Fastballs in NPB

» 24 June 2010 » In npb »

Was playing around with the ol’ db and wrote a quick query to pull out average fastball velocities this season in Japan. These are exceedingly simple lists; I didn’t filter by number of pitches thrown or anything like that.

Here are the 15 fastest averages:

name max
Juan Morillo 95.32
Eulogio de la Cruz 95.21
Marc Kroon 94.78
Takahiro Mahara 93.98
Brian Falkenborg 93.63
Kyuji Fujikawa 93.11
Brian Wolfe 93.07
Takuya Asao 93.01
Shun Yamaguchi 92.88
Jon Leicester 92.41
Tatsuya Uchi 92.17
Tomoyuki Kubota 92.14
Yao-Hsun Yang 92.14
Yoshinori 92.12
Chang Yong Lim 92.00

No surprises here, mostly relievers and many foreign pitchers, though I didn’t expect to see Wolfe. Morillo, de la Cruz, Uchi and Yang have all thrown very few innings so take their appearance on this list with a grain of salt for each.

And here are 15 slowest:

name max
Atsushi Kizuka 83.89
Masato Nakazawa 83.72
Hironori Matsunaga 83.71
Kazuhito Tadano 83.71
Tomoya Yagi 83.69
Shoto Takekuma 83.66
Koji Hiroike 83.12
Mikinori Kato 83.08
Yasutaka Hattori 83.06
Hayato Aoki 82.82
Makoto Yoshino 81.93
Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi 81.59
Masato Kobayashi 81.50
Masaru Takeda 81.36
Shunsuke Watanabe 75.51

No real surprises here either, though it is striking to see how much softer Watanabe throws than everyone else.

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  1. Patrick
    Isaac
    25/06/2010 at 8:45 am Permalink

    It’s amazing Watanabe can get professional hitters out thowing at that speed, it seems like they would catch on after a couple innings.
    But it looks like he’s had a pretty successful career, and I saw a game earlier this season where the Dragons couldn’t touch him.
    He makes Jaime Moyer look like he’s throwing smoke.
    Do you know if he threw harder earlier in his career?

  2. Patrick
    Patrick
    25/06/2010 at 8:56 am Permalink

    Well, here’s the data since last season: http://npbtracker.com/data/player.php?p_id=288

    I’m having a hard time remembering seeing him crack 130 km/h, which is about 81 mph.