How often do you run across lower level college pitchers around 75-77mph is this becoming more common

Having just been through the Summer showcase circuit with my SS / RHP, I have to say I didn't see this at all...these being high school not college pitchers so perhaps not exactly the same sample.

 

There were some guys in the upper 70's, but they were mostly LHP.  There were a handful of smaller guys (like my son) but these guys were almost always secondary pitchers. 

 

I was actually surprised at the physical stature of most of the pitchers we saw.  Lots of big dudes (not just tall) at every showcase. 

 

And lots of velocity.  I'm guessing that average pitching velocities are up over 4 or 5 years ago.  Many many places focused on increasing velocity (TBR, Driveline, et.al.) and lots of players working on it.

Not speaking of perfect game or other elite invite tournaments....what I saw this summer in travel ball tournaments was a whole lot of high 70's to low 80's.  These were mostly west coast 18U and 19U teams.  There are all different levels there too.  There were occasional outliers, a kid sitting high 80's or getting into the low 90's, or a kid coming sidearm that was low 70's.  

Where I am 80% of the high schoolers fall into the same "bucket"....75-81 mph.  The college guys I have seen still have 80% falling into the same bucket....79-83 mph.  

This is RHP and LHP and just sort of going by the local small college pitchers I have seen around where I live. 

Even at the local D1, a solid program, for every guy sitting 89 there is one sitting 84.  

Leftside you are exactly correct.  Have tried to espouse this point many times.  Although it is less rare, 90's are still rare.  Just look up the nimbers on PG or PBR.  Unless it is one of their super premier events very very few are hitting 90.  And there are plenty of mid 80's guys at the D1 level.  Lots.  And once you get to D3 upper 70's is common.  People like to look at outliars like a D3 somewhere throwing 93.  People also like to make it sound so hard to 'get to the next level'.  Sort of like corporate America middle management filled with less than spectacularly talented people who want you to believe their job is so demanding only a precious few could do it.  Truth is if you have any ability at all and a desire to play there is somewhere for you.  But most kids set their sites on D1 and a lot of them if they don't get that just hang up their cleats and go to the college of their choice.  There are tons of kids walking the hallowed halls of big schools that could easily have played at D2, NAIA or D3 schools.  I have personally Gunned small college kids in the 70's.

My 2017 catcher played "up" this past summer with now HS seniors. I watched 25 or so games at various Dynamic showcases throughout VA, MD, and NC. I saw a steady diet of low 80s. The fastest we saw all summer were 3-4 Canes pitchers, all were mid-80s and touching high 80s. Did not see a single pitcher in 90s.

My sons team faced one throwing 90 the whole summer split schedule of 16u and 18u. He did face many D1 commits over that time, some from the ACC, Big East, A10 and so forth. There are very few 16 and 17yrs throwing 90 and a whole lot less then what is rumored! Hitting 90 once on a perfect day is not the same as throwing 90 while pitching.

Batty67,

 

Not sure which Canes team you saw, but we have watched their top team play a hundred or more games over the past few years.  What would be rare is when you see one of their pitchers that doesn't throw 90 or better. So if you didn't see anyone throwing 90, I would assume you didn't see their top team.

 

I realize there are more high school pitchers throwing 79-80 than those throwing 90 or better.  But there are a lot of HS pItchers throwing in the 90s these days.  A couple years ago an old scouting buddy of mine said his organization had turned in more college and HS pitchers that had touched 96 that year than the previous 10 years combined.

 

I spent several years coaching in small college.  We never had a pitcher that topped out in the 70s.  We did have some low 80s to mid 80s guys and a few upper 80 guys and two 90+ guys, one that topped out at 96.  BTW, both of the 90+ guys ended up pitching in the Big Leagues.

 

I suppose if you are talking about the very lowest level of college baseball, you might see a lot of 70 mph types.  But our BP pitcher threw 65-70 most of the time when guys wanted it a little quicker and that was from short distance.  12 year old Little League kids are throwing in the 60s, some much higher.  

 

I will admit that I have seen very good pitchers that don't throw harder than upper70s or 80.  Most of them throw from a very low slot.  But I would be surprised to watch nearly any college game and see everyone throwing below 80 mph. Not saying it doesn't happen.

We have a low level D3 located nearby. I would sometimes stop and watch an inning or two if I biked by. I would say the pitchers were throwing at least 80. The difference in quality between them and higher level D3's was the lack of command. I saw a lot of drivable pitches.

 

One time my son and I stopped to watch. He felt his (large classification) high school team would beat the two teams on the field. It was at a time where everyone getting playing time at his high school went at least D3.

PG in fairness I have to say the kids I gunned 'cruised' upper 70's.   No doubt they topped low 80's.   And no doubt there are more 90's than ever.  But also no doubt a kid in the 80's can pitch somewhere. And mid 80's and up can put you D1.

I agree

Blake, are you seeing this at lower level D2/D3 schools? Or lower level D2/D3 JuCo? As compared to what time period? 5 years ago? 10 years ago?

 

I haven't noticed that in the Northeast. One thing that comes to mind for your area... has the development of showcasing, tournament baseball, the internet, etc. opened up a larger pool of schools to your local ballplayers outside of the Dallas area? So your local lower level schools aren't getting as high a level of recruit as they did in the past. Just wondering.

Last year during the Regional at Elsinore my buddy texted me a picture of the Radar Gun at 77.  His caption under it was, "Don't ever let your players attend a college game or they might think that they can be a D1 pitcher,"  Now in all fairness this was like the 12 inning of the marathon USC game.

I have seen this.  When my son was in HS they had a crosstown rival that they had some great games against.   In those games there were about 10 kids that played DI baseball and a bunch that played at other levels.  It really was a college game. 

My son's team ended up in the top 30 in a bunch of national polls and the opponent was in and out when they got on a streak over a couple of seasons.  Those were fun games to watch. 

I've watched a lot of HS varsity and 15u-17u travel I we the last 3 year, in 6A region play in GA and all over metro Atlanta. I've seen exactly 2 HS games with a kid that sat 90+, and both of them were drafted in the first 3 rounds.

I've seen one 16u and one 17u touch 90 in a game, and a small handful cruise above 85.

Without exception, every velocity I've been told a particular player was sitting at was at least 2-4 mph faster than the peak I witnessed when I saw them in person. People talk like there's a guy cruising 90 around every corner and it just isn't true.

My son's HS had 4 guys throwing 85-87 last season according to the coaches and parents. One of them may have touched 85 once, but not a single one of them didn't actually have a cruising velocity range that didn't include upper 70s.

How many HS kids can throw 90 mph?

 

What would a person guess?

 

I'm not talking about averaging 90 mph, just those that have shown they can throw 90 mph or better. Be interesting to see what everyone thinks.

that number is going to be quite a bit higher. Maxing out a pitch is not pitching. I would say somewhere around 10% of all 17u pitchers could touch 90 and that is probably high. 

I think that there are quite a few. 

 

In the entire time my son played HS ball, i only saw one that averaged over 90 (his teammate).  He averaged 93-94 and touched 96-97 once or twice.  He's now averaging 98 and has touched 100 once or twice (MiLB).

 

At the college level, I never saw a pitcher throw less than 80.  At JuCo most were at low-mid 80's and when my son was at a D2, there was a few who touched 90 and averaged high 80's.

We played all last Spring and Summer without seeing a single 90+ hour kiddo. There may have been one in our HS league, but we didn't see him as he was primarily a closer and wasn't needed. During summer ball (mostly Legion), we saw some mid-80's. A couple kids had already played one season of college ball, but none were close to 90.

Last weekend was the first weekend for fall ball in our area. My son's team got a glimpse of probably the top recruit in the state. He was clocked at 93 over the summer at a PG event and has a PG rating of 10. Rumor is the kid might go in the top 5 next draft and is committed to a top D1 program. You could tell by talk in the dugout and body language that this was the hardest thrower any of the kids had ever faced, and most of the kids are incoming seniors. As an aside, my 15-year old Sophomore was the only batter to get on base and he eventually scored after 4 pick off attempts. His only comment was that the pitches didn't seem as fast as he thought they would be (I'm guessing he wasn't throwing top speed since it was fall ball - maybe high 80's). Most kids either watched strikes fly by or swung at stuff that was junk and out of the zone.

Velocity on the fastball is the basis for all other pitches. At 75-77 with a CU thrown correctly the veolcity should be 12 mph slower. A CB should be velo quite lower as well.

At 60-70 mph, an older pitcher (if this is what you are referring to) will get blasted, unless he is throwing all junk, I dont see how effective he would be.

 

So to answer your question, no, this is not good at all.

Not that i have that much experience or even viewed as many games as some on these forums, but for the PG event (200 plus total between underclass and top) and the two college camps at D1's i've attended with my 2018, along with all the tournaments I've been too...the fastest I've seen was 87...majority sat 83-85.  Looked at PG site with the search of players who they are tracking and it is about 500 or so out of all the grad years (2016 thru 2019) that are able to sip 90MPH...considering PG tracks A LOT of pitchers, that isn't too many in my mind.

Thoughts?

Even humping just one pitch up there at 90, without necessarily any control over where it's going, I doubt there's on average one guy per HS V staff even in reasonably large classification leagues, and I'd bet good money there's nowhere near 1 per V staff across all classifications.

 

So what does that work out to? 3-5% in big classification schools? Less than 1% overall?

 

As a reference point, Dakota Chalmers was a 98/99th percentile guy when he was playing fairly big 17u events a year and half ago and going 87-92 per PGs database.  I didn't see everyone in his region pitch this spring, but he's the only I did see who even came close to 90 (he regularly exceeded it, of course), and I saw him relieved twice by guys who spent a lot more time around 85 than 90.

And, as another point of reference, I've seen a grand total 4 guys throw in JV games in the last 3 years who even as much as touched 80, and only one who lived there. One of them was a V pitcher who was just on the outside on a full V staff so pitched a good bit of JV, and the other 3 had obvious control issues.

 

My inference based on that is guys who can pitch and get over 80 are V pitchers pretty much everywhere, barring really loaded pitching staffs.

Again I think this conversation comes down to defining what 'a lot' means.  I look at it this way, every D1 recruits at least 5 to 8 pitchers a year.  So many go away after freshman year or get drafted once eligible.  So sometimes they are bringing in 10 pitchers.  For now lets be conservative and say 6 pitchers per D1 come in every year.  So 300 schools at 6 pitchers each is 1800 pitchers.  Now to me 'a lot' would be more than half of those.  I don't think that is even close to true but I could be wrong.  For those of us who have younger kids (mine will be 14u next season) the holy grail is D1 baseball.  Professional is not even a consideration.   So we are curious (and yes I know you need control secondary pitches yada yada yada) just how fast a kid has to be to put him in that picture.  I say topping at 86 cruising at 83 - 85 is D1 material.  Keep in mind we are not talking about the weekend starter for a top 25 team against their conference rivals!  PG if you have data about how many PER CLASS hit 90 at any point of their high school career that would be awesome!  And PG, Bob the consultant, Prepster or anyone else in a position to know would you agree with my assessment?

2020dad,

Maybe there is  geographical aspect to the comments and observations.

In the West Region for D1, which would include the Big West, Mountain West, Pac 12 and the WAC, the number of pitchers  cruising 83-85 could be counted on one hand (total number in all of those conferences). The ones who are 83-85 are really, really good. In the Spring,  I posted  about Tyler Davis, who actually is 84 to 86 and can touch 88.  Tyler has a change and command down in the strike zone on both sides of the plate which was second to no one in college baseball during the 2015 season.

While the gun had him at 90-91 in the 2015 post season, I saw Thomas Eshelman of Fullerton as a freshman and sophomore and he was 84-85. He was also their Friday guy as a freshman and did things like walk 3 guys in over 120 inning, with an ERA under 1.50.

In the conferences I mentioned, you won't find 83-85 guys getting innings during a season unless they are elite guys like Tyler and Thomas.  .

I don't know.  No expert at all. I'll let others who know more weigh in.  But from talking to my son's D3 coach, on our campus visit, about what kind of pitching one faces at the D3 level, topping 86, cruising 83-85 sounds much more  like your decent D3 pitcher.  Even the top guys at D3 seem to have more velo than this.   So I don't know, I think you may be seriously underestimating pitching at the D1 level.  

I will have our tech guys get me a number and post it tomorrow.  Of course we haven't seen every HS pitcher so there are more than what we have in the database capable of throwing 90. I'm guessing we have most of those that can throw 92 or better, though.

 

No, one wild pitch to the top of the screen is not a 90.  On our peak velocities it has to be a strike or close to it.  There are not many who just happen to throw a 90 one time, but there are some I suppose.  Once I see it, I know they are capable of doing it. Once I see a kid hit a 400+ foot HR with no wind, I know that he can hit a baseball 400+ feet. I'm also not expecting the kid that touches 90 to throw every pitch 90. Or the kid that hit the 400 foot HR to do it consistantly. Furthermore it is "almost" a certainty that in that brief period, I just didn't happened to see someones best ever fastball or longest ever home run.

While there are probably guys who can throw 90 who don't ever get into a PG event, my guess is that you guys aren't really missing all that many in the greater scheme of things.  OTOH, there are literally thousands (probably tens of thousands) of HS guys who can't come close to 90 that also don't show up in PG's data. I'd be surprised if the percentage of guys in PGs database that hit 90 isn't at least an order of magnitude or two larger than the percentage of HS players at large.

Thanks for responding PGstaff, here and elsewhere.

 

I will add that there seems to be a LOT of Canes teams from the tip-top, national teams to those that are "just" good. In 6 Dynamic tournaments, my son's team played 6-7 Canes teams. I think we (as in my son's team) went about .500. However, the signature win was at the Dynamic WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 15U, 16U, 17U when we beat the Canes American team 5-1, and that run was unearned. The 3-4 pitchers those Canes pitched were all mid-80s and touching high-80s.

 

Our team pitched our best, who was also cruising 85-86 and touching high 80s. He just committed to James Madison U.

As discussed many times on here there are certainly many levels of D3.  But honestly I think you are seriously overrating D3 velocities.  And actually I don't think I am off by that much on the D1's.   Would live some hard numbers and if I am way off will be the first to say I learned something.  But even when we were at the college world series most guys were in the mid to upper 80's.   Now imagine the staff at the 250th ranked D1 school...  how many 87 or 88 plus guys do you think they have?  I don't know either but I would love to.  Anyone know of a site with game by game D1 velocities?  When trackman becomes more affordable D1 will have info like mlb.  Then we will all know!

According to the PG site the average high school senior at their events is 80mph and thats a top velo number.  And thats at PG events!  Imagine if we had all hs velocities.  

But the average high school senior at PG event is not an average D! player.  So I don't see your point. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lbi2F70FZg

So the point is you would expect the PG guys to be faster and even there 80 is average.  Just looked at a ranking and found the 250th ranked D1 team.  Looked up their pitchers (yes I have no life).  Latest PG or PBR velocity...  1 at 90, 89 and 88.  2 at 87 and 86.  One each at 85, 84, 83, 82, and 81.  And these are top velos not cruising speeds.  Now I am sure some of them have improved.  But still I stick to saying that cruising 83-85 and topping 86 can get you on a D1 roster.  Also there were 5 pitchers I could not find velo for.  At least presumably those would be on the low end.

In my experience with my 2012 D1 SS / RHP and my 2016 SS / RHP, "cruising" 83-85 and topping at 86 for a RHP will rarely, if ever, get that player a D1 roster spot.  I do think a LHP may have a shot at those mph but that depends on the roster needs of the college, i.e., do they desperately need LHP.

 

 

I went to a Fresno St./Univ of Nevada game last year and saw the RHP starting for Nevada, ranked in the top 35 at that point, sitting about 85.  Many FBs in the 83-85 range.  He was effective, pounded the zone and had a couple of other pitches.  Of the six pitchers I saw that day two were sitting in the 84ish range. Two more were in the 86 range from the right size and two were sitting high 80s (88-89) and touching 90 or 91 on occasion.  Those are both solid D1 programs.  This was a midweek game and both have guys that are 90+ I am sure, but, four of the six guys I saw were sitting in that 84-86 range, mostly from the right side, getting innings in a conference D1 game.  

Just received an email from a mid-D1 about an evaluation of 2018 after a college camp and in it he mentions the average D1 pitcher is 85-87.

can't be true, virtually all D1 pitchers throw 90 plus...or are projected to do so!! 85 can't get in the starting line of a good HS team! sorry for the sarcasm.

my sons organization u17 was at the big july tournament this past summer, they went 5-2 so they were competitive, they used 8 or maybe 9 pitchers. Not one of them hits 90in any regular way...I will have to check to data base and see what if any top numbers are posted for them.

 

The top velo kid is a D2 throws hard but kind of straight, upper 80's pretty much all the time may touch 90 occasionally, he isn't the best pitcher but he throws the hardest.

If you're referencing the average listed on a player profile when you hover over the FB velocity, that number might not be as useful as you're assuming. That average includes every recorded FB at a PG event, regardless of position. So if a 2nd baseman threw an inning in a blowout at the WWBA, his 72 is included. Also, that average doesn't take into account when the player threw that velocity. If a 2015 went to the WWBA as a sophomore and threw 75, then never attended another PG event, his 75 is part of the average.  Lastly, that particular average includes left and right-hand throwers.

 

If you're looking at a different average on PG, please let me know where you found it because I'd be interested in seeing it. Thanks

No apologies necessary...averaging 85 in an outing is not bad at all for a HS pitcher...that would mean he touches a few above.  I am just saying if you take into account all D1 pitchers and take their average velocity throughout the year, it's gotta be about 85-87...this would be their average cruising speed...not their average top speed...I'm sure the two would be different.