BP Unfiltered

The Velocity Gainers and Losers of Spring 2013

by Harry Pavlidis

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Two years ago Mike Fast (now with the Houston Astros) took a look at pitchers who gained or lost velocity between the end of 2010 and spring 2011. We won't summarize his whole study here, but here’s the money quote:

There is definitely a predictive relationship between the fastball speed change observed in spring training and the fastball speed change observed in the regular season. Pitchers on average retained 41% of their spring training speed changes into the regular season, and the correlation coefficient for the sample here is r=0.53.

With that predictive relationship in mind, we've compared velocities from September 2012 and March 2013 and come up with some interesting results. This year's study includes World Baseball Classic pitchers, who were all limited in their usage by rule.

First, a summary of gainers and losers:

Total Pitchers	69
Gainers	25
Losers	44
Average Change	-0.4 mph

MPH Change	# of Pitchers
3	1
2	0
1	6
0 to 1	18
-1 to 0	24
-1	14
-2	5
-3	1

Most pitchers didn't change much at all, with 42 guys within one mile per hour of their September velocity one way or the other. There were more losers than gainers (44 to 25), with 20 guys losing at least one mph but only seven gaining that much.

The pitchers listed below each threw at least 20 fastballs or sinkers (combined) in both September 2012 and March 2013 as a starting pitcher. (Pitches thrown in relief by pitchers who also worked out of the bullpen were not considered.) The big table below shows the raw speed numbers and the change between the two periods. In addition, we reran the numbers using Mike's temperature adjustment technique (37 degrees = 1 mph fastball velocity change, baselining from 70 degrees) and recalculated the changes between periods. For sanity's sake we're showing only the raw numbers below, along with the “Delta” and “DeltaAdj”, the latter being based on the adjusted speed numbers.

Pitcher	SEP12	MAR13	Delta	DeltaAdj
Andrew Cashner	93.0	96.3	3.3	3.0
Patrick Corbin	91.3	93.2	2.0	1.7
Jarrod Parker	93.6	95.2	1.6	1.6
Homer Bailey	92.4	94.2	1.8	1.5
Kyle Kendrick	89.9	90.5	0.6	1.2
Luke Hochevar	93.1	94.3	1.2	1.1
Travis Wood	89.2	90.4	1.1	1.1
Jason Vargas	88.7	89.5	0.7	0.9
Madison Bumgarner	90.7	91.6	1.0	0.8
Jake Peavy	91.5	92.1	0.6	0.7
Ubaldo Jimenez	91.8	92.7	0.9	0.7
Tim Lincecum	90.4	91.0	0.6	0.6
Josh Beckett	91.5	91.6	0.1	0.6
Derek Holland	94.1	94.4	0.4	0.5
Edinson Volquez	93.8	93.9	0.1	0.4
Yu Darvish	93.9	94.2	0.3	0.3
Andy Pettitte	88.9	88.9	-0.1	0.3
Blake Beavan	90.8	91.3	0.6	0.3
Trevor Cahill	90.4	90.8	0.4	0.2
Bud Norris	92.2	92.3	0.2	0.2
Mike Fiers	88.9	89.1	0.3	0.2
Gio Gonzalez	93.5	93.7	0.2	0.1
Aaron Harang	90.2	90.4	0.2	0.1
Edwin Jackson	94.5	94.6	0.1	0.1
Ervin Santana	91.6	91.8	0.2	0.0
Mark Buehrle	85.6	84.9	-0.7	0.0
Ian Kennedy	90.2	90.1	-0.1	-0.1
Chris Sale	91.2	91.3	0.1	-0.1
Marco Estrada	90.7	90.4	-0.3	-0.2
Tommy Hanson	89.9	89.4	-0.5	-0.2
Mat Latos	93.2	92.8	-0.4	-0.3
Josh Johnson	93.5	92.6	-1.0	-0.3
Zack Greinke	92.9	92.5	-0.4	-0.4
Wandy Rodriguez	90.4	90.2	-0.3	-0.4
Matt Harrison	92.8	92.4	-0.4	-0.4
Barry Zito	84.5	84.1	-0.4	-0.6
Clayton Kershaw	93.8	93.3	-0.4	-0.6
Eric Stults	88.2	87.5	-0.7	-0.6
William Smith	90.3	90.1	-0.2	-0.7
Bronson Arroyo	87.9	87.4	-0.5	-0.7
Dan Straily	92.0	90.9	-1.0	-0.7
Hector Santiago	93.8	93.0	-0.8	-0.7
Jeff Samardzija	96.2	95.6	-0.5	-0.8
James Shields	93.8	93.4	-0.5	-0.8
Yovani Gallardo	92.4	91.4	-1.0	-0.9
Hisashi Iwakuma	90.6	90.1	-0.5	-0.9
Jordan Zimmermann	94.9	93.3	-1.6	-0.9
Scott Feldman	92.1	91.0	-1.0	-1.0
Tommy Milone	88.8	87.5	-1.2	-1.0
Chris Capuano	89.0	87.9	-1.1	-1.2
Wade Miley	91.2	90.1	-1.1	-1.2
Luis Mendoza	92.7	91.8	-1.0	-1.2
Samuel Deduno	91.7	90.2	-1.5	-1.2
Cliff Lee	92.3	90.2	-2.0	-1.3
Clayton Richard	90.7	89.6	-1.1	-1.3
Zach Stewart	89.5	88.6	-0.9	-1.3
Jerome Williams	93.7	92.5	-1.2	-1.4
Tyler Chatwood	94.4	93.1	-1.3	-1.4
Matt Moore	94.2	92.5	-1.7	-1.6
A.J. Griffin	90.5	88.8	-1.7	-1.6
Jeremy Guthrie	93.3	91.9	-1.5	-1.7
Joe Saunders	88.6	87.2	-1.4	-1.8
Doug Fister	90.0	88.2	-1.9	-1.9
Joe Blanton	91.2	89.0	-2.2	-2.0
Bruce Chen	87.2	85.1	-2.1	-2.1
Felix Hernandez	93.6	91.7	-1.9	-2.2
Justin Masterson	94.1	91.7	-2.4	-2.6
Wily Peralta	96.3	93.4	-2.9	-2.8
Ryan Vogelsong	92.7	89.5	-3.2	-3.2

Harry Pavlidis is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @harrypav
Click here to see Harry's other articles. You can contact Harry by clicking here

Related Content: Pitching, Scouting, PITCHf/x, Velocity

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