Posted by Bill Baer on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Tonight’s Phillies-Cubs game at Wrigley Field had a lot of action: two starting pitching debuts for the Phils’ Pedro Martinez and the Cubs’ Jeff Samardzija; an offense-packed top of the fourth inning for the Phils; and a full cup of beer being thrown at Shane Victorino while attempting to catch a fly ball in deep left-center. For a non-divisional game, it was quite interesting.

While the beer will likely be a hot topic, the real story is the start made by Martinez in his debut, a 12-5 Phillies victory. He threw five innings as expected, allowed three runs on seven hits and a walk, and struck out five while throwing 99 pitches. According to the Pitch F/X data, he threw 52 fastballs, 27 change-ups, 13 sliders, and 7 curveballs.

Three of the seven hits he allowed came on change-ups, and four came on fastballs. Three of his strike threes came on fastballs, and one apiece on a change-up and a slider. Overall, he threw about 65% of his pitches for strikes. Here’s a more in-depth look:

Using an Excel tool created by Harry Pavlidis of Cubs F/X and Beyond the Box Score, we’re also able to visualize the average pitches Martinez threw. Click the image to enlarge it.

Birds Eye View

First Base View

Those only include the top-three pitches Martinez threw since we would have to deal with sampling issues with his lesser-used pitches.

It’s interesting to look at — from the first base view — how similar his change-up and slider are, especially considering they only differ by about two MPH. Obviously, looking at the bird’s eye view, his change-up moves towards a right-handed hitter while his slider tails towards a left-handed hitter. Most pitchers would love to have even one pitch that moves as well as that; Pedro has two, one for lefties and one for righties.

As expected, Pedro was at around 87 MPH with his fastball — definitely not the hard-throwing Pedro we came to love in the late-1990’s when he was with the Boston Red Sox. However, as Jamie Moyer proved last season, you don’t need to throw hard to succeed if you have intelligence, and Martinez might know a thing or two about pitching.

In particular, he impressively outwitted Alfonso Soriano in the second inning, striking out the Cubs’ outfielder on three pitches. From Brooks Baseball:

(Note that you are looking at the graph from the catcher’s perfective, so the right-handed batter’s box is towards the left.)

Soriano had a career .415 OPS against Martinez in 44 at-bats heading into the game. So maybe it’s not a surprise that he looked completely baffled while flailing away at Martinez’s offerings.

While Martinez did pitch well enough to deserve a victory, there were a couple of items to worry about:

• Of the ten non-strikeout outs he recorded, only one came on a ground ball. In the homer-happy Citizens Bank Park, this will be a problem.
• Martinez threw 99 pitches to 23 batters, an average of 4.3 pitches per plate appearance. Among pitchers who have thrown 100 or more innings, only two pitchers in the Majors have a PPA of 4.1 or higher: Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer. For a pitcher who is not at 100%, limiting the amount of pitches he throws is crucial towards preserving both his health and the Phillies’ bullpen.

Still, Martinez gave the Phillies a quality outing and this bodes well for the future. Next time out, he’ll shoot for a six-inning performance. The Phillies won’t always have the luxury of using two pitchers to pick up the remaining four innings as they did tonight.