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It's that time of year again, where we look back at the pitcher velocity trends of yesteryear to see if we can glean anything about the upcoming season. I'm a bad-news-first kinda guy, so we'll kick off the series by looking at those pitchers who are on the downslope of velocity over the last few years before heading over to the sunnier side of the hill. I also admit to having a side agenda in the form of a theory regarding velocity decline and pitchers who engage extra spine-tilt, an element that has been considered in each of the previous renditions of Under the Gun and which will make another appearance before we are done here today.

The same rules apply as the last two iterations of Under the Gun: the sample is limited to starting pitchers who have pitched 50-plus innings and thrown 500 or more fastballs (four-seam plus sinkers) in each of the previous three seasons. In order to qualify, a pitcher must have shown a velocity-drop of at least 0.5 mph from each of the previous two seasons (so 2014 performance compared to '13 and '12), and the loss of a full tick when compared to at least one of the seasons under the microscope. The velocities shown reflect a weighted average of four-seam fastballs and sinkers, taken from the awesome resource at www.BrooksBaseball.net, and only cover pitches thrown in the regular season at the MLB level.

Group 1 – The Bunny Hill

MPH Difference, 2014-'12

MPH Difference, 2014-'13

2014

2013

2012

Jordan Lyles

-0.6

-1.0

92.0

93.0

92.6

Erik Bedard

-0.7

-1.3

89.4

90.7

90.1

Dan Haren

-0.7

-1.3

88.4

89.7

89.1

Tommy Milone

-1.0

-0.6

87.7

88.3

88.7

Gio Gonzalez

-1.1

-0.5

92.8

93.3

93.9

Hisashi Iwakuma

-1.2

-0.7

89.5

90.2

90.7

It's a too early to get overly worried about this group, but they could be on the precipice of steeper slopes in the very near future. Lyles comes in just under the gun, reaching the minimums for inclusion while dampening the overall concern given the up-and-down nature of his velo trends. Such decline is potentially worrisome for a 24-year-old such as Lyles, as he is slipping away from a time where velocity was an asset to a time where it is just average, and any acceleration of that time table will hasten the need for refinement of his pitch command.

Bedard (turned 36 yesterday) and Haren (age 34) are examples of older pitchers who are slowly being robbed by Father Time of ticks on the radar gun, so their decline is less a worry than an inevitability, but some optimism is triggered by each pitcher's non-linear trends with respect to velo. All three of these pitchers experienced upticks in 2013 before suffering a more precipitous fall last season.

The trend is a bit more troubling as we progress down the bunny hill and enter a realm of mid-prime pitchers who are on a two-year velocity decline. The soft-tossing Milone is already walking a fine line, and the southpaw can ill afford to lose any more juice from his left wing given that he has so little margin for error. Whereas Milone could slow-pitch his way out of the bigs, Gio rests on a much higher perch of the performance scale, leaving the impact of his speed drain as potentially more dramatic. What was once plus fastball velocity is slowly settling into the average range, though he has stepped up the pitch command to help counteract the impact of diminished pitch speed and Gonzalez is actually coming back to earth after a three-year spike in velocity, so we will have to wait and see what he brings to the table in 2015 before any red flags are raised.

Iwakuma (turns 34 in April) falls into the Haren category for age, and though Iwakuma's multi-year trend features more of a steady down shift than a yo-yo pattern of velocity, concerns are further mitigated by a commanding skill set and trap-door repertoire that are less dependent on sheer heat to be successful.

Group 2 – Black Diamond

MPH Difference, 2014-'12

MPH Difference, 2014-'13

2014

2013

2012

Doug Fister

-1.0

-1.1

88.6

89.7

89.6

Tim Lincecum

-1.2

-1.0

90.3

91.3

91.5

Rick Porcello

-1.3

-0.8

91.5

92.3

92.8

Chris Tillman

-1.3

-1.0

91.8

92.8

93.1

Ubaldo Jimenez

-1.5

-0.8

91.7

92.5

93.2

Drew Smyly

-1.5

-1.0

90.9

91.9

92.4

Justin Verlander

-1.6

-1.0

93.4

94.4

95.0

Josh Collmenter

-1.6

-1.4

86.9

88.3

88.5

Bartolo Colon

-1.6

-1.5

89.6

91.1

91.2

Bronson Arroyo

-1.7

-2.0

86.3

88.3

88.0

Cliff Lee

-1.9

-1.1

90.5

91.6

92.4

The Black Diamond slopes are packed this year. Pessimism is tempered by the circumstances revolving around the kids on the bunny hill, but this tier features a swath of pitchers who have sounded the alarms for the townsfolk to take cover.

Fister made some big mechanical changes last season, with multiple grades on his report card going in the tank along with his velocity. A pitcher's torque is the greatest mechanical determinant for pitch speed, and Fister's hip-shoulder separation fell a dramatic 15 points from 2013 to last season, grading out at below average (45) after previously finishing in the plus range. Velo has never been his calling card, but Fister's frequency of cracking 90 mph is decreasing and hitters have more time to adjust to the movement of his pitches.

Big Time Timmy Jim has been siphoning gas off his fastball for years, with his average heater having dropped more than four full ticks since 2008. Despite multiple appearances on this list, the continued dive took its steepest plunge in three years last season, and optimism about Lincecum's potential future in the bullpen is counter-balanced by a below-average fastball that requires his split-change to play up to Trevor Hoffman levels in order to avoid crooked numbers on the scoreboard.

The trio of Porcello, Tillman, and Jimenez are in the same boat, drifting from what was once plus velo to average territory, and the quick decline has concurrently accelerated the demand for mechanical consistency to ensure precise command. In particular, Porcello (age 26) and Tillman (27 in April) are in the mid-to-late-20s age range where a pitcher's technique must improve in order to stave off the predictable physical decline, and the reduced velocity turns up the heat on the pressure cooker of each player's development. Jimenez has been a mess for quite a while, and though his late-season run of 2013 may have inspired temporary trust for some believers, the pitch-speed data reveal that he has been on a downhill run of velo for several years (he has dropped more than four full ticks on average since 2010).

The 25-year old Smyly is too young to be going through such a rapid decline of velocity, and with a mechanical foundation that fails to support his ultra-low walk rates, there are multiple signs pointing to a potential downfall for the new Rays' left-hander. Verlander has fallen from a much higher peak than Smyly, steadily dropping from his 96.1-mph average of 2010 with a decline of 0.5 mph or more each year, culminating in last season's career-worst drop of 1.1 mph from Verlander's average heater. He can still reach back for mid-to-upper 90s gas, but the frequency of that occurrence is dropping along with the average reading on the radar gun, and his once double-plus velocity is quickly receding into the abyss as he qualified for the velo droppers for the third consecutive season. Collmenter has played slalom with the bullpen and rotation over the last few seasons, so part of his velo drop can be attributed to his transition from full-time relief work in 2013 to his 28-start campaign of '14, but the pitch speed is drifting into dangerously low territory.

A trio of veteran arms bring up the rear, each of whom can blame age-related physical decline for their loss of velocity. Neither Colon (age 41). Arroyo (age 38), nor Lee (age 36) has stuck around this long due to pitch speed, with careers that are defined by pitch command and consistency, but the speed drain could act to accelerate the aging process from a performance standpoint.

Group 3 – The K-13

MPH Difference, 2014-'12

MPH Difference, 2014-'13

2014

2013

2012

Jon Niese

-2.1

-2.0

89.3

91.3

91.4

Hector Santiago

-2.3

-1.1

91.5

92.6

93.8

Jhoulys Chacin

-2.3

-2.0

88.9

90.9

91.2

Mat Latos

-2.3

-2.1

91.4

93.5

93.7

Justin Masterson

-2.6

-2.1

90.1

92.2

92.7

Scott Feldman

-3.0

-1.3

89.6

90.9

92.6

The penultimate group of velocity-decliners have already weathered a steep plunge, yet they still face a treacherous road ahead, particularly if the speed remains depressed into the future. All of Niese's velocity loss took place last season, and though he was chasing a three-year run of peak pitch speeds, his 2014 levels fell below any other year in his seven-year career. Santiago has suffered a more steady decline, dropping from his rookie-year high of 94.1 mph to the nadir of last season. He has dropped more than a full tick each of the last two campaigns, and though his control of the strike zone has made marked improvement, his command is far too spotty to buffer a performance downfall if the speed suck continues.

Chacin makes the list for the third consecutive season, following his 2013 appearance on the bunny hill and last year's trip down a Black Diamond to this year's tumble down the K-13. His two-mph plunge between 2013 and 2014 was by far the most egregious season-to-season drop of his career, sending him hurtling far below the hard deck of 90 mph and calling into question whether a move to sea level will be enough to resurrect his fledgling career.

The Latos situation is particularly interesting, as the right-hander completely altered his delivery last season to exaggerate stability to the sacrifice of power, with a torque grade that dropped 10 points from the previous season (in addition to lighter momentum) but far superior balance. There's plenty of intrigue wrapped up in which version of Latos is on display in 2015, as he may have been compensating his mechanics last year as he dealt with the lingering effects from early-season injuries, so we will have to wait and see if the low-powered delivery was something that will be part of his long-term profile in the future.

Masterson is the weirdo from a mechanical standpoint, with 70-grade posture among a sea of below-average pitchers in terms of spine-tilt, and his stable baselines raise the concern that there was something structurally impaired with the right-hander last season. The torque was down as well, leaving questions of functional strength and flexibility in addition to the structural concerns, and the volatile right-hander has a tough hill to climb before he gets back on top of his game.

Feldman is in a freefall, and any worries that he was overpaid and over-extended back when he inked his three-year deal with Houston have now evolved to full-blown panic attacks. His torque grade was unchanged between 2013 and '14, but he was unable to approach previous levels of velocity. Perhaps early-season tendonitis in his right forearm was a contributing factor, but his inability to recover combines with the multi-year pattern of velo-loss to cast serious doubt as to whether he can earn the money still remaining on his contract.

The Role of Spine-Tilt

It started back in 2013 as a mere observation that many of the velocity-decliners suffered from very poor posture at release point. More evidence to a possible connection between spine-tilt and velocity-loss was piled into last year's lists, and I would be remiss to not take a look at that element with the current crop of speed-sapped pitchers. The Bunny Hill group is less of a focal point given their relatively modest declines and the small sample, but I will note that their collective posture was actually above average last season with a 55.0 rating on their mechanical report cards (n=6) in the 2015 Starting Pitcher Guide.

The evidence begins to fall more in line with previous trends as we progress to the cases of steeper slope. In fact, of the 17 pitchers who qualified for either the Black Diamond or the K-13, they averaged a posture grade of just 46.8 on the 20-80 scale, with 50 being the theoretical average and the 255 pitchers within the 2015 SP Guide having an average rating of 51.3. The difference fell just short of significance at the p < .05 level, with a t-value of 1.84 and a p-value equal to 0.067, so the mini-experiment falls short of definitively answering any questions. The results do, however, add one more piece of circumstantial evidence to suggest that pitchers with poor posture face an overlap with those who struggle to maintain velocity over time.

Next week, we'll look Over the Radar to breakdown those pitchers who are on an uphill climb of velocity over the past three seasons. Stay tuned.

Thank you for reading

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kenraty
3/06
Doug, does Smyly's drop-off in velocity have anything to do with maybe throttling back on the fastball when starting? Even though his average velocity dropped .5 mph from '12 to '13, the sample size from '13 must have been much smaller, rendering it less reliable.
bhalpern
3/06
Great point. Collementer also pitched mainly in relief from 2012-13.
tombores99
3/06
Word, and I was sure to mention this in the Collmenter commentary.

He and Smyly are in a similar situation, in that some of the velo dip might be explained by the transition out of the 'pen, but that doesn't change the reality that the velo is underwhelming in a starting role and is trending the wrong direction.
tombores99
3/06
Good point on Smyly, though he was mostly a SP back in '12 when he averaged 92.4 mph. In fact, 95 of his 99 IP were as a SP that year. If anything, that makes his velo dip of '13 more of a head-scratcher, as one would expect it to go the other direction when moved to the bullpen.

Sample size could be an issue with Smyly, who busted triple-digit IP in the majors for the first time in 2014, but the lack of a track record does not exactly inspire confidence in his ability to rediscover velo.
oldbopper
3/08
The way Smyly pitched for the Rays, I wouldn't care what his velocity is. Remember, it ain't velocity, it's movement and location and it is very possible he took something off to improve what really counts. I read recently that the Rays changed his approach in some way, can't recall exactly what, and the results are so good that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
tombores99
3/08
So long as he can keep the H/9 in the 4.7 range, as he did last year with the Rays, then sure no problem. Of course, I do wonder what they changed about his approach that allowed him to cut his hit rate in half, to sub-Kersh levels (tongue firmly in cheek). Suffice to say, I don't have faith in extrapolating his 47 IP with the Rays into 200 IP for 2015. If the hit rate bounces back up to his career-norm of 8.0 H/9, then there could be trouble in Tampa.

I hear ya on location and movement being more important than sheer velo, but that's not really what this article is all about. Velo also provides a timing baseline, and lesser pitch-speed gives the batter more time to make a decision on pitch type and location. So these elements are not isolated, and hence velo is sought-after.
Ryan13636
3/07
Earlier this off-season there was an article about pitchers who lost the most break on their curveball and Lyles topped the list. How did he manage to lose velocity, lose movement, go to Coors Field and improve significantly?
tombores99
3/08
Well, batted-balls had a lot to do with it (career-low H/9 and HR/9), and whether that's sustainable is an open question. But one would obviously anticipate the opposite effect in a pitcher's first year in COL, so he makes for an interesting case study.
sebaker
3/08
"Penultimate" means next to last.
tombores99
3/08
Damn, good call. Tried to get fancy on the vocab, only to expose my own ignorance. Well played.
dfloren1
3/09
Thanks for being a bad news first guy. Don't offer them a choice. Just dispense it. Then on to the good news. Rejoice!