What velocity is necessary to get onto a college roster at certain schools?

One young man that 2019 Dad lists in OP on one of the Power-5 Academic rosters as an RHP I know well.  He nailed the RPI "Golden #120" with a PG-FB: 90, and a PG-ACT: 30. 

The 90/30 combo is a hard to beat one-two punch for the RHP looking to be the "buyer" at just about any school he wants.  This young man turned down Ivy offers to take his 90/30 to a Power-5 Academic.  Obviously, after the 90/30 is documented, other factors must be in alignment: GPA, throwing strikes, off speed, etc, etc. 

All very unscientific observations about RHPs, velo, and college recruiting. 

http://www.perfectgame.org/Pla...ofile.aspx?ID=181546

Not a very impressive profile.  Doesn't even list the speed of his fastball.   Must be nice to be a crafty lefty.   

I know this is only anecdotal and I cringe to put this out there as it is my son but he is living this exact scenario right now as a freshman at what in recent years been a top 40 program but not in a power 5 conference. 

18 pitchers in fall camp. I think of those 14 are RHP.  Throw out the submarine guy so down to 13.  Of those I think at least 6-7 cruise comfortably above 90. 

I've said it before son is an outlier. Topped at 85 coming out of HS.  Now more like sitting 85-87. 

First team all state by the TX HS coaches last year, but guess what happened in first fall outing that was only fastball and changeups. He got smoked. 85 mph bp basically.   College hitters don't miss many 90 mph fastballs when they know they are coming.  85 they miss rarely if ever  

Until he could start pitching backwards with a high spin rate slider he was pretty helpless at that velo against college quality  hitters. Now he has a chance to win with fastball when they sit on slider.  He has done well this fall  but nothing is guaranteed.

Cabbage said it well earlier. It is extremely hard to make that jump. It's a battle and a grind.  Kids have their own criteria when looking at schools. My son wanted to win and play in the post season. He ended up at his dream school.  He has confidence he will earn his innings like he always has. 

I understand when folks say 90+ etc I really do but I also think it is easy as a player and a parent to let others define what you should chase after.  I say chase that dream school until they say no but also be wise enough to have a plan B.  Know when to pull the plug on dream chasing and move to plan B. I still see lots of players get stuck and it's fall of senior year of HS and now what.  Son had several backup juco offers just in case.

This is a very worthy discussion IMO.  Just like anything I think knowledge is power in this recruiting game.  I don't think my son would be at a top program as an outlier if not for everything I started to learn here when he was in 8th grade.  

that Indians pitcher tonight threw pretty soft, mostly 87-88 very rarely touching 90 with his FB. He is a lefty but I'm surprised he made it to the Majors especially with a pretty conventional delivery (no submarine or sidearm).

you do see some older guys in the upper 80s in the Majors but to see a 24 yo conventional delivery pitcher making it is pretty rare.

of course for college Standards cruising 86-88 and touching 90 as a lefty is not slow but for mlb in These days it definitely is.

2019Dad posted:

I thought other posters or just folks browsing might be interested in this information.

The idea was to see what is really required, velocity-wise, by HS senior fall, using real data that is publicly available with respect to actual players. (Of course, there are other factors to pitching than simply velocity, but velo is an important component).

Below is a list of the max velocity recorded by PG for all RHP on certain current college rosters (available online) who also (1) are in the PG database and (2) had a velocity recorded during the summer before senior year, or in Sept - Jan of senior year.

In a few cases, the highest velocity was actually earlier in their high school years, but if there was a velo in the PG database from May of HS junior year to January of HS senior year, I included the kid and used the highest velocity. Also, in a couple cases, the kid pitched a PG event after graduating high school, and reached a higher velocity, but I did not include that higher velocity, on the theory that 99% of the kids are recruited before they graduate from high school.

If the kid's only PG velo was from earlier (for example, summer after HS freshman year), I did not include him because I didn't want to skew the numbers lower. Same thing with kids who are on a current roster but are noted as a transfer from another college. For two-way players, I included them if RHP was listed first, under the theory that their pitching played a significant role in their recruitment.

Of course, there are also RHP on every roster who aren't in the PG database, or who had no velocity readings from the summer before senior year, or senior fall -- and for some rosters, it was the majority of pitchers. Since I had no easy way of getting data on those kids, I did not include them.

Anyway, here is the information:

POWER 5

• Duke (ACC): 87 (Glavin); 89 (Davis); 90 (Kovachik); 92 (Blum); 93 (Williams); 94 (Pesto)
• Notre Dame (ACC): 87 (Vorsheck); 88 (Smoyer); 88 (Hearne); 89 (Connolly); 89 (Combs); 89 (McCarty); 90 (Solomon); 90 (Hock); 91 (Bielak); 91 (Ruibal); 92 (Bass)
• Virginia (ACC): 85 (Shambora); 89 (Harrington); 90 (Bettinger); 90 (Page); 91 (Doyle); 92 (Roberts); 92 (Murdock); 94 (Sperling); 94 (Casey)
• Wake Forest (ACC): 76 (Casstevens); 81 (Awad); 86 (Dunshee); 87 (Loepprich); 88 (Supple); 88 (McCarren); 89 (Dee); 90 (Johnson); 90 (Farish); 90 (Johnstone); 91 (McSweeney)
• Northwestern (B1G): 84 (Vukovich); 86 (Christie); 87 (Davis); 88 (Levy); 88 (Schindler); 88 (Cauley); 89 (Rosman); 89 (Lass)
• Michigan (B1G): 85 (Lozer); 86 (Wysocki); 88 (Karcher); 90 (Vancena); 90 (Lehmann); 90 (Nutof); 91 (Miller); 91 (Pall)
• USC (Pac-12): 86 (Vaccaro); 87 (Perryman); 88 (Lunn); 90 (Bates); 92 (Hart); 92 (Wegman); 93 (Dyrda); 94 (Crouse);
• Cal (Pac-12): 86 (Bain); 88 (Flemer); 89 (Martinez); 89 (Buckley); 90 (Schick); 90 (Jeffries); 92 (Dodson)

 

MID-MAJOR

• Cal-Poly (Big West): 87 (Lee); 88 (Colen); 91 (Uelmen)
• UCSB (Big West): 84 (Bieber); 86 (Chandler); 87 (Davis); 88 (Chapman); 89 (Keever)
• St. Mary's (WCC): 84 (Braman); 86 (Strotman); 87 (Holdgrafer); 88 (Buckley)
• Bucknell (Patriot): 81 (Stephens); 84 (Strahm); 85 (Gottesman); 85 (Gambon); 89 (Robichaux); 89 (Tailor)
• Army (Patriot): 84 (French); 88 (Messina); 87 (Ball); 88 (Carte); 89 (Verrill)
• Columbia (Ivy): 86 (O'Brien); 86 (Barr); 87 (West); 88 (Gannaway)
• Dartmouth (Ivy): 85 (Fossand); 85 (Michel); 87 (Fagler); 87 (Bygum); 87 (Danielak); 88 (Bubala); 90 (Fichthorn); 90 (Johnson)
• Davidson (A-10): 85 (Barry); 85 (White); 86 (Leonard); 86 (Hopkins); 87 (Gordon); 87 (Spear); 88 (Plebani); 88 (Sutherland); 89 (Hudson)
• William and Mary (CAA): 84 (Toner); 84 (Fletcher); 85 (Powers); 85 (Yoest); 86 (Butts); 87 (Brown); 88 (Waldman); 88 (Bailey); 88 (Lohr); 89 (White)
• Rice (CUSA): 88 (Otto); 88 (Parthasarathy); 89 (Orewiler); 89 (Schwarz); 90 (Moss); 90 (Gayle); 90 (Silber); 92 (Canterino); 93 (Salinas)

 

DIVISION 2

• UCSD (CCAA): 85 (Lucke); 85 (Mora); 88 (DiPoto); 88 (Nelson); 89 (Jarvis)

 

DIVISION 3

• Amherst (NESCAC): 84 (Z. Brown); 84 (Baldi); 84 (Vasiliu); 86 (Volle); 86 (Dow); 86 (D. Brown)
• Bowdoin (NESCAC): 81 (Osterholtz); 83 (Lopez); 85 (Arms); 85 (Wilhoite)
• Williams (NESCAC): 82 (O'Brien); 87 (Capute)
• Pomona-Pitzer (SCIAC): 82 (Kannappan); 86 (Gerics)
• Trinity (SCAC): 81 (Coffman); 83 (Nix); 83 (Wimberley); 84 (Cubley); 84 (Turner); 85 (McGee); 85 (Pontikes); 86 (Nelson); 86 (Williams)

awesome work! and thanks for stating the thread...good stuff.  Found the below attachment on the internet the other day that seems somewhat relevant to the topic...

Great stuff, I like to see hard data that confirms what my eyes tell me. Went to the B12 tourney a few years ago in brick town and saw Baylor vs West Virginia, Baylor rhp 84-86  // WVa lefty 79, never touched 80. This was on the stadium gun.

2019Dad,

Love the research you have done and very interesting stuff.  Did you happen to look at any LHP velos in your research?  I would guess they might be 2-3 MPH lower, but at power 5 it may be the same.  Just curious and thanks again!

This thread led me to check on my local in state D1 on PG website.  The 2018 class already has 4 RHP commits and all are 6'5" and over and all throwing over 90 mph.  Must be in the water....

mdschert posted:

This thread led me to check on my local in state D1 on PG website.  The 2018 class already has 4 RHP commits and all are 6'5" and over and all throwing over 90 mph.  Must be in the water....

Proof that throwing hard makes you taller.

Go44dad posted:

mdschert posted:

This thread led me to check on my local in state D1 on PG website.  The 2018 class already has 4 RHP commits and all are 6'5" and over and all throwing over 90 mph.  Must be in the water....

Proof that throwing hard makes you taller.

I knew there was some sort of relationship between the two!!

phillyinNJ posted:

awesome work! and thanks for stating the thread...good stuff.  Found the below attachment on the internet the other day that seems somewhat relevant to the topic...

I saw that graph on @TreadAthletics. I never want to discourage people from crunching the numbers, but I think they made some assumptions that hurt the accuracy of the numbers.

First, the title of "Chance of Pitching in College" is misleading. I'm pretty sure they did not confirm that those 7,000 players in the sample have actually pitched in college. Lots of college position players have a FB number on their PG profile. MSU outfielder Jake Mangum (SEC Freshman of the Year) has an 85 FB on his profile.

Second, there are lots of kids pitching in college who don't have a school commitment listed on PG. Anecdotally, it seem like the likelihood goes down from D1 to D3 to D2 to juco to NAIA. So if they want to look at "Chance of Pitching in College", the lower velocities are most likely under-represented in this group.

If the hypothesis is that higher velocities directly relate to chance of pitching in college, very few would disagree. But if you're trying to put real percentages to that relationship, I don't think you can use this data for that purpose. I think 2019Dad's analysis gives a much more accurate assessment of the relationship between velo and pitching in college.

2020dad posted:

Go44dad posted:

mdschert posted:

This thread led me to check on my local in state D1 on PG website.  The 2018 class already has 4 RHP commits and all are 6'5" and over and all throwing over 90 mph.  Must be in the water....

Proof that throwing hard makes you taller.

I knew there was some sort of relationship between the two!!

Better living through logic. You can also go to any elementary school in the country and show the link between bigger feet and math ability.

Goosegg posted:

Nice compilation.

I'd say any pitcher touching 88 with an ACT of 30 should call an Ivy coach.

Looked up an Ivy team and their current top pitcher this past season threw 86 mph fall of HS senior year with 27 ACT.

Curious how you determined who their top pitcher is?

I also wanted to add from memory of last years college World Series, I don't remember see any 90+ guys until the super regional games. That is the final 16. I'm not saying that teams didn't have them, but outside the top 16 teams they were few and far between.

Keep in mind that by the CWS the top pitchers are running on fumes. Long season combined with a narrowing bucket of pitchers used as the golden ring gets closer means way too many innings for these guys.  

That's  why - for guys who get drafted that year - their pro innings are really restricted over the next three months; for the top pitchers not drafted, many will either sit out the summer or log very few innings.

FriarFred posted:

2019Dad,

Love the research you have done and very interesting stuff.  Did you happen to look at any LHP velos in your research?  I would guess they might be 2-3 MPH lower, but at power 5 it may be the same.  Just curious and thanks again!

I didn't, FriarFred. Only because my son is a righty, so that was what was relevant to me. I'd also guess they'd be a couple mph slower, but I don't have any data on that.

Also, FWIW, I noticed that there were no 95 or above RHPs, and it struck me that (in addition to there not being very many such HS pitchers) they are all likely very high draft picks.

mdschert posted:

Goosegg posted:

Nice compilation.

I'd say any pitcher touching 88 with an ACT of 30 should call an Ivy coach.

Looked up an Ivy team and their current top pitcher this past season threw 86 mph fall of HS senior year with 27 ACT.

Could be that he improved both by 3 or 4 before his high school career was over.

2017LHPscrewball posted:

mdschert posted:

Goosegg posted:

Nice compilation.

I'd say any pitcher touching 88 with an ACT of 30 should call an Ivy coach.

Looked up an Ivy team and their current top pitcher this past season threw 86 mph fall of HS senior year with 27 ACT.

Could be that he improved both by 3 or 4 before his high school career was over.

Although, it's quite likely given admissions requirements for IL schools that he at least was committed to the school at the very least while he was throwing 86.

And the IVY coach would politely say call them when they get a 32 on the ACT . A 30 won't cut it today for a RHP at a top IVY