Velocity is a wonderful thing for a pitcher. But there’s evidence that extreme velocity leads to greater injury risk. Simply put, these flame throwers defy the physics of the human anatomy, but usually not for long.

Conversely, then, the slower you throw, the less your injury risk, even though throwing a baseball repeatedly at any even quasi-major league speed is a very stressful and thus risky act. Unfortunately, results often track velocity. So poor velocity often leads to poor results.

But what about the guys who prove they don’t have a need for speed? Let’s look at all of the pitchers with the lowest fastball velocity, sorting by strikeout rate, while also looking at percentage of fastballs thrown and the other averages that count in our leagues – ERA and WHIP.

First, though, a hat tip to colleague Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus for his article on why some pitchers don’t get injured. He noted that the average fastball velocity of the five pitchers who have gone the

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Slower velocity

We like stories and second-half splits tell us one: pitchers are good early in the year but tire late. They fade.

Give me last year's trailers in ERA and WHIP during the second half and I will certainly find examples that seem to support this theory. If you are so inclined, you will bet against them. Except that when you look at three-year splits, you find what you'd expect to find if second-half (or post-All Star) splits meant nothing – the bad second-half pitchers are mostly the bad overall pitchers and vice versa.

Some people even bet that pitchers who improved last year in the second half will improve this year, too. I'm not sure what the story even is there. Okay, they don't tire. But how can they get better as the season wears on?

Let's illustrate with leaders and trailers, post-All-Star break from 2009-2011 (minimum 200 second-half innings pitched). We'll start with leaders first, even though, again, what's the theory here even? I'm not sure. If you are a believer, pleaseRead More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Half-baked notion

R.A. Dickey has been a model of efficiency. (AP)This is the time of year where the contending teams start looking at their pitching staffs and worrying about whether certain pitchers who are racking up higher than expected innings paces will be shut down early or simply lose steam down the fantasy stretch.

But should we even be looking at innings? It seems pretty ridiculous that teams count innings instead of counting pitches. So let's use three-year averages of the average number of pitches that starters threw per inning and do a simple recalculation. The result: pitchers this year who are below the three-year average of 16.1 pitches per inning really aren't on pace for the number of innings suggested by their stated totals. And we can calculate exactly how much less. Conversely, pitchers who throw more than 16.1 pitches per inning are on pace for a greater workload than their actual innings pace suggests.

Our formula is the number of pitches thrown divided by that 16.1 P/IP three-year average to get a new innings number. Not Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Pitch charting

Josh Johnson's ERA should greatly improve over the rest of '12. (AP)Since the dawn of the sabermetric revolution, homers have always been put into the "pitcher's responsibility" column, along with walks and strikeouts.

A look at the league leaders and trailers this year in homers per nine innings shows that's for good reason. The test was simply looking at the current rate and comparing it to that pitcher's rate from 2010-2012 (needed 300 innings pitched).

While homers are not a pitching category in most leagues, they have a dramatic impact on ERA. Thus far this year (through Wednesday), there have been 2,909 runs scored on 1,852 homers – 1.57 runs per homer.

We've isolated how these runs-scored-per-homer should be expected to contribute to each pitcher's ERA, too. League average this year is one homer per nine innings. So if you are half-a-homer-per-nine under, you should expect an ERA savings of a little more than three quarters of a run. Vice versa if you a half-a-homer over.

Here are the current leaders in limiting jacks:

Player

HR

Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Going deep

Trade Tommy Hanson now while you still can. (Getty)Getting the leadoff hitter out every inning is the most important box on the pitching checklist. In innings when they do it, pitchers' ERA this year is 2.15. In innings when they fail, it's 7.75.

Put another way, when you let the leadoff hitter on, the opposing team is more than three times as likely to score.

But, of course, pitchers face far more hitters overall than they do to leadoff innings. When he's great at both, there's no action step for us fantasy owners. He's great, period. When he's bad at both, conversely, he should be swept from every roster.

But one very neat way I think to isolate pitchers who may be unlucky in ERA especially is to see where he's good overall but poor against leadoff hitters. There's a pretty good chance that's due to chance. I stipulate that it's possible that certain pitchers just lack the focus to deal with leadoff hitters, who are arguably more intent than usual to get on. But that's complicated and speculative. The simplest answer is that it's Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Taking the lead

Perhaps Chris Capuano can keep up his early '12 success. (Getty)We're well past the quarter turn now so you would think that year-to-date performance greatly influences current starting pitching rankings, even though those rankings are supposed to only consider future performance.

But the relationship between what's actually happened thus far in 2012 with starters and what's expected to happen going forward can be most tenuous.

But which rankings to use? I don't want to go on a witch hunt here. The idea isn't that whoever does the rankings is an idiot. They may well be correct: Maybe Chris Capuano is going to be pretty much non-rosterable for the rest of 2012, even though he's been the fourth-most valuable pitcher in the league to date. So I've averaged three current rankings that will remain unnamed to get a consensus view. I know I'd probably do something very similar if charged with this rankings assignment – put too much weight into my preseason view. While I strive to be hyper rational here, I suffer from the same decision-making biases Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Future tripping

Now is a good time to acquire Ivan Nova's services. (Associated Content)A good barometer for mixed leagues is that all pitchers with a better than 3-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio should be owned. Usually, that gets you very workable averages in WHIP and ERA. (For "only" leagues, the barometer is lower – 2/1.)

Usually is the operative word though, as it usually is in this space. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. But if you buy the rule, you really need to be willing to buy the exceptions. And the best thing is, they are cheap (or at least cheaper than they should be).

It's a very good bet that if the K/BB ratios of the following pitchers stay close to their rate thus far in 2012, their ERAs and/or WHIPS will get much better. For a sense of how much better, consider that thus far in 2012, the ERA of all starting pitchers who have a K/BB ratio of better than 3.0 is 2.94 and average WHIP is 1.08. Even if the following qualifying starters with a K/BB of 3.0 or better with an ERA of 4.00 or worse (through Wednesday) get only halfway there going Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Rules of K/BB ratio

This is the year of the failed fantasy closer. Injuries and poor performance have jettisoned preseason guys from saves duty, or threaten to. So let’s try to chart up the relievers in the best position to be promoted.

The data suggests Aroldis Chapman could thrive as a closer. (Getty)But what are the key metrics? Fortunately, there’s no need to get fancy with relievers presently not getting saves. With starters, we must look deeper because everyone sees the stats that directly relate to fantasy categories. But most of these guys aren’t even rostered in standard Yahoo! mixed leagues and many escape notice altogether.

To make this chart, relievers must have less than three saves and also (1) have thrown 15 innings through Wednesday, (2) have a K/9 of at least 9.00 and (3) walked 4.00/9 or less. (Since 1980, only 10 closers have at least 69 saves with a rate higher than that.) But we also note other key factors – ERA (because no manager is going to go all in on a guy that has an ugly number on the scoreboard for all to see every time he’s summoned),Read More »from Pitching by the Numbers: Closers in waiting