The 100 club, 2010 regular season update

In July, I paid tribute to the major league hurlers who had reached 100 mph in 2010. I will adapt that post here to encompass the entirety of the regular season. The data is presented in two tables: one sorted by number of pitches over 100 mph (technically 99.5 or higher), and the other sorted by maximum velocity.

Rank	Pitcher	#
1	Joel Zumaya	225
2	Henry Rodriguez	137
3	Aroldis Chapman	85
4	Jordan Walden	54
5	Daniel Bard	51
6	Neftali Feliz	43
7	Bobby Parnell	27
8	Justin Verlander	27
9	Ubaldo Jimenez	21
10	Stephen Strasburg	17
11	Andrew Cashner	15
12	Kyle Farnsworth	7
13	Chris Sale	6
14	Mitchell Boggs	5
15	Jonathan Broxton	4
16	Fernando Rodney	4
17	Santiago Casilla	4
18	Jason Motte	3
19	Alexi Ogando	2
20	Edwin Jackson	2
21	David Price	2
22	Joba Chamberlain	2
23	Brandon Morrow	1
24	Billy Wagner	1
25	Gregory Infante	1
26	Zack Greinke	1
27	Robinson Tejeda	1

Rank	Pitcher	Max Velocity
1	Aroldis Chapman	105.1
2	Neftali Feliz	103.4
3	Henry Rodriguez	103.2
4	Bobby Parnell	102.5
5	Joel Zumaya	102.2
6	Justin Verlander	101.6
7	Jordan Walden	101.5
8	Daniel Bard	100.8
9	Ubaldo Jimenez	100.6
10	Stephen Strasburg	100.4
11	Mitchell Boggs	100.4
12	Chris Sale	100.3
13	Jonathan Broxton	100.2
14	Alexi Ogando	100.2
15	Andrew Cashner	100.1
16	Kyle Farnsworth	100.1
17	Fernando Rodney	100.1
18	Jason Motte	100.1
19	Edwin Jackson	100.1
20	Brandon Morrow	99.8
21	Santiago Casilla	99.7
22	David Price	99.7
23	Billy Wagner	99.7
24	Gregory Infante	99.7
25	Zack Greinke	99.7
26	Joba Chamberlain	99.6
27	Robinson Tejeda	99.5

These numbers are straight from the Gameday PITCHf/x data (accessed via Joe Lefkowitz's site) and have not been park-adjusted. As Mike Fast detailed in a Hardball Times post earlier in the year, there are some stadia in particular that have been showing higher than average velocities in the pitch data. In Fast's article, he mentions Kauffman Stadium, Coors Field, US Cellular Field, Progressive Field, and Fenway Park as being the parks with the highest velocity park factors on average. But, as Fast mentions, parks drift in and out of calibration over the course of a season, so it's impossible to take the velocity from any one game, apply the park factor to it, and get a certain result. Still, I feel pretty strongly that quite a few of these pitchers' numbers were enhanced by park. For example, of the pitchers that hit 100 mph only once, Morrow did it in Cleveland, Infante did it in Chicago, and Tejeda did it in Kansas City. And Chamberlain did it once in Kansas City and once in Chicago. So, please take these with a big old grain of salt.

Oh, one other thing I should mention. You may have been wondering, "Wait, didn't you say that Joel Zumaya hit 100 mph 230 times this year? Why does it say 225 here?" The reason for that is that there were some PITCHf/x errors that duplicated some pitches that I had not corrected for in my July post. I have now, so this should be slightly more accurate.

Dominance from Lincecum

Tim Lincecum was simply filthy yesterday, throwing a complete game two-hitter with 14 strikeouts against only one walk. If you include the 3 foul tips, he generated a ridiculous 31 swinging strikes in his 119 pitch outing. He showed all five of his pitches, though only one curveball by my count. The columns below (click for a larger image) show pitch mix, including lefty/righty splits:

Lincecum has one of the harder repertoires to classify. He has a two-seamer, a four-seamer that usually cuts, a changeup, a slider, and a curveball; since is motion is straight over the top, nothing has a whole lot of horizontal movement, and that makes the slider, changeup, and curveball difficult to distinguish. Whatever the pitches were, they were working against the Braves yesterday. Here are some metrics for each pitch.

	#	Swings	Whiff Rate	Zone Rate	Chase Rate	RV/100
FF	36	15	.600	.444	.150	-1.86
FT	36	18	.500	.444	.350	-5.18
SL	28	17	.471	.429	.563	-9.35
CH	18	5	1.000	.111	.313	-3.45
CU	1	0				3.69
	119	55	.564	.387	.329	-4.84

Whiff rate = swinging strikes / swings

Zone rate = pitches in the strike zone / total pitches

Chase rate = swing rate on pitches out of the strike zone / pitches out of the strike zone

RV/100 = linear weights run values per 100 pitches, a stat that John Walsh (among others) popularized in February 2008. The values were kindly provided by Dan Brooks of brooksbaseball.net.

The Braves' batters missed on over 56% of the pitches that Lincecum got them to swing at. Even for one game, that is extremely impressive (over a full season, it's rare to see even a 30% whiff rate from a pitcher). Even though he hit the strikezone with less than 40% of his pitches (below both his average and the major league average), he got enough swings out of the zone to make up for it. It's worth noting that no Atlanta hitter made contact with the changeup yesterday.

There's not really much else to say. Lincecum was completely and utterly dominant, and even though he reached 94 mph only one time, he was able to fool the Braves with both his offspeed pitches and his heaters.

Gameday PITCHf/x data are from MLB Advanced Media.

Tim Lincecum is absurd

9 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 14 K

Unbelievable. Between this Freakiness and Halladay's no-hitter, we've seen two of the greatest postseason pitching performances in recent memory on back-to-back days. And let's not forget that both of these gems were postseason debuts. I'll have more on this gem tomorrow (technically later today).

Pettitte is starting Game 2 - what about Hughes?

Andy Pettitte will start Game 2 of the ALDS for the Yankees this evening. I am skeptical of the move; I can't help but wonder if Phil Hughes is the better choice. A Game 2 start will line Pettitte up for a start in the potential Game 5, and there's no denying that Pettitte has the better postseason track record. However, while both pitchers have performed significantly better on the road than at home in 2010, Hughes' skillset sets him up better in Minnesota than in New York. Here are some splits for both Hughes and Pettitte.

Phil Hughes	IP	ERA	K/9	BB/9	GB Rate	HR/BIA*
Home	106 1/3	4.66	7.03	3.22	.358	.097
Road	70	3.47	8.10	2.44	.366	.039

Andy Pettitte	IP	ERA	K/9	BB/9	GB Rate	HR/BIA
Home	69 1/3	3.95	5.79	3.03	.400	.076
Road	59 2/3	2.58	8.67	2.74	.494	.037

*HR/BIA is home runs / balls in air, which includes all batted ball types other than ground balls.

Both pitchers show a significant split between their home and road performances, but Hughes is at greater risk because of his very low groundball rate (6th lowest among major league starters in 2010). According to ESPN's 2010 park factors, Target Field has the lowest home run park factor at 0.64, while Yankee Stadium has the third-highest at 1.42. As an extreme fly-ball pitcher, Hughes is best suited in the park that suppresses home runs. I'm aware that that's not the whole story, as it's hard not to go with Pettitte in the deciding game based on his postseason success, but I still think it's questionable to have Hughes pitch an extra game at Yankee Stadium.

The data are from Fangraphs; the batted ball types are determined by the Baseball Info Solutions stringers.

If you're interested, here is the full list of ESPN's 2010 park factors.

How about the other guy?

The AL Cy Young award has been causing quite a bit of debate recently. CC Sabathia leads the league in wins, but other than wins, Felix Hernandez has better numbers than he does on pretty much every level. (Felix has won only 11 games, playing for the worst team in the league.) The common consensus is that it would be hard for the BWAA to vote for a pitcher with so few wins in favor of a pitcher with at least 20, which CC should reach by the end of the year. So for the last few weeks, it's really been about CC vs. Felix, one pitcher with the wins and the other pitcher with the "other stuff" (which includes a microscopic ERA). But there is somebody else whom I believe has put himself right in the middle of the battle. Take a look at these numbers for three pitchers:

Wins	Losses	ERA	IP	K/9	BB/9*	HR/9	GB Rate
19	6	3.03	217	7.42	2.86	0.75	.508
11	11	2.39	225 2/3	8.53	2.79	0.60	.532
17	8	3.17	190	9.85	3.84	0.57	.544

*Here, BB/9 is calculated with hit-by-pitches and without intentional walks.

The first pitcher was Sabathia, and the second was Hernandez. That third guy? That's Jon Lester, who dominated the Mariners yesterday for his 17th win. He's got innings, a low ERA, and excellent peripheral statistics to back up his performance. There was an interesting article by Dave Cameron of Fangraphs yesterday that displayed the results of the AL Cy Young poll that the site had held the previous week. Hernandez won in a landslide, with over 60% of the votes, Francisco Liriano came in second with just under 11%, and Sabathia came in 3rd with around 9%. Cameron notes that Lester received virtually no support from the readers, and personally, I find that shocking. (To be brutally honest, Lester has sort of slipped my mind the last few weeks as well, and I voted for Hernandez in the poll.) Fangraphs' readers would be aware that Lester is second in the American League in xFIP and fifth in the majors. And now with his 17th win, there are only four other pitchers with more. Really, the only thing lacking in Lester's performance this year is control, and his excellent strikeout and ground-ball tendencies make up for what he loses in terms of walks. With a bit less than three weeks left on the season, Lester does have a chance to reach 20 wins. If he does, then there's no doubt in my mind that he would then be considered the Cy Young frontrunner.

Data are from Fangraphs.

Chapman brings the heat

Aroldis Chapman made his much anticipated debut earlier this evening, and he did not disappoint. He pitched a perfect 8th inning with a strikeout and two weak ground outs, and it would be an understatement to say that he lit up the radar gun. Six of his eight pitches were fastballs (the other two were sliders). Here are the velocities of his fastballs:

98.4

102.5

100.3

102.7

101.4

98.6

With his second pitch registered at 103 mph, he passed Bobby Parnell (who threw a pitch gunned at 102.5 mph a few weeks ago) as the max velocity leader in 2010. In case you're wondering, Chapman's fastballs average out to 100.65 mph, which is fairly ridiculous. The last pitcher to throw a pitch as hard as Chapman did tonight was Joel Zumaya, who threw two pitches at 102.7 in June of 2009.

Gameday PITCHf/x data is from MLB Advanced Media.

Lilly's interesting line

Ted Lilly's line from his Sunday start against the Rockies caught my eye:

4 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

I wouldn't expect a pitcher who strikes out 8 in 4 innings to have such poor results. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a pitcher who only walks one in 4 innings to have such poor results. You can imagine my curiosity when I noticed Lilly's combination of an 8/1 K/BB ratio and 7 runs allowed in those 4 innings. Overall, Lilly faced 22 batters. Take out those 8 strikeouts and 1 walk, and you have 13 balls in play. Of those, there were 9 hits, including 2 home runs. That's a batting average on contact of .692, which is more than double the league average. Obviously not significant, because of the sample size. But, noteworthy, I suppose.