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There was an interesting discussion in the comments section of my “Jon Niese Should Start Friday” article about whether Jon Niese could succeed in the majors with a fastball that was consistently 88-89 mph.
So, I ran the numbers on MLB lefthanders. Among lefties who have thrown at least 30 innings this year the average (median) fastball is 89.9.
So, do lefties succeed with below average fastballs?
Top Ten MLB Lefties By ERA
| Rank | Player | ERA | Average FB Velo | Rank Among LHP >30 IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mark Buerhrle | 3.09 | 85.6 | 49 |
| 2 | Dallas Braden | 3.13 | 87.9 | 41 |
| 3 | Doug Davis | 3.15 | 85.2 | 50 |
| 4 | Wandy Rodriguez | 3.28 | 90 | 24 |
| 5 | Zach Duke | 3.28 | 88.6 | 37 |
| 6 | Johan Santana | 3.29 | 90.8 | 20 |
| 7 | Ted Lilly | 3.32 | 87.1 | 46 |
| 8 | Jarrod Washburn | 3.36 | 88.4 | 39 |
| 9 | John Lannan | 3.45 | 87.9 | 42 |
| 10 | Cliff Lee | 3.45 | 91 | 15 |
Whoa. That’s a resounding yes to the question above. I just learned something.
The median fastball for the ten best lefty starters in baseball by ERA was 88.15. Among the top ten lefties in the game this year, the best fastball belongs to Cliff Lee and his ranks just 15th best overall in terms of velocity. SIX of the top ten in ERA are in the bottom QUARTILE of their mates in terms of velocity.
By the way, Johan Santana’s average FB in 2009 has been 90.8. If that mark held, it would be the lowest average velo of his career. His average fb velocity peaked at 93.1 in 2006 with the Twins when he put together a 2.77 ERA year with 245 K in 233 IP.
As long as we’re here, lets check the lefties with the fastest and slowest fastballs.
The top 5 LHP by average FB velo:
1. CC Sabathia – 94.1
2. Clayton Kershaw – 93.8
3. David Price - 93.7
4. Jon Lester - 93.4
5. Jorge de la Rosa – 93.2
That’s an interesting list. CC’s dope. Lester is 2nd in the AL in strikeouts and just finished an untouchable June (3-1, 1.85, 40 K, 6 BB, 34 IP) and was good in his first July start.
The other three have been extremely wild, which has limited their effectiveness. Kershaw leads MLB in walks (52), but has struck out a batter an inning and owns a 3.49 ERA. Price has walked 30, but struck out 40 in 38.0 innings. De la Rosa, in some ways looks like Kershaw statistically with a touch fewer walks (42) more strikeouts (93) in a similar number of innings, 89.1 to Kershaw’s 87.2. De la Rosa has just given up hits, a lot more, 87 to Kershaw’s 63, and a few more HR 9 to Kerhaw’s 5.
By the way, Kershaw’s BABIP is currently .276. Fantasy owners, is it time to trade? (Don’t ask me, I quit playing fantasy baseball three years ago, and have never won a baseball title. Football, yeah, my teams are always contenders.)
Also, teams are willing to tolerate extreme wildness from young (and not so young) lefties with nice fastballs…. Just ask Oliver Perez.
Bottom 5 LHP by Average FB Velo
47. Barry Zito - 86.4
48. Sean Marshall – 85.9
49. Mark Buehrle - 85.6
50. Doug Davis - 85.2
51. Jamie Moyer – 81.2
Moyer’s in a class by himself these days.
The take home messages:
1. lefties really do succeed with fastballs in the upper 80s
2. Jon Niese has enough fastball to be a successful starter in Major League Baseball. Now he just has to locate it when the Mets call him up.
All fastball velocity data from fangraphs, one of my new favorite baseball sites.
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RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
velocity is a cop out, though obviously this is a very interesting and awesome post.
niese has a straight, straight, straight fastball too.
i don’t know if the same can be said of the other guy’s on that list.
Niese fastball – avg hor. movement – 6.3 .. avg ver. movement – 9.2 http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=4424&position=P
Zito – 6.2 .. 10.2
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=944&position=P
Lilly – 6.1 .. 11.5
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=833&position=P
Buerhle – 5.9 .. 7.7
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=225&position=P
Davis – 5.7 .. 10.5
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=1244&position=P
Lannan – 4.2 .. 8.4
http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=7080&position=P
–I believe Niese’s pitchFX comes from his 2 only starts of 2009 since I dont believe they do pitchfx for minor league games.. but in the 2 starts he demonstrated a fastball with better horizontal movement than all of those guys listed (might be more, i just decided to end it after lannan), but he lacked the vertical movement that Davis, Zito, Lilly have had this year..
Give up the fight, Nick, it’s like playing tennis against a wall. No matter how good you are, you’re never going to score any points. The wall isn’t better, but it is denser, and entirely unmovable from its current position. All it does is takes everything you send its way and spits it back at you, without adding anything of its own. You’re just going to end up frustrated and exhausted.
Analogy aside, I did appreciate your movement comps.
Beautifully put! Wow!
Awesome article….
This just proves he has the stuff to be successful. I’m not saying he’s ever going to be an ACE, but a nice #3 would be cool.
let’s keep in mind that half of those guys are going to regress in a huge way.
doug davis, john lannan, and zack duke. all coming down to earth..
likely ditto for buerhle, braden, and washburn.
Very interesting post, Toby (I guess sometimes feeding the trolls can have a positive outcome after all). Where did you get the data, if you don’t mind my asking?
” All fastball velocity data from fangraphs, one of my new favorite baseball sites. ”
http://www.fangraphs.com/
Thanks. Either I missed that the first time or Toby put it up in an edit. Regardless, that’s what I was looking for. I’ll have to check that site out
i just checked it out, its really nice.. has all the pitchFX of every pitcher and a bunch of charts… i think we found out where dave duncan gets all of his charts from
Yeah, that was an edit, I put up in response to your question. I thought it deserved to go at the end of the article anyway. Sorry for leaving that out in the first place.
awesome post Toby..
though of course bigbaby tries to play around it by calling half of those guys overachievers who will fall back down to earth, haha.. we’ll see where those stand at years end, Im sure a few will fall off, but not most. And not to mention half of those guys have had past major league success (ie: Zito, Moyer, Buehrle, Lee, Lilly, Washburn and so on), its not like this is their first year of pitching well.
btw i made a post before comparing niese’s fastball movement (pitchfx) to that of a few of the listed pitchers… but i didnt post? i had a bunch of links to fangraphs in it… is there like a wordpress limit for links in a post or something?
Yeah, our spam filter seems to think anything with more than one or two links is spam, but sometimes it even catches those as spam so I have to approve comments with links manually. Adding the movement is a nice extension of the piece. Thanks for that. Maybe that belongs in the original table too.
Do I sense I follow-up coming? Would be good reading…
pitchfx data on movement for a sample size of 10 major league innings is hard to judge by, this year shows decent movement, last year shows awful movement, the kind of fastball that can be spotted on the inside corner of the plate and get ripped up the gap by an opposing pitcher
seeing him in buffalo recently, what did you think of the life on his fastball? His velocity isn’t so important to me, whether or not his ball is moving is. If he’s doing something differently now to make his fastball move more, great for him, but if his good stretch is just him spotting/mixing his pitches better, I’m still betting against him being good
Toby, thanks for the post. Talk about an interactive site! We talk about it, and you take it to the next step and post facts and details. Nice job!
Niese has been scouted as having a straight fastball since he first started pitching in the system.
It’s a bad pitch. He doesn’t have a usable #1. He would need the cutter to lean on and he would have to locate perfectly to be anything approaching decent in the majors.
niese has a bad fastball, no change-up and an average curve.
scintillating arsenal.
his curve is a plus pitch.