Questions regarding major league fastball pitchers:
(Pitchers who have been around since they started using radar guns)
What is the fastest measured speed of a major
leaguers’ fastball, and who threw (throws) it?
Has anyone thrown a 100 mph fastball?
Who are the recognized leading major league
fastballers (based on the speed of their fastballs,
and what are their typical fastball speeds?
(Randy Johnson? (Kerry Wood? (Nolan Ryan?)
It is realized that measured speed is dependent on the accuracy of the radar gun, and there may be some
errors there.
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A number of current pitchers can throw fastballs in the 100-105 mph range, including all the ones you named. I’m not aware of any central repository of records for it, though. Randy Johnson would probably be the fastest today, due to his height and arm length. Pedro Martinez can bring it, too.
Bob Feller (Cleveland, late 40’s - 50’s)was the first to have his fastball measured at 100 mph, but the apparatus was much cruder than today’s Doppler radar guns.
Another reliever who’s gotten to 99 mph (according to SI) is John Rocker. Glory, is it painful to watch that guy pitch. He fidgets more than a 5-year-old child on speed!
Billy Koch, closer for the Blue Jays, tops out at 101, and has been measured at that speed quite often. Randy Johnson hits 100 occassionally, but it’s easier for a closer to let it fly if he’s only out for one inning. There have been a number of pitchers who have hit 100. Of course, even if you could throw at that speed consistently, eventually any major leaguer will catch up with it, unless you change speeds.
There was a guy in the Orioles farm system a while back, I believe his name was Steve Dalkowski. He could supposedly throw close to 110. But, control problems kept him from ever reaching the big leagues.
Walter Johnson of the old Washington Senators had quite a fastball in the days before accurate means of measurement existed. The Big Train, as he was called, was probably one of the first to top 100.
All of the above are (somewhat) misinformed. The fastest pitch on record is 100.9 mph by Nolan Ryan when he was with the California Angels. It was measured using a laser (ie, not radar) measuring device, the main caveat of which was that it had to be aimed before the pitch was thrown, and not moved until the next pitch. This meant they had to “guess” where the pitch was going to be thrown. Radar guns can be moved to follow a pitch, but this makes them slightly inaccurate. Radar guns at ballparks have been known to be off anyway, even when not moved.
FYI, the two men that conducted the laser clocking of Nolan Ryan clocked only Nolan Ryan and only one game. They told reporters that there were pitches they saw that seemed visibly faster than the 100.9 pitch, but their device was aimed at the wrong place.
