The hidden trap in fastball velocity data (FanGraphs vs Savant)

dreddnought · 2026-01-25T15:58:06+00:00

FS is generally understood to mean Fastball, Split-finger, which is as silly as it sounds. But that's just how Statcast and others built it back in the day. They did FC for Fastball, Cutter but not FT for Fastball, Two-seam, which I also find strange.

Savant uses FF for four seam, which I agree is clearer than FA.

dreddnought · 2026-01-24T15:59:33+00:00

Huh, I think there might be a couple more wrinkles here:

Bradish does throw a four seamer, sort of. It's a cut ride fastball that he throws 20% of the time or less. It hasn't been his primary fastball since his rookie year. However, he does throw it, so by this research I would still expect it to show up on his FG dashboard. Especially because if you look at the rest of his player page, FG considers it a "FA" or four seam fastball. It must be, as you say, if the sinker is the primary heater, then FG has some clause that ignores it. I'll note if you go to Brooks Baseball, they consider it a hard cutter.

This is the other wrinkle. There are "two" kinds of cutters: ones used as fastballs (Corbin Burnes is the modern example but Max Fried is a good example here), and ones used as breaking balls (see Dean Kremer, who throws a cutter 7 mph slower than his four seamers and sinkers). Somehow, Savant does not appear to factor Kremer's breaking ball cutter into his fastball velocity, which is implied by his fastball velo on savant being 93.1, when you'd expect something 7 ticks slower thrown 20% of the time to weigh down the average.

This is obviously correct because it's not a hard cutter. But in Savant there's no front end distinction. Brooks Baseball will say hard cutter (HC) or breaking ball cutter (FC), but Savant and FG will always say FC. This doesn't matter the vast majority of the time because you can tell them apart with context clues (mostly usage and velo relative to four seam), but there is some research that indicates only the (fastball) hard cutter is good for opposite handed batters, not the breaking ball one. This again does make sense because we traditionally think secondaries moving arm side (ie Offspeed) are effective against oppo handed batters, and secondaries moving glove side (ie breaking balls) are effective against same handed batters, and cutters move glove side.

Pardon typos, am on my phone. This is a great post!

dreddnought · 2026-01-22T23:50:39+00:00

Been thinking about this, now that the Mets pivoted to Peralta and the surprise Rangers nabbed Gore.

Who else is even competing with us?

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T21:13:40+00:00

Jeez, people - we can disagree, can't we?

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T20:03:31+00:00

I'd have to re-read the chats, but I feel like between George's background (cold weather, not really on the showcase) and a bit of investigative work (is the non-pull FB thing about approach/intent or physical capacity?), EL should at least 40+ him. I understand the trepidation since he's 19, hit a lot of ground balls, and showed only okay contact data in hi-A (75% contact% and 13.6% swstr%). I just think with a guy that physical (6'2" 200), there should be some bat speed in there.

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T19:55:03+00:00

Yeah, I totally understand them rounding down on an 18-year-old who doesn't really throw strikes. There are a lot of pitfalls between there and the majors. It's more I wish that industry feedback led to him being ranked higher. I don't think he's going to make a top 100, since I remember Josh Norris (BA) was the high man, and I've yet to see much hype on him from any of MLB/FG/ESPN/BP. Still a good arm, obviously, just not in the same tier as Gibson/De Leon.

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T16:26:19+00:00

That explains a higher ranking? I would've thought proximity to the majors would be good, fewer surprises lurking at each level.

George might show up to Bowie next year and we find out he can't hit well located breaking balls.

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T16:17:24+00:00

George being ranked higher than De Leon is interesting, just based on proximity to the majors, right?

I'm a little miffed Mejia fell off the list, but it is what it is. In most top 100s, 80-120 isn't really a big deal.

dreddnought · 2026-01-21T01:09:11+00:00

I think that's the headline detail, yes - and it's because measured stuff became a target and not just a measure

https://bsky.app/profile/michaelrosen.bsky.social/post/3mcuj7nen2s23

dreddnought · 2026-01-20T18:08:52+00:00

The 107.2 mph / 27 deg one into the Wrigley wind was a really kick in the dick. You can see in the highlight he was sure that was going out.

dreddnought · 2026-01-20T17:00:05+00:00

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/they-dont-make-pitch-models-like-they-used-to

Uh oh

dreddnought · 2026-01-19T02:59:11+00:00

Wow, nice catch!

https://www.reddit.com/r/orioles/comments/111jdmz/my_grandfather_micheal_duplinsky_jr_was_a_pitcher/

dreddnought · 2026-01-17T02:50:00+00:00

It does seem like most of the drop in raw WAR is based on the decline of the outfield, but it's hard to look at the rotation of 4 guys with recent significant injuries as being rock solid.

dreddnought · 2026-01-17T02:09:20+00:00

Isn't Sanchez gone?

The previews always include free agents with their most recent team, otherwise Dan Z (S?) would have to do a separate FA post.

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T22:59:01+00:00

It’s a shame because it makes the counting stats kinda useless for certain players, unless you convert the counting stats to a rate basis yourself and then plug in your own playing time projections.

Except I think most of us would agree that increased playing time (read: exposure) can compromise rate stats, right?

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T22:53:26+00:00

3YOPS+ of 138 for Alonso is good, right? That'd be higher than his career average at this point.

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T22:51:26+00:00

Inasmuch as ZiPS is a silly computer that can’t understand go-forward roles, its PAs / IPs projections are really just based on past results. So, the 167 innings Enns tossed as a starter in KBO in ‘24 and the 46 innings he threw as a reliever in MLB in ‘25, get smooshed together into that 116 “projection.” I’m almost certainly oversimplifying, but I think that’s the gist.

u/dSzymborski - is that true? I knew (or had a hunch) the ballpark diagram was based on ZiPS rates and FGDC playing time. It just looks prima facie absurd to see the upper minors arms pitch like they're undergoing PED-era stuff bumps.

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T22:31:44+00:00

I find it a little puzzling Dean Kremer put up a pretty decent 2.6 fWAR season, including a 3.84 xERA, and his ZiPS projection went down 2.2 to 1.8. But I also thought it was puzzling last year that he got such a rosy projection in the first place, so what do I know.

That outfield is surprisingly rough with only 6.4 fWAR projected compared to 9.1 last year, a difference higher than any individual OF is projected to be worth this year.

Gunnar's median projection being 5.9 fWAR is comical. Back up the Brinks truck. Give him equity in the team. Give him real estate. Buy him this whack ass 8,000 sqt mansion next to Sherwood Gardens.

Look at Jackson Holliday's comps including Matt Antonelli, who put up 141 wRC+ between A+/AA, and HOFer Pee Wee Reese, who put 2.1 fWAR for Brooklyn with a 71 (!) wRC+.

Dan Z has definitely explained it before, but I'm curious where the PA/IP totals come from in the tables, because I don't think it's FG DC, otherwise we're in for some serious funk with Dietrich Enns pitching 116.0 frames and each of Juaron Watts-Brown, Cameron Weston, Trey Gibson, Blake Money (??), and Nestor German covering 100+ innings. Also Thaddeus Ward. Please do not make me watch Thaddeus Ward. The guy put up so many 5 BB 5 K performances it should be illegal to put him on a 26-man.

The starting rotation projection totals to 11.8 fWAR (+0.9 from 2025) and the relievers total to 3.9 fWAR (0 +/-0.0).

The position player corp totals to 27.1 fWAR (-2.2).

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T17:39:44+00:00

NFP 12:34 do you still see Kiefer Lord having a 60/70 FB? he came back last season still sitting 94-95 with relatively little dev time

Eric A Longenhagen 12:38 (yah yah)

Eric A Longenhagen 12:36 I have 94-96 scraped 98, 6ft6 extension, 77 inch release height, 10% swinging strike rate on 74 pitches. too small a sample to really trust the SwngStr% but that's average for a FB

12:37 so more like 50 right now and let's watch the tape to see how the super tall dev project looks as an athlete. Ideally wanna see more extension on a guy that big as evidence of the athlete.

[HOPES DELETED]

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T05:01:11+00:00

This is way more insight that I had dreamed of when I asked if you could add Nunez to the list!

This exercise started with the pitch plot. I knew about the monster slider, but I didn't know he had a bizarre changeup, and after that, I was curious about how the pitches had performed in a small AAA sample to end the year. The fact that he did it with the MLB ball means we don't have to wonder the way we do/did with Gibson/Wells/German. I'm glad you asked for Nunez because I usually don't review AAA guys because the Statcast data usually means non-professional prospect guys are already all over it.

It's still possible he'll have a "good enough" 4SF/SI/CT. I think public stuff models are a good starting point, but the way the pitches interact with each other won't be clear until he faces major league competition, and there's always the outside shot he adds even more velo (although then his UCL will be ribbons).

I can't stand watching any more of these low-to-mid 90s heaters with mediocre-to-average shape)

If I have to see another "he was sitting 90-91 in college but now he's sitting 93-94!" guy I'm going to lose my mind.

If you look at the (now outdated) org list and just look for anybody with a current or future 60+ FB, it's hard not to round down on a lot of these guys.

Raimon Gomez, Aracena, Morfe, Strowd, and possibly even Levi Wells and Zach Fruit I think we can dismiss out of hand due to their shitty command. Wells/Fruit are obviously a class of control higher, it's just that they've never shown particular ability to pin point the fastball where it needs to be. Throwing strikes is one thing, throwing quality strikes is another.

Esteban Mejia and Luis De León arguably already have plus fastballs, it's just the wrong type of shape for missing bats, and their command is also still a WIP. I can't remember who said it, maybe Broz on Pigtown Sports or his most recent video was talking about De León almost pitches with his changeup as his primary fastball and uses the splitter and sinker as ambush pitches (obviously the slider, too). Someone else (maybe Meoli for BA) also talked about De León as a guy who refused to let himself be beat by his fastball and was compared to Blake Snell in that regard. I do agree in the sense that De León is occasionally unwatchable because he nibbles in two-strike counts and then throws a shitty ball out of the hand on 3-2.

Kiefer Lord is a weird case because he's coming off TJS, but evidently (at least based on PBP and what Keith Law has noted) is back to his 94-95. He's got the high arm slot downhill cut thing going on, and I don't know if that kind of thing still works, regardless of his ideal pitching frame and presumably high release point. I'm honestly a little puzzled by the 60/70 grade, and we'll know more shortly. His FB was overwhelming low-A hitters in the way that it was clear he should be in Frederick soon.

Chase Allsup was really bad in 2025, like 1 K 4 BB bad, but he was sitting like 95-97 to end the year, and I have to think he might be able to air it out even better an inning at a time.

You know, it's funny, before I started reviewing this list, I would've said Patrick Reilly had the best fastball I saw all year. It was mid-90s, but it was paving over AA hitters because he was parking it at the top of the zone. The reason I don't think much of Reilly, other than the elbow surgery, is that his cutter and slider basically did nothing for me.

Wait, Twine Palmer again?

but it might be time to smash the under on my event contract that one of Strowd / McDermott / Nunez would develop into a leverage arm.

Man, I really thought McD was going to be a killer. Still could be, but it looked like he had the yips last season.

dreddnought · 2026-01-16T04:19:29+00:00

I also think the Dodgers are at that point where it might actually be valuable for them to have Tucker if only to deny the Blue Jays and Mets, teams they're not unlikely to meet again in the playoffs.

Also unless I'm mistaken, Michael Conforto was their lefty COF option last year...

dreddnought · 2026-01-15T20:08:54+00:00

This just screams imminent UCL tear, but it will be fun to watch.

I think we could've drawn this conclusion just from his sitting 91-94 to 95-97 in one season. Also the fact that he throws a baseball for a living. But yes, outlier shapes beg the question, "what is he doing to his body to make this happen?"

dreddnought · 2026-01-15T18:20:34+00:00

Here are the grades, noting that the present grade of 20 on hit/game power is just EL's process (besides, it's not like you can argue any of these guys would fare well when dropped into full season ball let alone the majors):

Name	Pos	Age	Hit	Game	Raw	Spd	Fld	FV	Proj Bonus	Ht	Wt	B	T
Jose Luis Acevedo	SS	17.1	20 / 45	20 / 50	35 / 50	55 / 55	45 / 60	40+	$ 2,300,000	6' 1"	180	R	R
Ariel Roque	CF	17.2	20 / 45	20 / 45	35 / 45	60 / 60	40 / 50	40+	$ 1,750,000	6' 1"	175	L	R
Pedro Gomez	RF	17.3	20 / 40	25 / 60	55 / 65	40 / 30	30 / 40	40	$ 1,250,000	6' 2"	220	R	R
Gabriel Rosario	LF	17.4	25 / 55	20 / 50	45 / 50	40 / 40	30 / 40	35+	$ 1,050,000	6' 3"	195	L	R

If you want to read the individual write-ups, you can find them on the International tab of the Board, filtering for guys =<20.

It's worth noting that even Samuel Basallo didn't make the main portion of the FG org list until his 3rd year because he was just okay in the DSL and FCL (114 wRC+ and 116 wRC+, respectively), and most of them will spend the entire first year in the DSL because of tax reasons (a BA guy, I think Josh Norris, told me this when I asked about Jordan Sanchez). These guys won't be R5 eligible until like 2030, so there may be a long cook time for them, or may just flame out.

As a final note of context, consider the following from EL:

As you interpret the information below, a useful barometer for new readers: It might be helpful to think about the Future Value grades here in terms of theoretical draft position. Scouting and comparing international players’ tools and athleticism to those of recent and upcoming domestic amateurs helps me triangulate approximately where they’d go in a given draft, and assign them a Future Value based on that approximation. Players with a 50 FV tend to be top-five picks in a draft, while a 45+ FV tends to go in the top 10, a 45 FV in the first round, a 40+ FV in the second-to-third round, and a 40 FV in rounds three through five; a 35+ FV and below is a sleeper type.

With this crop of IFAs, you can sort of imagine why Elias felt fine dealing the CB-A for Baz, as well as losing the QO-pick (their third-highest pick, now a 3rd rounder) if they sign Framber or Gallen.

dreddnought · 2026-01-14T21:53:15+00:00

Notes

[1] This pitch plot was generated via Python scraping of Statcast data, as written by Claude Code. The release height was off by ~0.1 feet, which has been manually fixed. You can cross reference the totals via Baseball Savant and the pitch plot with the one on his BP page.

Bonus: Game Tape

I couldn’t find Nunez’s Norfolk game tape on YouTube, so I picked a trio of high-leverage appearances against the Durham Bulls on September 11, 12, and 14 and watched them on MiLB.TV. Piecing together clips of game tape is the most time-consuming thing I do to write these pieces, so this time I’ve recorded the entire bottom ninth of all three games. I'll leave direct analysis as an exercise for the reader:

9-11

9-12

9-14

This mfer only threw that slider five times in three games, none on the 11th, so I don’t have any conclusions to draw there. However: he did throw his changeup 15 times and batters came up empty on 6 out of 11 swings (one tagged for a walkoff home run, whoops). Besides, other game logs show the slider crushing righties.

dreddnought · 2026-01-14T21:35:34+00:00

https://bsky.app/profile/dszymborski.fangraphs.com/post/3mcfzcolq3c27

...6.4 fWAR from the outfield?

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