My latest post on Edward Mujica examined what may be causing his extremely high home run rate. To be honest, I’m not sure we can really conclude much on the issue – at least not from my analysis. Anyway, Larry and Mike made some good points in the comments, and I wanted to further investigate Mujica’s pitch location.
Conveniently enough, just yesterday Jeremy Greenhouse looked at pitchers who are able to locate their pitches on the corners of the plate, but avoid the middle. A home run – or hard hit ball – is most likely to be located somewhere in the middle portion of the plate, and probably slightly up.
Here is Mujica’s pitch location graph for 2010 (view from catcher’s perspective, measured in feet):
Mujica’s pitch location does not look that much like Rivera’s. It seems his pitches are in the middle of zone as often as they are on the corners.
Against righties, Mujica is very reluctant to go inside. Though he keeps it away from righties in general, he appears to miss o...
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