Fastballs in NPB
Was playing around with the ol’ db and wrote a quick query to pull out average fastball velocities this season in Japan. These are exceedingly simple lists; I didn’t filter by number of pitches thrown or anything like that.
Here are the 15 fastest averages:
| name | max |
|---|---|
| Juan Morillo | 95.32 |
| Eulogio de la Cruz | 95.21 |
| Marc Kroon | 94.78 |
| Takahiro Mahara | 93.98 |
| Brian Falkenborg | 93.63 |
| Kyuji Fujikawa | 93.11 |
| Brian Wolfe | 93.07 |
| Takuya Asao | 93.01 |
| Shun Yamaguchi | 92.88 |
| Jon Leicester | 92.41 |
| Tatsuya Uchi | 92.17 |
| Tomoyuki Kubota | 92.14 |
| Yao-Hsun Yang | 92.14 |
| Yoshinori | 92.12 |
| Chang Yong Lim | 92.00 |
No surprises here, mostly relievers and many foreign pitchers, though I didn’t expect to see Wolfe. Morillo, de la Cruz, Uchi and Yang have all thrown very few innings so take their appearance on this list with a grain of salt for each.
And here are 15 slowest:
| name | max |
|---|---|
| Atsushi Kizuka | 83.89 |
| Masato Nakazawa | 83.72 |
| Hironori Matsunaga | 83.71 |
| Kazuhito Tadano | 83.71 |
| Tomoya Yagi | 83.69 |
| Shoto Takekuma | 83.66 |
| Koji Hiroike | 83.12 |
| Mikinori Kato | 83.08 |
| Yasutaka Hattori | 83.06 |
| Hayato Aoki | 82.82 |
| Makoto Yoshino | 81.93 |
| Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi | 81.59 |
| Masato Kobayashi | 81.50 |
| Masaru Takeda | 81.36 |
| Shunsuke Watanabe | 75.51 |
No real surprises here either, though it is striking to see how much softer Watanabe throws than everyone else.
25/06/2010 at 8:45 am Permalink
It’s amazing Watanabe can get professional hitters out thowing at that speed, it seems like they would catch on after a couple innings.
But it looks like he’s had a pretty successful career, and I saw a game earlier this season where the Dragons couldn’t touch him.
He makes Jaime Moyer look like he’s throwing smoke.
Do you know if he threw harder earlier in his career?
25/06/2010 at 8:56 am Permalink
Well, here’s the data since last season: http://npbtracker.com/data/player.php?p_id=288
I’m having a hard time remembering seeing him crack 130 km/h, which is about 81 mph.