Pitching Families

Pitching Families

I was recently going back and reading some of my favorite book (The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract) and noticed a small article in the back I had forgotten about. It was about "pitching families." That is the grouping of pitchers into bunches based on similar characteristics. The original intention of this, according to James, was to find out how a pitcher of a certain type might age through comparing him to similar pitchers. Just for fun I've decided to update this list and put the contemporary pitchers into those famlies. The familes and descriptions are taken directly from his book.

The Tommy John Family - left-handers who have success without overpowering stuff because they keep the ball on the ground and in the park while issuing few walks
- John Lannan, Paul Maholm, Joe Saunders, Kenny Rogers
- Pitchers of this group thrive with good defensive infields and because of this normally have much more success on good teams and struggle mightily on poor teams.

The Lefty Grove Family - Blow them away lefties with big time stuff
- Randy Johnson, Clayton Kershaw, Jon Lester, C.C. Sabathia
- These pitches typically take longer to develop and are often unathletic and poor defensively but thrive once they figure it all out

The Bob Feller Family - Power righties who do not give in and are not afraid to walk people
- A.J. Burnett, Joba Chamberlain, Matt Cain
- This group is split between those who had really long careers (Nolan Ryan) and those that had to be moved into the bullpen (Goose Gossage, Kerry Wood)

The Tom Seaver Family - Right-handed power pitchers with full, excellent repertoires
- Zack Greinke, Tim Lincecum, Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, Josh Beckett
- This is typically the group that enjoys the most long term success because they have many paths to victory

The Jim Bunning Family - Picture-Perfect Pitchers, sort of the players in the Tom Seaver family without big fastballs but still a solid fastball and lots of other good pitches
- Dan Haren, Javier Vazquez, Roy Oswalt, Chad Billingsley
- This group is typically made up of pitchers with "textbook" motions and excellent control who have long solid careers

The Juan Marichal Family - Guys who will throw any pitch at any speed from any arm angle
- Daisuke Matsuzaka, Orlando Hernandez
- This group generally gets plenty of strikeouts but is also very self destructive with walks, or playing bad defense

The Robin Roberts Family - Guys who pitch lots of innings, use their fastball a lot and give up a lot of home runs.
- Curt Schilling, Aaron Harang, Jered Weaver
- These are very efficient, typically fly ball pitchers who can eat a lot of innings

The Don Drysdale Family - Big, scary, intimidating right-handers
- Carlos Zambrano, Josh Johnson
- These guys are usually very good athletes and can normally hit quite well

The Warren Spahn Family - Lefties with easy motions who make getting outs look effortless
- Tom Glavine, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels
- Another group that tends to age well if healthy and is typically made up of good fielding athletes

The Christy Mathewson Family - Control-righties with enough stuff to make batters uncomfortable and a great changeup
- Greg Maddux , James Shields
- This group typically gets outs by changing speeds and working with unusual pitch sequences

The Kevin Brown Family - Sinker-ball pitchers who also get strikeouts
- Brandon Webb, Ubaldo Jimenez
- A rare group, they can completely dominate when they are on but often struggle as their stuff dwindles with age

The Bert Blyleven Family - 125 curveballs per game
- Armando Galarraga, Ian Snell
- Much less common than it used to be, unlike this family's namesake, they typically do not have long careers as the league adjusts to them quickly

The Derek Lowe Family - Pure sinker-ballers who do not strike out many guys and rely on their defenses
- Derek Lowe, Tim Hudson, Joel Pineiro, Aaron Cook
- Due to low strikeout rates this group struggles when their primary pitch is off, but typically can pitch a lot of innings