May 1, 2013; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Athletics first baseman Nate Freiman (7) hits a RBI-double scoring third baseman Josh Donaldson (20, not pictured) against the Los Angeles Angels during the third inning at O.co Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Nate Freiman is one of the bigger players in all of MLB baseball, standing at a listed 6 feet 7 inches. He was old for the level in 2012, but he had a nice year in AA for the Padres organization. The Astros then selected the 1st baseman in the Rule 5 draft, but designated him for assignment before the start of the season. Rather than going unclaimed and returning to the Padres, he was claimed by the Athletics, who have kept him on the roster since then. Frankly, he hasn’t been very good so far, not showing the power that he should produce with the frame, but has about an average strikeout rate and a plus walk rate so far. Since Freiman fascinated me in AA last year, I wanted to look at the Pitch F/X data of his time in the Majors so far, and see if we can project Freiman going forward.

First, let’s look at his spray chart according to Texas Leaguers, and see where the right-handed batter is hitting the baseball:

He has been rather balanced so far it seems, showing power to both his pull side and up the middle (and a little the other way as well). While, as mentioned above, the numbers haven’t shown it, he has hit the ball with some serious authority, with an average batted ball distance of 211 feet according to Baseball Heat Maps (267 if you tease out the balls hit under 150 feet).

This opposing pitcher release point chart will show us the kind of pitchers Freiman has faced, along with the results of the pitches:

Despite swinging through a healthy amount of pitches against lefties, he is putting a lot in play and having good results. The balls he is putting in play against righties all seem to be outs, but two of the three pitches he has seen from far out righties have been put in play, which is a good sign. This spin and speed chart will show us what kinds of pitches he is seeing:

While he is having success against high spin curves (usually lefty curves), he seems to be having a lot of problems with sliders (those pitches between 80-85 MPH with little to mid spin).

This is where Freiman has been pitched on average, by result and by (MLBAM tags, though I combined all fastball types) pitch type:

Not surprisingly, he is seeing a lot of arm side changes from lefties, and curves down the middle and low, but seeing a lot of sliders in is surprising. Most sliders are thrown to the glove side of the plate and with the platoon advantage, so you would expect most of the sliders to be away from him. The fastballs and average pitch are thrown in normal spots, on the slight inside part of the plate for Freiman (with the fastball a little higher than the average pitch). His runs scored plays (homers or RBI plays) are on pitches high and on the outside part of the strike zone, while his whiffs and other contact plays are almost in identical spots (the outside part of the plate).

As you might expect from both the strike zone chart and the fact that he is a gigantic slugger that was old for the minors, his bat speed may be a question. Freiman has seen 54 fastballs 92 MPH or over (what you might call “above average” fastballs). Here are where they were located along with result:

He obviously isn’t doing much with them, getting a lot of them in the middle or the inside part of the plate, and really only getting a couple of hits and a lot of swinging strikes. Something I thought about when looking at this strike zone is his height. The strike zone above is just the traditional strike zone, not taking into account height. Notice that some low pitches in the strike zone were called balls, while balls above the traditional strike zone were called strikes. So here is his called strike zone (along with the traditional strike zone for bearings) to give us an idea of how umpires are calling pitches against him:

There only appears to be one absurdly high called strike, and there is one that was really low too, so I don’t think the strike zone caused by height is a real factor for Freiman (or, it hasn’t been one so far).

Freiman clearly has the raw power to succeed in the big leagues, and he has flashed it in games so far this season. There are some questions about whether or not he can really hit big league fastballs, but his power comes from balls up as well. So for now, he is a high risk high reward hitter, as the pitch that can get him out is the same pitch and location he can launch out of the park. This makes sequencing important, and this is where slow bat speed sluggers usually get exposed at the big league level. They have to sit on fastballs and then big league pitchers throw them quality breaking balls and they swing too early or at pitches out of the strike zone. This is what makes Freiman’s early struggles on slider like pitches (even with the weird location) concerning. If he can’t hit (or select the right breaking balls to hit) he is in a lot of trouble and the raw power will never be fully tapped and he will be destined to be a AAA slugger. I don’t think he has the hitting tools to be an every day player (as he needs to really hit almost like an all-star to be an even average player as he has no positional value and his defense is poor), but if he proves he can recognize breaking pitches (the sample seems to small to really tell with the data right now), he could be a good platoon player or good bench bat for a National League team.

May 13, 2013; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo breaks his bat during the eighth inning against the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

The Chicago Cubs’ announced earlier this week that they had signed Anthony Rizzo to a 7 year extension worth 41 million dollars. It will keep him in a Cubs uniform until at least 2019 and possibly up to 2021 and can be worth up to 73 million dollars. The extension buys out this year, when he was making near league minimum, next year, when he would make near minimum, his 3 arbitration years, and then at least two of his free agent years, keeping him around until at least his age 29 season. Rizzo originally broke into the big leagues with the Padres (after being a part of the Adrian Gonzalez deal with the Red Sox), but really struggled. He then was traded to the Cubs where he had thrived. I thought it would be a good idea in this post to look at his Pitch F/X data and see what we can tell about Rizzo as a hitter (he is a first baseman, so he has to succeed with the bat obviously), and see whether or not he can keep it up.

For our purposes, we will look at only his data as a Cub, and only versus starting pitchers. By my count, this gives us 1322 pitches to look at, a decent sample.

First, let’s see where pitchers are throwing the ball to the left-handed hitter., along with some results for comparison:

Teams try to keep the ball on the away part of the plate on average, nothing that is unusual. His tendencies are also pretty normal as well, as his home runs come on the higher pitches, and his whiffs come on the lower pitches. The only thing that is really surprising is that his outs are coming on higher balls than the average location (though this could just be a BABIP thing).

Here are the types of pitchers he is facing by release point (a quick key on the bubbles: O= Ball in Play Outs, H=Ball In Play No Out, SS= Swinging Strike, CS=Called Strike, B=Ball, F=Foul, RS= Ball In Play Run(s)):

We can also look at pitch kind and results using a Spin and Speed chart

I count 69 pitches thrown over 95 MPH by starting pitchers against Rizzo as a Cub. He has put 17 of these in play, and swung and missed at exactly zero of them. The bat speed is there, and by all evidence excellent. You can’t get in on him with hard fastballs, so most of his swinging strikes are coming on breaking balls, a lot of them looking like curveballs. The two hardest pitches on the speed and spin chart were pitches that were hit for run scoring plays.

One thing about Rizzo that makes him a little hard to evaluate on the whole is that we have not seen the lefty face a lot of left-handed pitching. He has just 196 plate appearances against lefties in his career. Here is where he has been pitched to by lefties so far:

As I think you can see, lefties pitch Rizzo away much more than in. They don’t want to bust him inside (and when they do, he seems to be okay), but instead are trying to throw the ball low and away. Rizzo is a little swing happy the numbers suggest, swinging at more pitches in and out of the strike zone than league average. This is how you can get him out, not trying to test his bat speed or trying to bust him inside, but by staying away from him and hope he chases. His walk rate isn’t especially high, especially if you consider the power in his time with the Cubs so far. Since we are looking at what amounts to less than a full season so far, there is always a fear that he could regress (which is why looking at Pitch F/X data can give us a more in depth look than just looking at the numbers) or revert back to Padre form, but power without a ton of walks isn’t unprecedented. In fact, there were 29 hitters that had a SLG over .500 last year, and 16 of them had walk rates under 9 %, so Rizzo can succeed power wise with his plate discipline, it is just something that will continue to be tested. He likes pitches that are higher to hit for homers, but left-handed pitchers aren’t giving him a lot to hit up so far. By laying off the low off-speed pitches, he can make the pitchers come up more, and he can hit the fastballs.

These extensions are somewhat of a gamble, especially when you have less than a year of data of Rizzo playing good, and he doesn’t give you position certainty. He has to hit, or you paid him too much money for his arbitration and pre-arbitration years (and you wouldn’t want him for the extra years anyway). However, if you are going to take a gamble on a 1st baseman, Rizzo seems like a guy who is worth it. He has shown that he has raw power, all throughout the minors and with the Cubs so far, and it has worked in games for him too, as bat speed is not the problem (unlike some other powering hitting 1st baseman prospects that didn’t or haven’t panned out). The extension seems like a reasonable gamble if you believe that he can handle lefties and the outside breaking ball well enough to get him fastballs.