The thing that has always made pitching so fascinating to me is that while everyone is doing basically the same thing, there are so many different ways to do it. How a pitcher throws the ball and the types of pitches he’s able to throw have always seemed to be as much an expression of the pitcher’s personality as their talent or training.
Reading Patrick Jeter’s excellent mini-series on the statistic RE24, and the general concept of looking at the change in expected runs after each play to determine the play’s value, got me thinking about breaking it down even further to look at the modern pitcher’s arsenal of pitches.