MLB Pitchers: Slow and Steady Wins the Game for These Arms
Some of the best MLB pitchers so far in 2019 are also the softest tossers. How they retire batters with negligible fastballs.
Baseball fans worship velocity. If the average fan knows only a couple of stats about their favorite pitcher, one is likely to be his fastball speed…and the closer to 100 mph, the better.
But this year, perhaps strangely, a lot of pitchers are achieving strong numbers with fastballs that barely register on the radar gun. Forget 95 or 100 mph, these guys have to muscle up to hit 90. Yet opposing batters find them baffling.
How? Simply put, they know how to pitch. They offset a lack of velocity with guile, precision and a strong sense of how to throw the pitch the batter isn’t expecting. As a group, they offer compelling evidence that you don’t have to be a flame-thrower to be a successful big league hurler.
Their teams are also finding success. With only one or two exceptions, the 10 pitchers featured below fill key roles on the staffs of some of the game’s most successful teams to date. Eight are rotation starters on either division-leaders or teams closely positioned in second. Their combined record is 36-15 with ERAs topping out at 3.51, yet there isn’t a 92-mph fastball in the group.
Who are these baseball counter-culturalists? Which pitchers are re-defining how the game is played, demonstrating that it isn’t necessary to strike everybody out, and that it’s possible to win at the game’s highest level with a heater that barely meets the definition of the term?
Here’s a look at them, and a dive into what, thus far in 2019, has made them successful.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Kyle Hendricks
Kyle Hendricks struggled through April, but he has dominated all three of his May starts and he’s now pitching in a way that hitters find baffling. In those three May starts, he has pitched 25 innings, allowed just one run, 12 hits and one walk. Perhaps more remarkable, he’s needed just an average of 91 pitches per game to do all that.
His nickname among the Cubs is “The Professor,” but on the mound he’s more “The Efficiency Expert.”
Velocity? Hendricks has none. His 4-seam fastball averages 86.7 mph, which puts him at the absolute bottom of big league arms from a strict power standpoint.
But he makes up for that with stunning command. Only seven percent of Hendricks pitches find a batter’s ideal hitting zone. Yet batters convert Hendricks pitches into only an 86.6 mph exit velocity, putting him in the upper quarter of pitchers in that regard. Only 6.5 percent of batters square up a Hendricks pitch.
Despite Hendricks’ lack of velocity, only 35 percent of opponents hit his pitches to the pull field, more evidence that he is a weak-contact specialist. The reason has to do with Hendricks ability to work the corners. His “edge” rate – the percentage of Hendricks pitches that catch a corner of the strike zone – is 48.6 percent, nearly half.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Zach Davies
In his fifth season as a member of the Brewers rotation, Zach Davies is off to a 4-0 start with a National League leading 1.54 earned run average. In his eight starts, he has yet to allow more than two run; in three of his starts he held his opponents scoreless.
And he’s making it appear effortless.
Davies doesn’t even throw a 4-seamer; his highest velocity pitch is his cutter, and that only gets to 88.4 mph. That ranks him in only the 5th percentile among major league hurlers for velocity. Yet the 85.9 mph exit velocity opponents average off Davies ranks among the game’s best. Beyond that, Davies displays an utter aversion to fat pitches. Only 3.9 percent of his pitches find the middle of the strike zone.
Contrast that with his 49.7 percent “edge” rate. As a result, only 3.5 percent of opponents get solid barrel contact off Davies. Nearly 30 percent of all Davies at bats result in weak ground balls to an infielder.
Davies is 6-feet tall but only 155 lbs., so he has the body of a finesse artist. The one element his game has lacked to date has been durability. In his first eight starts, Davies has averaged a fraction less than six innings per start, low for a pitcher who’s never been knocked off the mound.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: CC Sabathia
A decade or so ago, CC Sabathia was considered one of the game’s hardest throwers. In those days he regularly threw a 94.7 mph 4-seamer. But he is 38 now and the fastball is written into the history book. The charts put Sabathia’s best today at 88.3 mph, in only the sixth percentile.
Yet instead of fading into obscurity, Sabathia has set about proving that speed is over-rated. The exit velocity of opposing hitters is 85.5 percent, putting him just outside the game’s best 10 percent.
How? Like most successful MLB pitchers who get by without velocity, Sabathia lives on the fringes. His “edge” rate is 47.4 percent. Deceptive movement also helps; Sabathia’s “chase” rate – the percentage of time batters offer at pitches outside the strike zone – is 30.7 percent.
As Sabathia’s strikeout percentage has receded, those complementary performance adjustments have become critical. A little more than a decade ago, Sabathia averaged a strikeout an inning; today he’s down to 6.8 per nine innings.
Yet his 1.187 WHIP so far in 2019 is actually below his career average of 1.254.
As with Davies, durability is becoming the drawback, although the Yankees – with their great bullpen – have no incentive to extend Sabathia. Still it should be acknowledged that Sabathia is averaging just 5 innings per start.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Wade Miley
On a staff featuring Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, Wade Miley’s exceptional work would be easy to overlook. So let the record show that he’s 4-2 in 2019 with a 3.51 ERA in nine starts for a team generally being hailed as baseball’s best.
Miley doesn’t win on “stuff”. His four-seamer barely breaks 90 mph, and lands him only in the fourth percentile for pure velocity. By the standards of 2019 MLB, his 6.1 strikeout rate per nine innings is modest at best.
Rather, he excels at location and smarts. Miley only walks 6.2 percent of the batters he faces, and only 5.6 percent barrel up his pitches. That’s largely due to the fact that less than five percent of MIley’s pitches find their way into the middle of the strike zone. By contrast, 43.6 percent flirt with a corner.
Miley also seems to have an innate ability to induce ground ball contact. The average launch angle of opponents’ contacts off him is only 8.2 percent; as a result, 48.1 percent of contacts are ground balls. To a hitter, there’s nothing more frustrating than a weak ground ball off a below-average fastball. Miley specializes in those.
Miley will never be confused with his more illustrious mound teammates, Verlander or Cole. But so far this year he is proving to be a perplexing contrast for batters.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Jon Lester
Jon Lester’s 4-seam fastball velocity this season is 90.1 mph. That’s off nearly a full mile per hour from last year, and more than two mph from five years ago. He ranks only in the seventh percentile for pure velocity.
Yet with a 3-1 record and a 1.16 ERA in seven starts, Lester may be off to one of the best starts of his career. The Cubs staff leader hasn’t allowed an earned run in his last 20 innings of work.
The reasons lay in all the peripherals that good pitchers learn when they no longer can rely on blowing the ball past hitters. His walk rate is just 5.1 percent, and only 6.8 percent of his pitches find the heart of the plate.
He also keeps the ball out of the air. Forty-four percent of his ball contacts are ground balls, 34 percent of those weak ones.
Lester is also unpredictable, a true four-pitch guy. He throws his 4-seamer less than 40 percent of the time, mixing in his cutter almost as frequently and throwing both his curve and changeup more than 10 percent of the time.
Despite not possessing the same raw pitching attributes, Lester has reduced his WHIP from 1.4 as a young star to 1.12 so far as a 35-year-old in 2019.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Hyun-Jin Ryu
On a staff featuring Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore Hyun-Jin Ryu.
From a performance standpoint, Ryu has obviously become the staff ace so far this season. He has a 5-1 record and 1.72 ERA in 52 innings, compiling a league-leading 0.73 WHIP.
Like Lester and Hendricks, he has found his stride in May. Ryu’s three starts this month have lasted a combined 25 innings with one run allowed, just 9 hits and only 1 walk.
Ryu is not overpowering. His 90.5 mph 4-seamer puts him in only the 9th percentile for velocity. Yet his ability to change speeds had enabled Ryu to compile a 28 percent K rate that ranks close to the top 20 percent. His walk rate? What walk rate? Ryu has faced 195 batters in his eight starts, and walked just three of them.
That may explain the 27 percent opponent swing rate against Ryu. After all, there’s no percentage in trying to wait him out. Those waiting or a far pitch are likely to have a long wait; only 5.3 percent of his pitches find the middle of the strike zone.
By contrast, more than four in 10 cut a corner.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Jake Odorizzi
Those looking for reasons to explain Minnesota’s rise to the top of the AL Central should at least contemplate the part played by Jake Odorizzi.
The Twins got Odorizzi from Tampa Bay prior to the 2018 season. He was nothing special last year, but has blossomed in the first two months of 2019.
Odorizzi’s 5-2 record might theoretically be a reflection of Minnesota’s overall success, but his 2.32 ERA, less than half his 4.49 of 2018, is all Odorizzi. He’s simply quit surrendering base hits, having allowed just 25 of them in nearly 43 innings of work.
Entering his Wednesday outing, Odorizzi had allowed just seven hits in his last 20 innings.
That’s attention-getting when you consider that Odorizzi’s 92.3 mph 4-seamer puts him in only the 19th percentile for velocity.
A quick scan of the record suggests why. He has a .222 weighted on base average, in MLB’s top five percent. His walk and barrel rates are both better than 2018, and his hard hit percentage is so far down from 38.6 percent to 29.5.
Those figures translate to tangibles. Odorizzi’s 2019 WHIP is 0.94, much better than his 1.35 rate of 2018 or his career 1.23. He’s allowing just 5.3 hits per nine innings, three fewer than last year, and he’s only thrown two home run balls.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Cole Hamels
What is it with Cubs starters? It’s as if they’ve all gone on a fastball-free diet.
So far this season Cole Hamels’ 4-seam velocity is 91.6 mph, placing him barely outside the bottom 20 percent of all MLB arms. Yes, that’s a change. Just three seasons ago Hamels was a full mile per hour faster.
At age 35, he’s compensated by increasing both his “edge” percentage and his ground ball rate, the latter up to 55.6 percent from 46.2 percent last season. Keeping the ball on the ground is often a productive strategy. Batters’ launch angles off Hamels this season average just 7.6 degrees, down from 10.5 degrees in 2018.
The result is a far more consistent Hamels. In eight starts, he’s 3-0 with a 3.08 ERA and has averaged better than six innings per start.
The only issue has been walks. Hamels has allowed 17 of them, 14 of those coming in his most recent four starts. His hard hit percentage is also curiously up, from 35.7 percent last year to 43.6 percent so far this season. So it’s possible that Hamels has benefitted from the Cubs’ defense.
As he has aged, Hamels has become a true five-pitch pitcher. He’s under 40 percent using his 4-seamer, and above 10 percent with changeups, cutters, curves and sinkers. So there’s no out-guessing what he might throw at any point.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Matt Boyd
A 28-year-old in his fifth major league season, Matt Boyd is off to a 4-3 start with a 3.15 ERA, not bad for a sub-.500 fourth place team.
Boyd’s 91 mph 4-seamer barely lifts him above the bottom one-quarter of MLB pitchers for fastball velocity. Even so, he has become one of the game’s best strikeout pitchers, with a 2.2 walk rate per nine innings that puts him in the 83rd percentile. That’s close on the heels of Justin Verlander.
Boyd’s secret lies in his ability to change batters’ eye levels. His 17.6 percent popup rate ranks among the game’s best. He is also a weak contact specialist on the ground, 26.5 percent of opponent contacts leading to weak infield grounders.
He’s still finding the center of the plate more frequently than he’d like. Yet his 7.8 percent “meatball” rate, while high for the game’s elite, is down from his 8.4 to 9.0 rates of just a few years ago.
There remain areas to work on, and those are the reasons why Boyd isn’t yet thought of in the class of guys like Hendricks, Davies and Ryu. His average exit velocity is 88.1 mph, slightly higher than the major league average. His pitches leave bats at a launch angle of 19.6 degrees, an arc that is wrought with trouble.
But while Boyd still has things to work on, he is showing ability that belies that so-so 91 mph heater.
Slow and Steady MLB Pitchers: Patrick Corbin
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The Nationals have been a disappointment, but that’s not the fault of the three aces, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Corbin. All three have ERAs of 3.64 and lower.
Of the three, Patrick Corbin (3-1, 3.20) is decidedly the softest tosser. His heater tops out at 91.2 mph, keeping him in the lowest third for pure speed. His 2019 season to date has been a bit uneven, including an April 29 start in St. Louis in which he allowed six earned runs in five innings.
But that represents one-third of all the earned runs Corbin has allowed this season. In his other seven starts, he has compiled a 2.58 ERA.
His season-long strength has been an ability to avoid the hitting zone. Only 5.9 percent of Corbin pitches have touched the most hittable areas of the strike zone, while more than four in 10 have flirted with the corners. His soft ground ball percentage exceeds 33 percent.
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His record is uneven. Corbin allows a troubling 28.5 percent of balls to be lifted into the air, and the 10.4 degree launch angle – while not extremely high – is up from just 7 percent the past two seasons. At 11.5 percent, his barrel rate is also high, suggesting that part of Corbin’s record to date may be due to good fortune.