mix it up

Last night the M's beat a pretty good Tampa Bay team behind spectacular pitching by Jarrod Washburn. How did that happen? USS Mariner's Dave Cameron explains:

He threw a 91 MPH fastball with hardly any movement at all (upper right corner), he threw an 89 MPH fastball that rivaled Brandon Webb’s sinker for movement, and he threw everything in between. There’s so much variation in velocity and movement that the pitch description algorithm kind of threw it’s hands up in the air and went on strike.

Just on his fastball, we’ve got a lot of four seamers, a few sinkers, a couple of cutters, a pair of splitters, and a few that are just generically labeled fastball because they don’t fit into any of the aforementioned categories. That doesn’t even include the change-up, some of which are probably actually sinkers, and move like his fastball just with less velocity.

Oh, and he also threw two distinctly different breaking balls, just for good measure

In other words, there was a party on Jarrod Washburn's mound, and every pitch type was invited.

Click through to see the pitch F/X chart that proves Cameron's point.