MLB: Byron Buxton Leads the 2016 Statcast Superstars

Velocity Leaders from the Field

So while the big arms in the rotation were tremendous, even more impressive were some of the arms around the field.

Jackie Bradley, Jr. had the most 100 MPH throws in the field with four 100+ MPH throws from the outfield in the regular season and two in the postseason, but his average outfield throw still didn’t top Starling Marte‘s 97.

Bringing it into the infield brought two different views into play. At shortstop, you have Danny Espinosa who out-paced all shortstops significantly in his velocity from his position. Espinosa’s throws from short averaged 91 MPH on the season. Second place on the season was Didi Gregorius, whose average was 88.6 MPH, so that tells you just how incredible Espinosa was compared to the field.

Of course, Espinosa also brought a sub-.700 OPS to the plate as well, so he needed to be outstanding in the field to hold any value. Nolan Arenado, on the other hand, could get overlooked for his defensive prowess because of the incredible amount of value his bat brings.

While Arenado didn’t have the top throw of the year from third base, he did have three of the top five at the position on the year and ran away with the best average velocity at the position, launching balls across the diamond at an average 87.7 MPH velocity while his next-closest competitor, Manny Machado, came in over 1.5 MPH slower at 86.

However, in all of these statistics (and more outside the article if you dig into the Statcast leaderboards on MLB.com, which I’d recommend for some fun number exploration) one player stood out above all the rest.