Super Regional Gun Readings on Pitchers

There are very few college pitchers who actually throw over 90 consistantly and with good movement in college.
All of these teams are great hitting teams, the reason why you are watching them. For some pitchers, the fastball now gives way to mostly off speed pitches, as serving up a 90+ by accident over the plate usually is out of the park.

I think these are interesting observations.

Here is some speculation....

I am wondering if there are differences between showcase speeds and actual game speeds. What I mean by that is if a guy knows he is only going to be pitching for an inning or two before the scouts he might just let it fly several mph higher than he would if he knew he needed to go deep into a ball game. Kind of like when they convert a starter into a closer and as a closer the velocity goes up. The showcase numbers tend to stick with a guy regardless if he is actually throwing/averaging less than his previously recorded high values.

CD,

Good points.
PG lists velocities for wood bat tourneys, actual game situations.
My son never hit 90 until he went to the wood bat in Jupiter early junior year. I would suppose it was due to the scouts and coaches in attendance as we had never seen that, but then again we rarely measured his velocity.
Hitting that number brought attention, and as he grew so did his velocity, 90-91 by senior spring but lived in the FB zone of 87-89. Senior summer he hit 93 first time. He was not actually pitching over 90 consistantly until this year. Very few college pitchers throw 90+ each FB pitch.
Many college pitchers that can hit 90 don't consistantly live in the zone, especially in play off situations, most pitchers can't just rely on a FB to get through playoffs. HS pitchers throwing mid 90's consistanly usually don't make it to college.
At this point in the year, many pitchers are tired, will rely more on defense, thus why you might see very few strikeouts and lower velocity.

The pitchers are tired as Tiger Paw Mom suggests, they are throwing off-speed pitches to survive, and the mid 90's pitchers are in the pros, but could one difference also be the gun used (Jugs or Stalker?)

Barry Larkin had an interesting comment during the early game yesterday when he stated:

"This guy is low-mid 90's, he's not gonna blow people away as he's more of a finesse guy"

I think that hitters are ahead of pitchers late in the year.The pitchers have throw a lot and the hitters have seen a lot of pitches. The metal bats are also a huge reason for pitchers not throwing as many fastballs.

SFS's point was not how many fb's are being thrown, but rather the speed of the fb's which are being thrown.

The answer is that there may be as many kids who can throw 90 mph as some folks say. But there are not that many kids who can pitch 90 mph consistently.

Also goes to show that pitchers don't have to pitch 90 mph to be successful in high level college ball.

And no, not every 90+ kid goes pro out of HS.

quote:

Originally posted by NYdad:
Barry Larkin had an interesting comment during the early game yesterday when he stated:

"This guy is low-mid 90's, he's not gonna blow people away as he's more of a finesse guy"

Yea I heard that too.

I told my son that was one of the stupidest comments I heard from him.

I think Texan may have something. Being able to light it up a bit is not the same as pitching, and those who look for gunners run the risk of not getting people who can pitch. I know that the University of Miami in my neighborhood has seemed of late to be attracted to gun readings over pitchers. And they have paid the price of that "I can fix him" or "I can teach him to pitch" approach to recruitment.

After my first year of watching D1 baseball up close, my subjective opinion is being able to locate all your pitches is the #1 skill over pure velocity. Fastball velocity among our FSU staff ranged from a high of 95+ to a low of 82-83, with several guys sitting in the hi-80's/low-90's. One thing was completely consistent regardless of velocity or the pitcher: if the ball was left up and over it was air mailed. Our lowest velocity pitcher had an OppAvg of .272 and our highest velocity pitcher had an OppAvg of .282. Both were successful against D1 hitters. In those games where their control was a little off, both suffered similar results: lots of hits. The only advantage the 95+ guy had on an 'off' day was he might get lucky and sneak one passed the batter if he missed his spot, but otherwise their numbers were pretty close.

My son came home for one day over Easter, and something he said really stuck with me: "Dad, every pitcher at this level can throw hard, plus or minus a couple MPH. But if you want to succeed, if you want to stand out, you have to bring something special beyond just throwing hard. Whether that's a lot of movement on your pitches, command and location of all your pitches, 95+ velocity, a reliable fourth pitch, whatever, but there's a ton of guys out there at the college level that can just stand on the hill and throw high 80s all day, so you'd better have something extra".

Where are all these 90 mph pitchers.

Well, they are still pitching for the most part. When you say “ALL” what do you mean? We do some showcases where there are no 90 mph guys. We do others where there are lots of 90 mph guys. Over all I would estimate about 250-300 in high school who can do it, we just happen to see most of them. That is not very many when you consider 20,000n or so high schools.

There are close to 300 DI teams (I think) Some will have several (close to all) who can throw 90. This doesn’t mean they pitch at 90. If every DI school recruits a pitcher who can threw 90, it would add up to about one for each school. And the top programs are getting more than their fair share of them. Then the very best don’t even end up in college. That leaves a lot of room for those pitchers who don’t throw 90.

90 mph all by itself shows arm strength… It doesn’t show pitching ability. When the two are combined, you have what everyone’s looking for.