In my last post, I stated that we shouldn't concern ourselves with Billingsley's recent struggles unless he's hurt, and that's what got me thinking about his health in the first place.
Observationally speaking, it doesn't seem like he's throwing any differently, and he doesn't seem to be affected by any ailment when on the mound. The objective evidence backs this up, as his release points haven't shown a large variance between the start of the season and the last month or so.
Furthermore, his overall velocity on his fastball, cutter, curve, and change are all up. It's worth noting, however, that Billingsley's fastball velocity does seem to be trending negatively over the course of the season, even though it's actually back up quite a bit over this last three games.
To me, there's really nothing there to suggest that an underlying injury is behind his recent struggles. Without knowing anything about his interactions with the training staff, it seems unlikely that Billingsley has any type of abnormal ailment that's affecting his performance.It's worth noting, however, that while looking at the data to figure out if Billingsley was injured, I ended up finding something that did jump at me: the distribution of his pitches.
Billingsley is throwing less than 50% fastballs this year, which way down from 59.2% last year, and 64.8% in 2007. He's now throwing his cutter 28.7% of the time, compared to 20.9% last year, and his rate of curves is up from 17.5% to 20.7%.
The trend is recent, as well. Last night's performance against the Astros was a case in point. Billingsley threw 22 fastballs, 18 cutters, and 12 curves. It's not like he was struggling with his fastball either, as he was sitting 91-92 with his fastball, and topped out at 94-95. The same thing happened in his last start before the All-Star Game against Milwaukee, except it was more exaggerated and on a much larger scale. Billingsley threw 39 fastballs, 54 cutters, and 17 curves.
I don't know if this is a confidence issue in his fastball, or if he just lacks aggressiveness now, but something needs to change. This seems like less of a health issue, and more about a puzzling reliance on breaking pitches. I think this could also explain his odd regression in command.
