A little over a month ago, I wrote an article on Tom Glavine in which I talked about how I had finally come to accept him as a Met and a top of the rotation starter. In that article, I mentioned Tom’s struggles in the second half of 2004 and the first half of 2005, which led him to only put together one good half of pitching in the last two years.

Well, on The Hardball Times last Thursday, David Appelman, who runs the site Fan Graphs, put up an article on Tom Glavine. In this article, he discusses Tom Glavine’s first and second half pitching and has a graph showing Tom’s BB/9, which, as you would expect, is much better in the halves he has pitched well.

David also has a few more interesting graphs based on just 2005 data. He has a graph showing the location of Tom’s fastballs vs. righties, which confirms our observations that he started to work the inside part of the plate more with his fastball (and also left less of them over the middle of the plate) in the second half.

Another interesting graph shows the percent of times Tom threw each of his pitches throughout the 2005 season. The main point gathered from this graph is that as the year progressed, Tom threw his fastball less and his changeup, slider and curveball more. The last two, the slider and especially the curveball, are very important, as he was hardly throwing them at the start of the year. This mix in pitches, along with Tom’s willingness to at least throw pitches on the inside part of the plate are big reasons why he was so successful in the second half of 2005. And that is what makes me so optimistic about his 2006.

If you have not already, I suggest you take a look at David’s graphs in the link above. They are extremely interesting.