In his first full season, Parra showed flashes of brilliant stuff with a lack of control, and with that lack of control, he also struggled with the defensive support behind him. It has often been my thought that Parra relied too much on splitting his breaking pitches and off-speed pitches, working those equally, rather than focusing on his fastball. Against righties, for instance, Parra threw his change up approximately 18%, and his splitter and curveball approximately 12% each. Against lefties he used a more economical approach, working only with his curveball and sometimes his splitter.

Compared to other lefties who threw a fastball above 91 MPH in 2008:

Jonathan Sanchez (91.64): 72.31%

Clayton Kershaw (94.81): 70.88%

Oliver Perez (92.77): 68.91%

Andrew Miller (93.03): 68.45%

Jo-Jo Reyes (91.26%): 65.38%

Johan Santana (92.75): 59.7%

Jorge de la Rosa (93.5): 56.21%

Manny Parra (92.64): 55.44%

C.C. Sabathia (94.77): 53.77%

I think that it is acceptable to suggest that Parra should throw his fastball more frequently, and pitch aggressively with that weapon -- not many pitchers throw above 91 and are left-handed, and even beyond mechanics, ability, etc., it seems rather clear to me that that type of raw weapon should be utilized to its fullest advantage. There are times it seems that Parra was given a game plan that looked more like Jeff Suppan or Doug Davis, working breaking pitch and off-speed pitch after breaking pitch and off-speed pitch off of the corners. I'm not saying that Parra should abandon the corners and challenge hitters in the heart of the zone with his fastball. I'm saying that some of those splitters, change ups, and curveballs off the corner should be replaced with fastballs, and that Parra's fastball should feature a more prominent role in his 2009 campaign.

I would not be distraught if Parra showed up for 2009 pitching with a smaller arsenal, perhaps focusing simply on his fastball, curveball, and split, or his fastball, change up, and split. It's not a bad thing to have a lot of weapons, unless having a quantity of weapons detracts from utilizing a fine primary weapon less frequently. And I think this is the case with Parra's fastball.

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Source: Josh Kalk's player cards, based off of pitch f/x data. Check out his blog, and use his pitch f/x corrections and data presentations. His blog rules.