GIFs: Brad Peacock Has a Curveball

Washington National righty Brad Peacock made his first major-league start Wednesday night — an appearance that was much anticipated by the present author, if by few others. The 23-year-old struck out over a third of the batters he faced in 98.2 innings this year at Double-A Harrisburg — a figure that dipped to a still totally fine 23.5% after a mid-season promotion to Triple-A Syracuse.

Having only ever seen Peacock while under the influence of good cheer (and, it should be said, fermented beverages) at the recent FanGraphs event in San Francisco, I was happy to watch him again on Wednesday (under the influence of only one of the aforementioned stimuli).

Peacock wasn’t overwhelming, walking three while striking out just two in five innings, but he did occasionally feature a curveball that one could reasonably describe as having “aphrodisiac properties.”

Both curveballs you see here are from the third inning. The first one, above, is to Josh Satin and features 8.4 inches of glove-side movement and a full 10 inches of drop — relative to the league averages of 5.8 and 6.0, respectively, for a curveball.

The second one, below, is less impressive in terms of overall movement — 6.8 inches of glove-side movement and 8.1 inches of drop — but more impressive in that the person swinging and missing at it is the very talented Jose Reyes.

Thanks to Brooks Baseball for Pitch F/x data.