Generally speaking, rank how hard a MLB pitcher throws these pitches:
12-6 curve
Circle change
Cutter
Forkball
4-Seamer
Knuckleball
Screwball
Sinker
Slider
Splitter
2-Seamer
(If any are redundant, use most common name)
Knock yourself out: http://www.fangraphs.com
Enter a player (pitcher, specifically), click on “PitchFx” and scroll down to “PitchFx Velocity”.
Well, no pitcher (that I’m aware of) throws all of those pitches, so there will be variations due to that. Verlander throws a 2-seam fastball faster than many pitchers 4-seamers. Hell, I think Chapman (and others) throws sliders faster than some pitchers’ fastballs.
As far as redundancies, I think that typically a sinker is a variant of the 2-seam fastball. And a cut fastball is also a variation of the 2-seam.
Yup. Which is why it’d be great if etv would go to the pitchfx data on fangraphs, and pull some data. It’s going to be a game of “Pitcher A ranks FB2, FB4, Cutter, Slider, Changeup”, “Pitcher B ranks FB4, Splitter, Changeup”, “Pitcher C ranks FB2, Slider, Splitter, Changeup”, etc. (Verlander was the first I thought of to look at as well, for some reason.)
I’m not asking about specific pitchers. I just meant the average MPH of the pitches from a Major Leaguer.
Nor did any of us. But you’ll need to look at specific pitchers to get a general sense of how fast these pitches are. One guy’s 4-seamer will be faster than someone else’s 2-seamer, and vice versa. But the main info you’ll get is that everybody’s fastball is faster than a splitter is faster than a changeup, etc. So find a bunch of pitchers that pitch all those pitches you listed, and start sorting them. You’ll get some contradictions (as previously mentioned), but you can suss it out from there.
The only one I know off the top of my head is Wakefield’s knuckleball comes in best at 67-68 mph. And he’s pretty much the only current effective knuckballer active.
This article (How Do Good Starting Pitchers Differ From Other Pitchers? - Beyond the Box Score) from March 2011 gives the following data for it’s “all pitchers” chart:
Fastball - 90.0
Cutter - 86.5
Splitter - 83.9
Slider - 82.1
Change- 81.7
Curve - 76.4
Knuckle - 70.7
Is that what you are looking for? It pretty much tracks with my experience.
R.A. Dickey is still a starting pitcher for the Mets (your mileage may vary on whether you consider him or his knuckler effective, or whether the Mets now count as a AAA team). He throws his knuckleball at a wide variety of speeds, often much faster than Wakefield.
4-Seam
2-Seam/Sinker/Cutter
Splitter
Slider
Forkball
Circle change
12-6 Curve
Screwball
Knuckleball
ETA: No data, just my estimates, FWIW.
Yup! EXACTLY what I’m looking for! I intuitively knew the top and bottom, BTW.
Thanks RS! basically lines up how I imagined.
A screwball would generally be faster than a 12-6 or a changeup. A screwball is basically a slider in reverse.
Just because it breaks opposite a slider doesn’t mean you can throw it as hard. It’s a more difficult pitch to throw. It’s hard to find modern screwballers, but the two I know of only throw it at ~65 MPH, slower than both their own sliders and changeups.
This is pretty much exactly how I would have guessed.
Some pitchers’ circle change *is *a screwball. In fact, that’s the only way I know how to throw a screwball.