Liriano's Control Issues

There has been a lot of ink printed about the release point issues that have shown for Francisco Liriano this season, but there is just one little problem with that answer.  He was just as wild with his release point last season.  Here is a graph of his release point in all his starts so far in 2011.

There are two release points for Liriano in what looks like an overhead angle and a slightly offset arm angle.  normally this would be a concern for injury, but before anyone goes thinking this is why his BB/9 stands at 6.61 (the same as his ERA).  Here is his 2010 data for release points.

That looks the same to me and when I hear Ron Gardenhire brought this to Liriano's attention, according to this story, I am concerned he will make more changes to his delivery.  This is the way Liriano has pitched for at least a year now.  his 2009 was a bit different as it was not like two seperate release points, but one really large oval of release points.

Hopefully Liriano will not work to hard to change his release and delivery and work more on getting ahead of pitchers (43.8% first strike rate, which is a career low) and work on his fastball.  According to FanGraphs.com pitch f/x his fastball in 2010 was being increasingly classified as a two seamer for it's horizontal movement.  This worked for him, but this year he has come with a straighter four seam pitch.

Liriano obviously relies on an elite changeup, but with a slight velocity decrease in the early months and a straighter fastball he has struggled with his control.  Obviously the no hitter was good for fantasy teams, but the 6 walks was still a huge red flag.  Hopefully Liriano can solve this issue, but I'm not encouraged by Gardenhire's comments.

Graphs are from TexasLeaguers.com

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