![]() ![]() Watch this pitch move down and right:Ĭ.J. I feel like crying on behalf of hitters everywhere. In other words, it’s a changeup that behaves sort of like a screwball when compared to his heat. Strasburg’s changeup travels 88.69 mph and has the highest whiff rate among all starters - which we can attribute to the fact that it’s really fast and ends up four inches farther right and six inches lower than his straight fastball. Among starters, Mark Buehrle has the slowest four-seam fastball in MLB, averaging 83.81 mph in 2014. And since Wainwright is a terrific pitcher with the second-most valuable curve in the game, I feel fine giving him this award on the basis that he’s the only pitcher who gets nine inches of both vertical and horizontal break on his hook. Let’s be honest: Curveballs that break down and away are awesome. Movement with control certainly helps, but factors like variety, speed, location, and the extent to which other pitches set it up are equally, if not more, important. It’s important to note that movement is not the be-all and end-all of curveballs. ![]() And while that probably means he puts some topspin on the ball like a slider, I reject that explanation and attribute this to MAGIC:Īdam Wainwright, Cardinals. Unlike all the other sinkers in the game, his actually sinks, which is supposed to be impossible for a pitch with backspin. Somehow Masterson’s sinker, alone among its kind, has negative vertical movement. But all of them have positive values … except one. Some rise more than others, and some are nearly straight. Since all fastballs have backspin, all fastballs have a positive value, i.e., they “rise” compared to a spinless pitch (even though they sink relatively, due to gravity). So instead of simply looking at how high or low the pitch goes, PITCHf/x takes gravity out of the equation and measures how high or low a ball goes versus a pitch with no spin thrown at the same speed. ![]() Quick lesson on what we mean when we measure “vertical movement.” While horizontal movement is easy - does the ball go left or right? - gravity makes measuring the y-axis a bit more complicated. Mariano is gone, and while it hurts to give this award to someone from Boston, he’s got the most valuable cutter in the game, and there’s really no arguing against its nasty movement: ![]() (His splitter also produces the third-best ratio of ground balls per balls in play among all fastballs, even beating every sinkerball pitcher except Justin Masterson and Dallas Keuchel.) With Tanaka, it’s the disguise and contrast that counts - he throws it 87 mph, just 5 mph slower than the fastball, but it ends up about eight inches lower: Between the splitter, the cutter, the sinker, and the good ole straight cheese, there are four main types of what we call a “fastball.” Take every MLB pitcher who has thrown at least 100 of one type or another, and you’ll find just one man, with one pitch, who gets batters to whiff more than half the time they swing. Seriously, look at the way this really, really fast pitch drops, totally mystifying the batter: FanGraphs and the Baseball Prospectus leaderboards agree that he’s the fastest in the game among starters (we’re going to focus on starters here), and if that weren’t enough, he’s got the ninth-best “rising action” on his four-seamer … and he throws much harder than anyone above him on that list. Today, we’re honoring the best pitches of the year so far, with GIFs courtesy of our friends at the excellent Pitcher GIFs, which has quickly become one of the best daily baseball stops online. It satisfies on both a visceral and aesthetic level. There’s nothing like a devastating pitch, whether it comes in at 101 mph in a roughly straight line, or swoops in slowly with diagonal parabolic action. My premise is that pitching is enjoyed by intelligent fans and that we should judge all the rubes who think home runs are the best part of baseball. In terms of alcohol, pitching is the craft beer of baseball - subtle enough to be considered artistic, but earthy and powerful enough to avoid associations with more pretentious spirits, like that one whiskey you can find only on raft distilleries off the coast of the Outer Hebrides during a blood moon. ![]()
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