Danny Farquhar returns to the Sox

[SoxAce]

As a minor league pitching coach. Interesting. 

 

[poppysox]

2 hours ago, SoxAce said:

As a minor league pitching coach. Interesting. 

 

Now this is a case of Jerry's loyalty to employee's leaving a good impression in my mind.

[wegner]

Danny is a great story.  Good for him, but I did not realize that his comeback was over.  If a coach can teach a fighting spirit,  it is him.  I second the Reinsdorf loyalty being a good thing in this case.

[Heads22]

At least we know he's open to new stuff

[Boopa1219]

He’s super into analytics and applying the metrics to training and prep work. 

[SoxAce]

6 minutes ago, Heads22 said:

At least we know he's open to new stuff

He has always been into the analytics side of the game. Don't normally say this about Reinsdorf's loyalty to people, but this is a quality hire.

[CWSpalehoseCWS]

2 hours ago, Joshua Strong said:

He’s super into analytics and applying the metrics to training and prep work. 

Yep, hopefully he's good at applying that information to others. Good hire.

[Boopa1219]

3 minutes ago, CWSpalehoseCWS said:

Yep, hopefully he's good at applying that information to others. Good hire.

You could argue that’s one of the most, if not the most valuable skill in the game. 

Ive been reading MVP Machine. 

[CWSpalehoseCWS]

8 minutes ago, Joshua Strong said:

You could argue that’s one of the most, if not the most valuable skill in the game. 

Ive been reading MVP Machine. 

I want to read that so bad, but I know I'll just get so much more frustrated with this FO. 

[mqr]

Reading what Farquhar did with Gio last year was fascinating. I like this move a ton. 

[Boopa1219]

1 hour ago, CWSpalehoseCWS said:

I want to read that so bad, but I know I'll just get so much more frustrated with this FO. 

It’s so good, definitely a worthwhile read. 

[Bob Sacamano]

14 hours ago, SoxAce said:

He has always been into the analytics side of the game. Don't normally say this about Reinsdorf's loyalty to people, but this is a quality hire.

I agree here.

[Dominikk85]

Couldn't the sox have signed him to a one day contract and let him pitch one last inning in the majors?

It is a tank year anyway and even if he is only able to throw it 85 who cares?

[caulfield12]

Ironic that...

1) He’s the first one who pointed out that Giolito needed to go with more high, riding fastballs (the Rays, when Farquhar was there, their pitching staff collectively figured out how effective Lucas could be when analyzing video/data) because of their extreme carry and the lack of effectiveness on his two seam sinking fastball.  But they were still able to figure it out when Giolito’s fastball was only at 92 then, compared to 94-97.   (fwiw, Marco Estrada’s was the best in MLB)

2) Farquhar had to approach Hahn for the job...

3) Giolito’s high school coach (Harvard Westlake in LA) got a big league job, just not in Chicago

 

The Rays arguably have the most advanced analytics group in baseball...guess we can’t afford to follow suit.

 

https://theathletic.com/246514/2018/02/20/danny-farquhars-data-centric-approach-paying-dividends-for-lucas-giolito/

“So basically how it works, they both come out at the same slot, the fastball and the changeup,” Farquhar explained. “The fastball stays up and then the changeup goes down. You’re playing more on up and down, which is also as a hitter, you know most hitters can distinguish in and out. They know if a ball is half an inch on the plate, or half an inch off the plate. But up and down, the strike zone changes so much depending on the umpire and the hitters kinda really don’t know where that top line is in the strike zone. The bottom line they know a little bit more, but they say up and down is harder to distinguish than in and out.”

Simple enough of a concept to explain, but coming from the Rays, the approach was backed by hard data, displayed to their pitching entire staff with plot graphs of every pitch in their arsenal. Some big leaguers would blanch at being flooded with so much statistical analysis — and then there’s Danny Farquhar.

Like any pitcher, Farquhar, now on his sixth major league organization, has had countless pitching coaches stressing the importance of keeping the ball low in the zone and out of harm’s way. But the Rays told him his fastball dropped less than others, and stayed up a bit longer as it neared to the plate, causing hitters to swing through it when he elevated and challenged them with it, whereas it flattened out lower in the zone. Relatedly, Farquhar’s four-seamer was in the top 25 percent of the league for whiffs per swing among pitchers who threw more than 200 fastballs last year.

“The fastball has a thing called carry,” Farquhar said. “My fastball has an average of 10 or 11 inches of carry — and this is what the Rays told me — the average big league fastball is nine inches of carry, so it’s a couple inches above that. Then you have the kill zone which is the one that gets murdered most of the time by the hitters, and that’s eight inches of carry. That’s the one where you don’t want to be no matter what the pitch is. That’s not to say that every pitch with that carry level is going to be hit over the fence, but a majority of them get hit for extra-base hits. And then you have the changeup, I think mine sits between three and four, so it comes out the same but there’s separation in the pitch.”

Being above or below the kill zone, where sinkers and offspeed pitches drop at a quicker rate than expected, is thus where effectiveness lies. Lucas Giolito’s four-seam fastball averaged around 10 inches of carry in his brief time in the majors last season, which by the Rays’ model, made it destined for success once he decided to elevate it, even though it only sat at 92 mph.”

[caulfield12]

The exact opposite of the Don Cooper school...being high and low in the strike zone with 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock hard breaking sliders and then four seamers above the zone rather than sinkers below.