Breaking down Zito

By Adam Cancryn

Barry Zito threw an impressive complete-game shutout in his first outing, but figuring out what that means for the beleaguered hurler takes some digging.

You'd be forgiven if you didn't believe it at first. Few would have if the evidence weren't right there in black and white, staring up from the cozy confines of a box score.

The line read nine innings, four hits, zero runs, zero walks and four strikeouts. And just in front of those numbers came the real surprise: Barry Zito (W, 1-0).

Yes, that Barry Zito. He of the 43-61 record and 4.55 ERA over the past four years. The owner of a seven-year, $126 million contract widely derided as the worst deal in baseball. The man who spent his time in Oakland mesmerizing the league with the black magic he modestly called a curveball, only to be exposed as just another run-of-the-mill street magician once he arrived in the big city. Yes, that Barry Zito took the mound on April 9, and over the next two hours and 52 minutes, shut down the opposing Colorado Rockies.

The victory was stunning, not only because of his past poor performance, but because of what such an outing might mean for the future. After an offseason spent rebuilding his delivery, are these early returns an indication of things to come? Is this the 20-game winner that San Francisco imagined he would be when they acquired him back in 2007? The Giants would love to believe it, and a closer look reveals there's some reason for hope.

The first thing to understand is that the old Barry Zito is dead, and in truth he should have died a lot sooner. The lollipop curveballs that the lefty mixed in with his fastball were devastating during his 20s. But once hitters realized that the curve was his only above-average pitch, the jig was up.

That revelation occurred around 2008, a season in which Zito threw his curve 22.0 percent of the time (the highest percentage during his tenure with the Giants) and was rewarded with 17 losses and a 5.15 ERA. Rather than flailing at the knee-bucklers like before, batters were waiting out the curve and forcing Zito to find the zone on his own. The new strategy exposed Zito's inability to pinpoint his pitches. A career-low (to that point) 7.1% of Zito's strikes came via the swing and miss that year, resulting in a career-low 120 strikeouts and career-high 102 walks.

via FanGraphs

That should have been the signal that Zito needed a new approach. But he stuck with what had worked in the past, even as his opponents adapted. Though no season would be quite as bad as that 2008, he never came close to the pitcher he once was. Zito went 19-27 with an even 100 ERA+ over the next two seasons. He was a mediocre player with a top-flight salary.

The much-needed change finally came this past offseason, following an injury-plagued 2011. His new delivery has him crouched more toward the ground in an effort to lower his center of gravity. More importantly is the modified motion developed alongside an increased arsenal of pitches. Where Zito was once a straight fastball-curveball-changeup pitcher, his repertoire is now dominated by more effective variations on each.

The result was a markedly different pitcher agains the Rockies than the one we've seen over the past few years. From a release point roughly six inches to a foot lower than before, Zito employed six different pitches against the Rockies, including three types of fastball (four-seam, two-seam and cutter). In fact, he relied on those supporting pitches so much that the four-seam fastball barely made an appearance. Zito over the course of his 114 pitches went with the straight heater just 7.9 percent of the time, preferring the two-seamer (28.9 percent) and cutter (18.4 percent) instead. Compare that to 2010, when he threw the fastball 40.8 percent of the time, versus the two-seamer (21.4 percent) and cutter (4.8 percent).

via FanGraphs

The additional movement on Zito's pitches kept Colorado's hitters off balance and prevented them from sitting on any one pitch. Even better, he threw all those pitches reliably for strikes, hitting the zone more than six out of every 10 times and avoiding any walks. After years of relying on pure talent, Zito on April 9 was a more cerebral pitcher, more likely to retire hitters with prime placement and unpredictability than sheer stuff.

The shutout is certainly a step in the right direction, an indication that he is willing to embrace his current skills and reinvent himself rather than clinging to things that made him famous. The question now is whether a reinvented Zito can be as consistently good as the original once was.

There are certainly still some red flags, even amid his brilliant first outing. Zito's pitches rarely miss bats, meaning he is, to some extent, at the mercy of the batter's skill and placement. The Rockies' batting average on balls put in play (BABIP) on April 9 was .143, well below the baseline of .300. Had Colorado gotten a little luckier with where it hit the ball, the game could have turned out much different.

Similarly, Zito still allows too many fly balls. About 46 percent of the balls put in play that day went to the outfield, a higher fly ball rate than he's recorded in any season. More fly balls mean more chances for some to fly out of the park, and though it's a small sample size, it nevertheless bears watching. While Zito ended the day with a 0.00 ERA, his xFIP—which measures a player's ERA when factoring in league-average fielding and home run rate—stood at a much higher 3.87.

These are the tea leaves that carry Zito into his next start against the Pittsburgh Pirates. They are no doubt promising, an indication that he might have finally turned the corner. But whether Zito turns that corner and then starts down a better path will only be revealed in time.

Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.