 4/22/2009 | 89-93 | 0.0% | 46 | 82-85 | 0.0% | 13 | 79-83 | 9.1% | 22 | 82-84 | 6.3% | 16 | 97 |
| 4/15/2009 | 89-94 | 3.2% | 62 | 85-87 | 0.0% | 7 | 81-85 | 13.0% | 23 | 82-85 | 0.0% | 13 | 105 |
| 4/10/2009 | 89-92 | 4.0% | 50 | 83-86 | 0.0% | 9 | 81-84 | 13.3% | 15 | 82-84 | 0.0% | 10 | 84 |
| overall | 91-95 | 4.0% | 49.3% | 83-86 | 4.9% | 5.8% | 81-86 | 9.1% | 23.8% | 84-86 | 9.5% | 9.0% | 93 |
| * ST stands for swing-through; Tot is the number of times a pitch was thrown; PC stands for pitch count | |||||||||||||