A Couple of Notes on Gavin Floyd

Though on the surface he appeared one of the major league’s breakout pitchers in 2008, Gavin Floyd had a great deal of luck come his way during his 17-win, 3.84 ERA season last year.

Because of so-so peripherals, an abnormally low .268 BABIP and a high home run rate, many projection systems cried out for regression in 2009. PECOTA called for a 5.00 ERA in just 107 innings, CHONE projected a 5.08 ERA in 172 innings and ZiPS a 4.70 ERA in 184 innings.

Despite struggling in April and May, Floyd has really turned a corner in corner in June and he’s become a more complete pitcher in 2009. Though his ERA is currently 4.65, his FIP-ERA of 3.79 is 12th best among AL starters. There are a couple of things in particular that have changed with Floyd since 2008.

*Mixing It Up*

Here are Floyd’s pitch distribution charts from last season:

Floyd Pitch Dist 2008 (via mpindels)

And from thus far into the 2009 season:

Floyd Pitch Dist 2009 (via mpindels)

Note that each charts percentages do not add up to 100% because intentional balls and pitchouts were not included.

From here we can see that Floyd is relying less and less on his fastball and focusing a bit more on his secondary pitches.

Also note the addition of a two seam fastball detected by pitch f/x. Pitch f/x algorithms are often inaccurate meaning Floyd may not intentionally be throwing a two-seam fastball, but the pitch f/x system is picking up a pitch similar to it.

Over the last three seasons as a whole, Floyd has used his fastball less and less, mixing up his repertoire and perhaps becoming a little less predictable.

*The Curveball*

One of the pitches he’s been using a bit more frequently is his curveball, known by most White Sox fans as his best pitch.

This season Floyd is throwing his curveball at an average velocity of 79.8 MPH, a little more than two MPH faster than the average curveball. He’s also getting an average of -5.4 inches of vertical movement, right on target with the major league average, and 7.1 inches of horizontal movement, nearly two inches more than the major league average. That being said, his curveball is clearly an above average pitch: he’s getting more horizontal movement and throwing it harder than the average major league pitcher with a curveball.

Here is a look at the value of each of Floyd’s pitch types of the last two seasons. For those new to this type of statistic, the wFB/C column represents fastball runs above average per 100 fastballs. The wCB/C column represents curveball runs above average per 100 curveballs and so on:

Floyd Pitch Values (via mpindels)

As we can see, Floyd is getting much more value from his curveball in 2009 at 2.95 runs above average per 100 curveballs which is the third best figure in the AL behind Brad Bergesen of Baltimore and Roy Halladay of Toronto.

All Statistics provided by Fangraphs.