Early Starting Pitcher Velocity Changes
It may be a bit early to analyze velocity changes as pitchers continue to build up arm strength and we are still working with tiny sample sizes, but as you could tell by now, I am a sucker for comparisons and ranking lists. We all know that velocity has a significant impact on a pitcher’s effectiveness and all else equal, the higher the velocity, the better the results. When a pitcher suddenly experiences an increase or decrease in his average fastball velocity, it could portend a change in performance, for better or for worse. Since fantasy owners sometimes jump on pitchers quickly after just one strong outing, it is important to identify the velocity changers early on before it becomes obvious in their results.
As usual, we will start with the pitchers who so far have seen the largest bump in their velocities compared with 2010. Only the top five are presented below, as the increases further down the list were not significant enough to include.
Tim Lincecum owners and Giants fans have to love seeing Timmah at the top of this list. After seeing his velocity drop every single season since his 2007 debut, his velocity is currently sitting above his 2009 mark of 92.4 miles per hour. This is a good sign that his strikeout rate will hop above 10.0 again and his ERA will drop below 3.00 as a result. Daniel Hudson was another one of those sleepers that wasn’t (he went for a shocking $11 in my 12-team mixed league), but this velocity jump may just allow him to earn that price tag. Nice to see Javier Vazquez find some of his lost velocity from a year ago, but it is still well below the 91+ average fastball velocity he had displayed in previous seasons. I had always been a Vazquez fan, but I do not see much reason for optimism at this point. He is easily droppable in a shallow mixed league. Hmmm, maybe I will be way off on my Bold Prediction for Clayton Kershaw! But in my defense, I had no idea his velocity was about to rise.
And now for the velocity decliners. I have listed 10 this time since there are so many of them.
Woah, not a good sign for Colby Lewis owners. As an extreme fly ball pitcher in an unforgiving ballpark, and good, but not great, control, he cannot afford to lose his fastball. Though I would guess the majority of his strikeouts come from his slider, batters will have an easier time sitting on the off-speed stuff if his velocity cannot reach 90.0 MPH, let alone 88.0. I knew my projection and resulting dollar value for Francisco Liriano was better than most everyone else, but I still let him go during my auction at a discount. His health just scares the heck out of me and the velocity drop simply adds fuel to the fire. His control has also been terrible, and his fly ball rate so far has been an astounding 55.2%, versus just 27.4% last season. Something just ain’t right. Max Scherzer again? He just hates April. Maybe the Tigers should simply start him in the minors every season and have him suck it up down on the farm until his velocity returns.
*Phil Hughes is missing from the above list, I assume it is because his 6.0 innings were too low to make the qualified pitcher list.
**From just random FanGraphs player surfing, I noticed Joakim Soria‘s velocity is down from 91.9 MPH last season to just 89.5 this year. Any injury grumblings?
What about a comparison with just last April’s velocity? At the very least that might ease concern/temper optimism in some places where velocity is more similar in the season’s first month. Some pitchers don’t like the cold, and some pitchers may let it all hang out a bit too early in the year.
Agreed. Most pitchers would probably throw their heat in May / June – July / August, with April and September being the dips due to building up strength in April and tiring in September.
If that data was available, or at least I knew where to find it, it would of course be better to use. That probably explains why the list was a lot larger and more significant for velocity losers than gainers.
Would this effect relievers less though? They’re likely to be throwing gas early on, unless they haven’t built up arm strength.
No injury grumblings about Soria, but notice Kyle Davies and Luke Hochevar as well. Three teammates. Remember it’s well known that the gun was juiced in KC last year; maybe it’s more accurate now?
I was just going to say that same thing. When half of the players are from 2 different teams (KC and Det), there might be something going on with the home ballpark radar gun. We’ll need to see a few more games before any reliable trend shows itself, though. It does seem interesting that the top 9 are all AL pitchers, though.
I will say that Penny hasn’t thrown at home yet. And that Hochevar and Davies have started at KC and Det. Note that Bruce Chen is also down 1.2 mph from last year.
Definitely interesting, but I do think the gainers are more interesting than the losers. Velocities generally peak in July/August, so there’s a weather effect.
Is Doug Fister worthy of any interest?
Also, Hudson moved from Chicago to Arizona. Of his two starts this year, one was in Arizona, one was in 70degree weather in Denver. Presumingly much friendlier conditions than he experienced last April. He will come back to earth. Same can be said for Vazquez in south Florida.
Don’t see a problem with Coke going from reliever to starter.
Agreed, which is why I didn’t comment on him. You would expect his velocity to decline, but I left him in the table.
Tommy Hanson’s and Liriano’s velocity drops could be attributed to missed time in ST, right? I’m hoping so, because those guys, Brett Anderson, and F-Her all have 1+ MPH velocity drops and they anchor my rotation.
Possibly Hanson, but Liriano had shoulder issues in spring training, whereas there has been nothing suggested about Hanson’s health. So it’s quite likely Liriano is simply hurt, whereas Hanson might just be a “continue to build arm strength” case.
FA, FC, FT and FF are a pain in the butt to compare and almost every instance requires looking at the pitch classifications compared to the previous year and make sure we’re not getting little green dots in the little blue dot area. It’s just an overall nut-buster.
By the way, your best bet for getting the data for month-to-month is to spit it out on fangraphs and then head over to texasleaguers and set your dates individual by individual.
Alternatively
SELECT *, AVERAGE(VELOCITY) as AVG_VEL FROM TABLE WHERE TYPE=”FA” AND DATE between ’01-04-2010′ and ’05-05-2010′ GROUP BY PLAYER_NAME ORDER BY AVG_VEL DESC
You should be able to join it to this year’s data and do MATH ON IT.
I’m sure papa appleman will have no problem creating a clone of the DB for you to do MATHS ON IT.
under the “Leaders” tab on FG, go to “Pitch Type” tab & limit search to starters>march/april. did a quick spreadsheet sorting FBv from 2010 to 2011.
Top 10 March/April Losers:
(2010,2011, +/-)
Colby Lewis: 90.5, 87.9, -2.6
Brett Myers: 89.9, 87.9, -2.3
Wade Davis: 92.6, 90.3, -2.3
Hochevar: 93.5, 91.3, -2.1
Brett Cecil: 90.5, 88.4, -2.1
Blackburn: 90.5, 88.4, -2.1
Zito: 85.9, 83.9, -2.
Brett Anderson: 92.5, 90.5, -2
Jon Lester: 93.6, 91.6, -2
Verlander: 95.7, 93.7, -2
11.) Liriano: 93.4, 91.6, -1.8
Top 10 March/April Gainers:
(2010,2011, +/-)
David Price: 95.1, 92.8, +2.3
Hamels: 92.3, 90.5, +1.8
Lincecum: 92.8, 91.4, +1.4
Matt Harrison: 93, 91.8, +1.2
Romero: 91.6, 90.4, +1.2
Randy Wolf: 88.5, 87.6, +0.9
Masterson: 91.5, 90.9, +0.6
Anibal Sanchez: 91, 90.4, +0.6
Gallardo: 92.1, 91.6, +0.5
Kershaw: 93.4, 93, +0.4
Small sample size, not much to read into imo. Maybe the losers more than the gainers
Where do we get the latest pitching velocity stats, is there a link for it.
Cool article. I hope we continue to get updates every once in a while throughout the season.
Sure it’s early, but Kershaw’s sure looking great, isn’t he :)
fwiw timmy’s fastball is actually sitting higher than that (i think it’s averaging more like 93-94) but pitchf/x is picking up some of his harder thrown changeups as fastballs. so tim has probably picked up even more velocity than that
for instance you can look at the ethier at bat in the 1st from 4/12. both gameday and the brooks baseball pitchf/x tool call the last two pitches 88 mph fastballs (one 2 seam and 4 seam) but they were both changeups. he threw 4 fastballs in the pa which ranged from 94-96 according to pitchf/x.
i assume you guys are gonna have the same problems with timmy’s fastball velo.
I was curious about Javy Vazquez’s velocity and realize that his numbers for 2011 likely changed since this article was written due to a start. However, I am wondering why his fastball velocity is listed at 88.7 mph when the link below shows it at 89?
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=801&position=P
What source is being used for the 2010 velocities?
Clayton Kershaw throws an 88-mph change up?