The National League Central and fastballs
Full disclosure: I was very bored Friday night and subsequently found myself perusing the depths of Fangraphs. I needed something to write about, so it was a relief when I came upon an interesting thing about the National League Central. The five teams in the N.L. Central — those, of course, being the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Chicago Cubs — have an unusual proclivity towards the fastball.
The first evidence we will be examining is via Fangraphs’ Pitch Type tracker — actually, in order to not have to repeat myself, let it be known all our information is coming from the Pitch Type data found on Fangraphs. We start with the teams who threw the highest percentage of fastballs (two-seam fastballs, four-seam fastballs, cutters, sinkers and split-finger fastballs) in 2014. Here are the top-ten teams that chucked the highest percentage of fastballs last season.
- 1.) St. Louis Cardinals: 64.9%
- 2.) Baltimore Orioles: 63.4%
- 3.) Washington Nationals: 63.1%
- 4.) Texas Rangers: 62.8%
- 5.) Arizona Diamondbacks: 62.6%
- 6.) Miami Marlins: 61.9%
- 7.) New York Mets: 61.2.%
- 8.) Pittsburgh Pirates: 61.2%
- 9.) Atlanta Braves: 60.8%
- 10.) Milwaukee Brewers: 59.5%
The Cardinals, Pirates and Brewers all find themselves in the top ten, making it so 60% of the National League Central is already featured in this upper-tier of fastball throwers. The Cubs (58.7%) are not far off from the top 33% and placed 12th in baseball in ’14 while the Reds (58.0%) ranked 16th.
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Velocity has historically correlated well with overall fastball effectiveness; thereby, making it possibly intuitive to talk about the teams in the Central and their average fastball velocities relative to the league. As expected, every team’s average fastball velocity was above the league-average, save the Cubs whose 91.7 average velocity was exactly league-average. The Reds were second (92.7 mph), the Pirates were fifth (92.6. mph), the Cardinals were sixth (92.2 mph) and the Brewers were twelfth (92.0 mph) in this category last year.
From a logical standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. The higher the velocit, the better chance a pitcher has of having success with that pitch. Obviously location, deception, etc. play an important role, but in the aggregate, velocity’s imperative to prosperity. Bearing this in mind, it is reasonable to conclude that if a pitcher is having success with a particular pitch — especially if it’s their main pitch, which the fastball almost always is — they would be inclined to throw it more often.
All said, it is not at all erroneous to assert the National League Central throws a lot of fastballs in comparison to other divisions given the evidence we have. Whether this strategy was intentionally employed or not I can’t say, but if teams you witness more frequently than other teams throw a ton of fastballs to win games it stands to reason that the observing team may adopt that strategy to mimic their success. That is what certainly could have happened in the N.L. Central, as I find it hard to believe this is all purely coincidental.
Anyway, one could anticipate that the five teams residing in the Central of the National League would not only throw the most fastballs, but see the most fastballs as well. And you’d be 100% right — well, sort of.
St. Louis (60.1%) saw the second most fastballs in 2014, Milwaukee (59.3%) saw the sixth most, Cincinnati (59.2%) saw the eighth most and Chicago (58.0) saw the fifteenth most. These four teams were in the top 50% in seeing fastballs last year — something that was more or less obvious from a presumptive standpoint before I divulged this information. But, wait!
The Pirates, unlike their division rivals, do not place in the top 50% and instead saw the fifth least (or 25th most) percentage of fastballs at 56.2%. How can this be? Clearly they play in a division that throws many fastballs; why were they the only team who was not pitched a high percentage (relative to the league) of hard stuff in 2014?
This is actually a pretty simple question to answer: the Pirates, as a team, were really good at hitting the fastball; whereas the Brewers, Reds, and Cardinals were not — note: the Cubs were around average. At this juncture, that statement remains anecdotal but it won’t be for long thanks to Fangraphs’ Pitch Type Value. Using linear weights (for more reading on the subject click here), one is able to see how a team or player performed against a certain pitch.
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According to this metric, the Pirates (62.6) were the third best team against the fastball. The Cubs were the only other team in the division who was not a total disaster at hitting fastballs in 2014, as their -5.5 score put them at eighteenth in baseball last season. The Brewers (-12.5; 23rd), Reds (-14.6; 24th), and Cardinals (-26.9; 27th) did not fare too well.
Even though the Brewers, Reds, Cardinals and Cubs had a tough time doing damage against fastballs in 2014, they still threw a lot of them. The Pirates, on the other hand, threw a lot of fastballs and hit them well, too.
There wasn’t a broader point behind this post. I just thought it was interesting to see how fastball-heavy the N.L. Central was last year. The question, though, now becomes whether or not this trend can persist into 2015. It is something that I will be surely keeping an eye on.