Jonathan Papelbon, one trick pony?

Thanks to the MLB At Bat '09 application for my iPhone I was able to witness something pretty remarkable last night.

Boston Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon, was brought in a non-save situation against the Detroit Tigers.  Miguel Cabrera, Curtis Granderson and Brandon Inge all singled to load the bases.  Next up was left fielder Josh Anderson,  who proceeded to have an eleven pitch at-bat seeing nothing but fastballs.

Now, an entire at-bat with all fast balls is not that rare, but eleven pitch at-bats are.  So as the ninth pitch of the at-bat posted to the boxscore it got me thinking.  How many fastballs had Papelbon thrown the previous three hitters?  Anderson, by all accounts, is not a scary hitter.  Had he gotten a hit it would have been a single, maybe an extra base hit.  He is not Miguel Cabrera.

So, I check out what he had thrown to Cabrera, Granderson and Inge.  

Cabrera: 2 Sliders and 3 fastballs

Granderson: 4 fastballs

Inge: 2 Sliders and 3 fastballs

4 sliders to the previous three hitters.  So maybe Papelbon and Varitek  had a scouting report that Anderson could not hit a good fastball, which Papelbon does have.  But then on the next batter, Jeff Larish, he threw him 5 fastballs.  (Note: MLB Gameday pitch tracker listed 1 pitch as a change up, but it had the same speed and break as a pitch throw previously to Larish listed as a fastball.  So I am saying that it was a fastball.)  Larish, like Anderson, struck out swinging.

The final batter was Ramon Santiago who also faced, you guessed it, nothing but fastballs.  5 in fact.  He too, struck out swinging.  

Papelbon's final pitch count was 35.  31 of them were fastballs.  As I said before, Papelbon does have a good fastball.  It is regularly clocked at 95 MPH, but there is one fatal flaw with it.  It is straight as an arrow.  Very few times does the ball actually move up, down, run or tail.  Friends of mine, who are die hard Sox fans, are concerned about his straight fastball.  They are also concerned by the fact that he seems to throw nothing but fastballs.

Me, being the stat geek that I am, decided to find out for myself what percentage of the time is Papelbon throwing his fastball?  I found stats at Fangraphs.com.  I'm not saying the stats are perfect, but I could not find the numbers anywhere else.  If anyone finds the stats from another source I will gladly take a look at them.

Take a look at the stats:

Here

You will see that this season he is throwing his fastball 79.4% of the time.  Which is actually down from the 2008 season, 81.2%.  However, he is throwing his slider more, more than any other time in his short career, 10.7%.  The one pitch that he is throwing less of is his splitter.  9.7%, the lowest percentage of any point in his career.  

I remember when Papelbon first started as the Red Sox closer.  He would throw fastballs, high and on the corners, then throw a nasty splitter that hitters would never touch.  He would bounce it a lot too.  Which is fine because for the most part Varitek or Mirabelli would block it and tag the runner or throw to first for the out.  He was dominant this way.  He still is dominant, but if he continues to rely on his fastball he will start to get hit.  It does not matter if it is 105 MPH or 85 MPH, if it is straight it will get hit.  

I know that Papelbon looks up to Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time, but is he trying to become Mo?  It is an interesting thought, but I highly doubt it.  Maybe if he threw a slider or split finger pitch all the time I could see it, but not a straight fastball.  Mariano throws a cutter, when thrown correctly, will move or cut away from a righty and in to a lefty.  The only place a straight fastball is moving is over the outfield wall when it gets jacked for a home run.  

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