Jon Niese – Season Analysis 2008

Basic Stats

The next pitcher in my series of pitching profiles is Jon Niese.  I was going to do Luis Ayala but I only have Mets data right now so I figured I’d wait till I got all the data.  Niese only made 3 starts as a Met, so the data is limited on him.  But it is quite possible that he might emerge as the Mets 5^th starter so I figured it’s a good idea to take a look at him. 

As stated above, Niese only made 3 starts for the Mets. He threw 3 innings in two of those starts and 8 innings in the other.  He had one great start sandwiched between two bad starts.  He finished the season with a 7.07 ERA but did show some promise in that one start against the Atlanta Braves. 

Looking at his peripheral statistics, Niese did surprisingly well in the K/9 category with a 7.07.  That’s not bad for a guy that doesn’t throw that hard and it’s in line with his minor league numbers.  Jon’s major issue was issuing walks in the majors.  Niese had 8 walks in 14 innings producing a 5.14 BB/9 rate.  Jon will have to improve upon that to be an effective starter.  Since he only threw 14 innings, I’m not sure how much stock we can really put in these numbers and others.  We will have to see how Jon does next season to get a good grasp on what to expect from him. 

Looking at his lefty/righty splits, Jon actually had more success against righties then lefties, although he was pretty bad against both sides.  In the minors, Niese learned how to throw a cutter and this has been a pitch that’s effective for him against right handed batters.  It’ll be interesting to see if this pattern continues throughout his career. 

Pitch F/X Data

1) What Does He Throw

 Using data from MLB Gameday application, we can look further in detail to what Jon Niese threw in 2008.  Niese threw 267 pitches during the 2008 season.  Gameday has tracked all of his pitches. 

 Let’s take a look at Jon Niese’s pitches.  The first pitch I’d like to look at is his fastball.  His pitch had 9.48 inches of vertical movement so I labeled this pitch a 4-seam fastball.  He throws his 4-seamer at 90 mph, about a 1 mph lower then league average. Also his fastball is somewhat straighter then the league average fastball as he only gets 3.95 inches of horizontal movement.  I don’t think this is really that important since 4-seamers are typically faster and thrown straighter then 2-seamers.  Also, it’s quite possible that some cutters are mixed in there since the two have similar horizontal movement. 

The next pitch I’d like to discuss is Jon Niese’s cut fastball or cutter.  I think Jon is the first Mets pitcher we have profiled so far that throws a cutter.  In the minors, Jon struggled against right handed batters.  In order to improve against them, he developed a cut fastball.  Normally, a fastball from a left-handed pitcher will naturally move left as it is thrown towards the plate.  A cut fastball acts just the opposite, slightly tailing into a right-handed batter.  This pitch is very similar to the slider, except its thrown closer to fastball speed.  As you can see, his cutter is about 2 mph different than his 4-seamer.  His cutter didn’t really tail into the righties, but rather it tailed into lefties far less than the 4-seamer.  Also, looking at the data from Fangraphs, they stated Jon threw the fastball 63.3% of the time and the cutter only 2.2%.  From my data above, I have the split at 39% 4-seamer and 27% cutter.  Since Jon only threw 264 pitches, I’m not sure how accurate this is.  It might be that Fangraphs was only counting the pitches that tailed into the right-handed batters as cutters (from my data I only count 5 pitches).  I’m fairly confident that Jon did indeed throw more than 2.2% cutters last season and that the number should be closer to the figure above 

Aside from the cutter and 4-seamer, the big pitch for Niese is his curveball.  Jon’s curveball is a great one.  His curveball is thrown 12 to 6, having less horizontal movement than average but much greater vertical movement than average. 

Jon Niese also throws a changeup.  Niese gets a lot of horizontal movement on this pitch compared to his 4-seamer.  I’m not entirely sure whether this is a good thing or not.  Part of what makes a changeup so effective is that is behaves exactly like a fastball, only thrown slower.  A large difference in movement between the changeup and fastball will probably tip off a batter into knowing what is coming.  Also the difference between his fastball and changeup is about 8.2 mph, which is a bit less than some of the other pitchers we have profiled. Before moving on, I wanted to look at his one good start.  Here is the table for that game alone: 

 He threw more cutters and curveballs in this start and less 4-seamers and changeups.  Other than that I don’t see any major differences.  The speed and movement is similar to his total chart. 

2) When Does He Throw It? 

Next lets breakdown Jon’s pitches between Lefty vs. Righty 

 A couple of things I like to point out.  Jon did not throw his changeup at all to lefties.  We would definitely see lefties throwing more changeups to right-handed batters than left-handed batters so that seems about right.  The thing that confuses me is the cutter column.  He threw more cutters to lefties than righties.  This doesn’t seem right since the reason he developed the cutter is to be more effective against the right-handed batter.  I can think of 3 reasons.  It’s possible we just have a sample size issue here.  267 pitches isn’t a whole lot of pitches to work with.  It’s also possible that we were classifying some 4-seamers as cutters.  The last reason is maybe Jon’s cutter is so effective for him that he throws it against both righties and lefties.  We’ll probably have to revisit this next season.  Lastly, Jon throws the curveball more against lefties than righties which makes sense since the curveball will tail away from the left-handed batter.  Sliders especially are thrown more against opposite handed batters.  Curveballs are as well, except the split isn’t as large.  With the vertical drop of the curveball, you can throw it against both righties and lefties and be effective. 

3) What Happens When He Throws It? 

Here is a breakdown on what happens when Joe throws each type of pitch.  Since we have such little data, ill just show the total breakdown. 

Total

 As you can see, there were only 50 balls put in play so talking about BABIP would be kind of pointless here given the small data.  He did give up 3 singles on 5 balls in play on the changeup and since he threw this pitch the least of all his pitches, it suggests that he might not have a whole lot of confidence in this pitch.  Also, the cutter was hit rather hard as well, 6 singles and 3 doubles in 15 balls in play.  Although he did give up 3 singles and a double, his curveball produced 9 ground ball outs for him.  As far as most effective pitch when balls are hit, his four-seamer came out on top, just allowing 2 doubles in 13 balls in play. 

What’s In Store for 2009?

 Unlike the majority of the pitchers profiled so far, Jon Niese has had very little MLB experience.  The more data you have on a person, the easier it is to predict future performance.  Since Niese is still young and has little experience, it’s difficult to tell what may become of him.  He has an outstanding curveball and if he can keep the walks down from 2008, he can be productive.  Can he be the Mets 5^th starter?  I’m not quite sure.  Pelfrey struggled mightily before having success and the same might be in store for young Niese.  At this point his in career, I think the Mets would be making a big mistake relying on him next year to fill out a rotation spot.  A full year at AAA might do him well.  He did make big strides last season and I think another year down there can only bring better things for Jon Niese in the future.