After my recent posts fiddling around with heat maps for pitch location, Jason at It’s About the Money, Stupid contacted me to ask if I would contribute some location maps for Yankee pitchers. Obviously, I couldn’t pass up the chance to contribute to an ESPN-affiliated blog.

Despite being an Orioles fan, I actually do link IIATMS on my sidebar. Why? Because the writers there like to talk about issues in baseball that aren’t always 100% Yankees. For example, there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the BatGlove and using maple bats in MLB. There are always lots of posts, and I’d recommend checking them out if you haven’t heard of them yet (though, if you’re reading MY blog, then you have likely dug pretty far into the depths of baseball blogs and come across them before).

Anyway, the heat maps look at A.J. Burnett in certain counts. His fastball speed is down this year, and there are a few other changes. For good measure–and with inspiration from Albert Lyu at Fangraphs–I compare his 2-strike counts to those of Mariano Rivera. Quite a contrast.

Check it out!