The 100 mph club

Hard-throwers are always a lot of fun to watch. Why? I don’t know. But they are. In particular, it’s pretty awesome to see triple digits on the radar gun, which is always an impressive feat. This year, per PITCHf/x, 16 different pitchers have combined to throw 391 pitches registering at 100 mph (technically 99.5 or harder). Here are the members of the 2010 “100 club.”

(sorted by maximum velocity)

MLB Rank	Pitcher	Max Velocity
1	Joel Zumaya	102.2
2	Neftali Feliz	101.6
3	Henry Rodriguez	101.1
4	Justin Verlander	101
5	Daniel Bard	100.8
6	Ubaldo Jimenez	100.6
7	Stephen Strasburg	100.4
8	Jonathan Broxton	100.2
9	Andrew Cashner	100.1
10	Jason Motte	100.1
11	Kyle Farnsworth	100.1
12	Brandon Morrow	99.8
13	Santiago Casilla	99.7
14	Zack Greinke	99.7
15	David Price	99.6
16	Robinson Tejeda	99.5

(sorted by number of pitches at or greater than 99.5 mph)

MLB Rank	Pitcher	#
1	Joel Zumaya	230
2	Neftali Feliz	36
3	Daniel Bard	26
4	Justin Verlander	20
5	Ubaldo Jimenez	19
6	Stephen Strasburg	17
7	Henry Rodriguez	12
8	Andrew Cashner	10
9	Kyle Farnsworth	6
10	Jonathan Broxton	4
11	Jason Motte	3
12	Santiago Casilla	2
13	Brandon Morrow	1
14	Zack Greinke	1
15	Robinson Tejeda	1
16	David Price	1

First of all, how about Joel Zumaya. Talk about blowing away the competition. Now let’s hope that he can recover from the brutal arm injury he suffered last month against the Twins.

Second, an important note - these numbers are coming directly from the PITCHf/x data and have not been adjusted for ballpark errors. The 100 mph pitches from Tejada and Morrow were recorded at Kauffman Stadium and Progressive Field, respectively; both of those parks at least appear to be running “hot” this year. Any input on this front is always more than welcome.

Gameday data is from MLB Advanced Media; it can be easily accessed through Joe Lefkowitz's invaluable tool.