A Few Thoughts On Roy Oswalt

I’m not a Houston Astros fan, but I can’t help but notice how badly Roy Oswalt has struggled in his three starts this season. The reason is because I own him on a couple of fantasy teams. I watched his nightmarish start against the Marlins last week through my fingers, as he served up 4 home runs for the first time in his major league career over just 4 innings. When a pitcher as consistent as Roy Oswalt gives up 4 home runs in 4 innings, and 2 of the guys going deep are Mike Rabelo and Jorge Cantu, it’s natural to assume that something might be wrong physically. Yet looking more closely at the pitches he’s thrown tells a different and, I think, less troubling story.

Oswalt is a little out of whack, certainly. I can only speculate whether there’s something wrong with him mechanically because I’m not an expert, or even an amateur, in breaking down pitchers’ deliveries. Before we delve into what’s different about Oswalt this year, let’s recap his outings so far and how they compare to his career averages.

– Oswalt allowed 4 home runs in his last start against the Marlins, something he has never done in his career. He has given up as many as 3 just twice, once in 2003 and again in 2006. Interestingly, in both games, all three were solo home runs and were the only runs he allowed. He won both games.

– Oswalt has never allowed more than 18 home runs in a single season while averaging 222.1 innings a year. He has allowed 5 home runs in 16 IP this season.

– He didn’t allow his 5th home run until his 8th start last season.

– He has given up 30 hits in 16 IP this season, spanning 3 starts. He allowed exactly 30 hits over his first 5 starts last season, spanning 35 innings.

– Oswalt didn’t lose his third game until May 22nd last year, his 11th start. This year, 3 starts in and he’s 0-3.

– Yet last year after 3 starts, Oswalt’s K/BB was just 12/8, over 21.2 IP. This year, his K/BB is 12/2 over 16 IP.

It’s that last bit of information that I think is most telling. Oswalt is in the strike zone. A lot. All up in the strike zone. He has a K:BB ratio of 6:1. This trumps his career K:BB of 3.63:1. That’s awesome. You would typically expect a pitcher whose control improves that much to see his baseline statistics improve accordingly. That isn’t the case here. Oswalt’s career WHIP is an excellent 1.21; this year, he’s sporting a WHIP of 2.00. So whatever gains Oswalt has temporarily made in terms of control, he’s lost in the 30 hits he’s allowed. Oswalt had a career high WHIP of 1.32, has seen his K/9 drop for a few years, and he’s officially on the wrong side of 30, so there’s evidence he could be in slight decline. But what we’re seeing this year is nothing short of horrendous. Still, I don’t expect it to last.

First, I have to thank this lovely man named Josh Kalk, who has this blog. His PitchFX plots are invaluable when doing this kind of research. Now, on to the goods – here are the percentages of pitches thrown by Oswalt.

Here are the links to Oswalt’s 2007 player card and his 2008 card:

Let’s compare his 2007 season through his 2008 season thus far:

2008: 70.09% Fastballs

13.08 Curveballs

14.02 Sliders

.93 Splitters

1.87 Cutters

2007: 65.53 Fastballs

17.09 Curveballs

13.09 Sliders

4.33 Changeups

What immediately jumps out is that Oswalt no longer features a changeup, or least hasn’t yet featured a changeup. He has thrown 1 splitter and 2 cutters, however. What is preventing him from throwing his change? He threw only 47 of them last year, so it’s primarily a show me pitch, but what has made him scrap it completely in favor of two pitches he’s never featured? You can understand an unsuccessful guy tinkering with new pitches in an attempt to add a couple of years to his career, but we’re talking about arguably one of the 3 most effective starting pitchers of the last 7 years. I don’t think the absence of a changeup is causing Oswalt’s issues, because again, he has never primarily featured it and it wasn’t a plus pitch. I think it’s just interesting to take note that a perennial Cy Young candidate finds it necessary to mess with his arsenal.

Already through 3 starts, Oswalt has worked himself into 3 ball counts 8 times, about 2.66 times per start. In 32 starts in 2007, he was in 41 3 ball counts, about 1.28 times per start. Which brings us to a quick conclusion: he’s getting into more 3 ball counts, being forced to throw his fastball, and hitters are sitting on it. Major league hitters are fastball hitters. Even guys like Mike Rabelo, a relatively unproven player, can sit on one if they know or even suspect it’s coming, and hit it a long way.

He’s worked himself into only 4 0-2 counts in three starts. In 2-2 counts he’s throwing his fastball 76.92% of the time, up from 62.5 last year. This is telling me he’s afraid of working himself into 3-2 counts. On the 6 occasions he has worked 3-2 counts, he’s thrown his fastball 6 times. He’s also been in 2 3-1 counts and thrown his fastball on both occasions. This helps explain his 6:1 KK/BB ratio because he’s been a 1 pitch pitcher in 3 ball counts.

I admit to not having seen Oswalt pitch more than a dozen times in my life because of where I live, but what I have always seen from him is a devastating spike curveball. That’s his out pitch. So why isn’t he throwing it more when he works himself into 2 strike counts? Let’s look at the curveballs that he has thrown so far this year. He’s throwing them nearly 5 MPH slower than in 2007 and there is less vertical and lateral movement on them. Meanwhile, both his fastball and slider are moving more than they did last year. So he must be having command issues. But there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with his fastball, as he’s shown no significant loss in velocity, especially for April.

I think Oswalt is just trying to find his curveball right now. He has very good velocity and good control but seemingly very little command of any of his pitches – meaning they are in the strike zone, just not in the area of the strike zone that Oswalt intends them to be. Perhaps if he was spotting his fastball better or throwing his slider more, it would make up for the lack of depth and velocity in his curveball, but he’s unable to do either of those right now. I’m not a medical professional but the fact that Oswalt’s fastball velocity remains relatively unchanged doesn’t raise any red flags for me. This could simply be a matter of a great pitcher struggling with the feel for his best pitch. I suspect it’s mechanical but I’ll leave that to this guy to decide.