Kickham's Pitch F/X

How Much was Kickham to Blame Last Night?

I commented during the game last night that Buster needed to do a better job framing Kickham's pitches.  What I saw from Kickham was really not much different than I anticipated, and to put it simply, he looks like he will fit right in with the rotation.  He nibbled the corners, and the two biggest pitches were the two called balls that were clearly also strikes. The kid was hitting his spots, the ump wasn't calling them. Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus talks in great length about the importance of framing as a catcher, and I use his GIF from Lucroy as examples because to me he just jumps out as a backstop who "gets it".


That right there, is about as close as we can get to Kickham's called balls.  According to BP and Lindbergh, that pitch was 0.351 feet off the strike zone, and is exactly whay I am referring to when I talk about the catcher framing the pitch for the ump. Below is a pitch chart of Kickham's start from last night.  I count six pitches that were borderline strikes, but were called balls with only one pitch that was outside the zone called in Kickham's favor.

Now here is the pitch he threw to Derek Norris: It actually wasn't as "up in the zone", and Norris just went down and smacked a four-seamer 379 feet. Which can be seen RIGHT HERE

Bottom line is I liked what I saw from Kickham. The Giants don't have an arm that can bring it 94 MPH, and as proven by his 25% Whiff rate when he threw his slider, he has the offspeed stuff of a big league arm.  With a week of grooming, maybe we can get a better start from the Rook.