MLB’s Statcast is pretty cool. Tracking technology, basically, that gathers and displays stats for aspects of the game that had previously gone unmeasured. Or at least unmeasured on a consistent and comprehensive basis. Statcast collects the data using high-resolution cameras along and radar equipment and tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time.
One of the most relatable and familiar stats compiled is pitch velocity. We’ve know how fast guys throw for decades thanks to radar, but now it’s all being complied in a more orderly fashion than it had previously. So we have a leader board now, kept by the good folks at MLB.com. Here are the names of the pitchers with the current fastest pitches in the game:
Oh, sorry. Chapman skews it a bit. Let’s give the next couple of dozen:
Hmm. This is sort of a problem. Luckily, MLB has solved it with a little filter on the leader board:
Maybe that’s been there since they launched the thing, but I don’t spend a lot of time on Statcast leaderboards so it was just brought to my attention today. If you press that button you get Bruce Rondon and Ken Giles as your leaders, each with a single pitch of 101.7 m.p.h.
Which is good, I guess, if you’re not Aroldis Chapman. For him that’s a day when he’s suffering from flu-like symptoms, I imagine.
