After seeing numerous ads for the new Fox network TV series Pitch, about a woman who becomes a pitcher for the San Diego Padres, I had to do some research.
It seemed absurd to me that any woman could ever pitch in the major leagues, because scouts would never be interested in a young pitcher who CAN’T throw at least 92 MPH, and I didn’t think any woman had ever done so.
Guinness, not always the most reliable reference book, says the fastest any female pitcher has ever thrown is 69 MPH.
Is that accurate? Is there a better reference book with more reliable numbers that says something else?
The show itself may be highly entertaining. Lots of movies I enjoy are based on preposterous premises.
I’m just trying to find out, in THIS case, whether ANY woman has ever thrown a baseball hard enough to attract the attention of a real MLB scout. I suspect not, but I’m open to being corrected.
I knew the Colorado Silver Bullets had a decent pitcher in the 90s, Lee Ann Ketchum. According to the linked article, she and another woman, Ila Borders, threw about 82mph.
ETA: If she’s got a wicked knuckleball to go along with that 82mph fastball, maybe she could get some looks from MLB scouts.
For cricket the quickest male fast bowlers are about 20% faster than the fastest females and that is a massive, massive gap. Even a 10mph hike from 80 to 90 is like night and day. I suspect baseball is much the same. Very unlikely that a female bowler or pitcher could hack it at the top level.
I’ve no doubt a woman with long enough arms and body height, with reasonable strength for a female athlete, and some reasonable training could unleash a pitch faster then 69 mph. It’s just a matter of putting those things together with a radar gun to prove it. Pitching is such a specialized sport that it’s unlikely, though not impossible for a woman to ever be an MLB pitcher. It’s not that much more likely for any man.
Anecdote time, so grain or shaker of salt, as you prefer…
Cedar Point Ohio, late 80’s/early 90’s. I was at the radar gun game, rather proud of myself that I matched my 65 MPH fastball and won a Red Sox cap or such.
Then this 14 y/o wisp of a girl casually walks up with her father, toes the rubber-and starts throwing 87 MPH heat. I was utterly dumbfounded.
A good knuckler would be able to make it. R.A. Dickey, who won the Cy Young in 2012 (that’s the top pitching award in Major League Baseball) didn’t pitch any faster than the low-to-mid-80s for his fastball, but his pitching was mainly based on the knuckleball, which ranged from the mid-high-60s to the low-80s. Stats here. In his Cy Young season, his knuckleball ranged from 66.6 mph to 83mph and comprised about 82% of his pitches thrown. His fastball topped off at 86mph, averaged 83 (and comprised 14.5% of his pitches. And his changeup averaged in the low 60s. Knuckleballers are an oddball style of pitching and kind of have a mixed reputation, especially as they are difficult to catch for. But you don’t have to have heat to make it.
You may have seen an equivalent number. Since softball uses a 43 ft. pitching distance, a 69 mph throw is equivalent to a baseball thrown at 96 mph from 60.5 ft. in terms of flight time.
IIRC, there was a Japanese woman who pitched in one of the minor leagues for a while who had a knuckleball that looked like it was bewitched. Totally freaking amazing.
They have been thrown faster. Jenny Finch, I believe, averaged in the low 70s. Quickly Googling, the record in 2012 was 77mph, by Monica Abbott. ETA: Actually, it looks like Finch’s average was more like mid-60s.
Her name is Eri Yoshida.Here’s a video. I wish I could find the one I saw when she first came to the US; it showed lot of her amazing knuckleball-- but anyway, apparently when she came to bat in her first US game, with the bases loaded, she got a base hit for an RBI. That’s pretty good for a pitcher.
On her way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs, she was shot by the unstable Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey). After 16 years, she returned to pro baseball as a rookie for the last-place New York Knights. Despite early arguments with her manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), she became one of the best players in the league, and the Knights started winning. But this upset the Judge (Robert Prosky), their owner, who wanted her to lose games, not win.
I would not casually dismiss the possibility that the Cedar Point pitching cages were rigged, and that the operator could flip a switch to make 14-year-old wisps of girls look good. If they wanted to keep it “honest”, they could switch the MPH display to KPH, with the [sub]KPH[/sub] in very fine print in an easily-missed corner.