Craig Hansen and Pitch f/x

David Golebiewski, a man with a truly Pittsburgh-esque name and a Duquesne student, wrote a piece for Driveline Mechanics (an extremely interesting pitching blog) where he took a look at the Pitch f/x data for Pirates' reliever Craig Hansen to perhaps determine whether or not Mr. Hansen would be as successful as the Red Sox hoped when they drafted him.

His conclusions aren't particularly pretty, but not entirely hopeless either. He finds that basically:

1. Hansen has below-average movement on his fastball, which gets hit hard despite an average speed of 95 MPH, particularly by left-handers.

2. His sometimes devastating slider is just that: crippling at times, hanging at others.

3. He might want to throw his changeup more often, particularly to left-handed batters, simply to give them something else to think about in the hopes of reducing that .315/.401/.476 line against lefties.

Given that he wasn't the centerpiece of the Jason Bay trade, I'm comfortable agreeing with David's conclusion that the chances for Hansen living up to his high potential are far less than 50-50. Let's hope at least that he can become a mostly reliable middle reliever to set the table for Matt Capps.