Edinson Volquez and the Postseason Velocity Bump
Twitter was apoplectic. Drug tests were demanded. Old suspensions were being brought up. Hands were wrung. Edinson Volquez? Throwing 96s and 97s deep into his start? Where is this velocity coming from? This can’t possibly be right.
Turns out, Volquez hasn’t even added the most velocity this postseason. He’s fourth or fifth among starters, depending on your definition, and he’s not too far from the the norm that we should be bugging out. The postseason, like the debut, comes with adrenaline, and that adrenaline leads to a bump in velocity. Baseball is that simple sometimes.
Here are the pitchers that have thrown at least 70 pitches this postseason, with their postseason and regular seasons velocities, sorted by the difference between those numbers. Fastball velocity stabilizes after three starts and is statistically meaningful after one start.
| Pitcher | count(*) | Postseason Velo | Reg Season Velo | Diff |
| Aaron Sanchez | 110 | 96.9 | 94.1 | 2.8 |
| Steven Matz | 105 | 94.3 | 92.1 | 2.2 |
| Trevor Cahill | 55 | 93.5 | 91.5 | 2.0 |
| Chris Young | 87 | 88.0 | 86.4 | 1.6 |
| Edinson Volquez | 180 | 95.2 | 93.8 | 1.4 |
| John Lackey | 109 | 93.0 | 91.6 | 1.4 |
| Noah Syndergaard | 135 | 98.2 | 97.0 | 1.2 |
| Collin McHugh | 55 | 91.3 | 90.3 | 1.0 |
| Clayton Richard | 52 | 93.0 | 92.2 | 0.8 |
| Clayton Kershaw | 103 | 94.3 | 93.6 | 0.8 |
| Zack Greinke | 108 | 92.5 | 91.8 | 0.7 |
| Travis Wood | 85 | 91.1 | 90.4 | 0.7 |
| Liam Hendriks | 49 | 95.2 | 94.5 | 0.7 |
| Roberto Osuna | 56 | 96.2 | 95.5 | 0.7 |
| Jacob deGrom | 191 | 95.6 | 94.9 | 0.6 |
| David Price | 123 | 94.6 | 94.0 | 0.6 |
| Jason Hammel | 59 | 92.8 | 92.2 | 0.6 |
| Johnny Cueto | 158 | 92.7 | 92.2 | 0.6 |
| Scott Kazmir | 58 | 92.1 | 91.5 | 0.6 |
| Cole Hamels | 140 | 92.7 | 92.1 | 0.5 |
| Michael Wacha | 58 | 94.5 | 94.1 | 0.4 |
| Marco Estrada | 157 | 89.4 | 89.1 | 0.3 |
| Yordano Ventura | 144 | 96.8 | 96.5 | 0.3 |
| Tony Sipp | 53 | 90.9 | 90.9 | 0.0 |
| Lance McCullers | 51 | 94.3 | 94.4 | -0.1 |
| Marcus Stroman | 155 | 92.8 | 92.9 | -0.1 |
| Kevin Siegrist | 54 | 93.7 | 94.0 | -0.3 |
| Kelvin Herrera | 73 | 97.8 | 98.1 | -0.4 |
| Gerrit Cole | 53 | 95.2 | 95.6 | -0.4 |
| Jake Arrieta | 167 | 94.1 | 94.5 | -0.4 |
| Dallas Keuchel | 135 | 89.2 | 89.6 | -0.4 |
| Jon Lester | 125 | 91.4 | 92.0 | -0.6 |
| Matt Harvey | 111 | 95.3 | 95.8 | -0.6 |
| Jeurys Familia | 86 | 96.3 | 97.2 | -0.9 |
| Bartolo Colon | 71 | 89.2 | 90.3 | -1.1 |
| Kyle Hendricks | 72 | 86.5 | 89.9 | -3.4 |
This list is made up mostly of starters, but the postseason is a different beast. Did Chris Young know that he wouldn’t go deep? Trevor Cahill was a reliever, Aaron Sanchez also, despite having thrown as many as most postseason starters.
That leaves Edinson Volquez with the third-biggest velocity bump this postseason. Seems a lot less sinister in context.
And there’s two ways to look at how he fits in with the list. Yes, his 1.32 mph bump is three the weighted average of this group (0.43 mph), but it’s also lower than the bump Chris Young saw. Nobody accused Young or John Lackey of anything untoward when they were lighting up the radar guns.
Of course, they weren’t throwing 96. But look to a man just below Edinson Volquez on the list — Noah Syndergaard — and you’ll find a guy throwing harder and showing about as much of an increase. Maybe it’s just that going from 93/94 to 95/96 is an increase that catches all of our collective attention. And it does appear as though 96 mph represents a threshold at which swinging strikes increase and home runs on contacted balls decrease, so it’s not surprising that Volquez has had a good run while throwing harder.
Ben Lindbergh showed us that the proportion of harder fastballs in the postseason is rising faster than the same proportion in the regular season, and though this may have selection bias in it (better pitchers throw harder), there’s something else going on, too: starters are relieving. Relievers are in for one batter instead of an entire inning.
If you weight the entire sample of postseason pitchers (minus Cliff Pennington, despite his excellence) by the number of pitches thrown and then look at the difference between their velocities in the regular season and the postseason, you get .47 mph. So the reliever velocity bump is even bigger than the starter’s one.
But there isn’t the same scrutiny on relievers. Did anyone notice that Clayton Richard, owner of a 92 mph regular season fastball, was humping them in there at 95.7? Nah, that guy, he’s just another pitcher enjoying the postseason velocity bump.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
you sure he’s only thrown 30 fastballs? He’s pitched several games and throws 50% fastballs.
Ah, maybe you should take a look at his 2 seamers too.
If you redo the list for all fastballs, Edinson has 180 fastballs that averaged 95.2
thanks for reminding me, things changed just slightly when including all fastballs, mostly because of other pitchers moving around. For the record, I did check for ‘FT’ or two-seamer but it was under ‘SI’ or sinker, which is just my fault.
His increase in velocity didn’t seem to improve his performance. It looked like he lost location the harder he threw.
José Bautista said that he thought the fastball was moving less, maybe that’s the reason he fouled off all those fastballs in his third AB against Volquez. Probably adding velocity to a pitch flattens it more.
velocity and movement are inversely related
Unless your name is Daniel Bard, and it’s August 9, 2010.
August 9, 2010? Not sure I get it. All I know from that day (entirely from memory!) is him giving up a home run to Mark Teixeira, the only run for the Yankees in a 2-1 loss to the Red Sox.
It was also the second straight August 9th that Teixeira took Bard deep (he would take him deep on 8/6/2011 as well). Maybe you’re thinking of August 9, 2009? That was also a game against the Yankees, also at Yankee Stadium, and he gave up back-to-back home runs to give up a 2-1 lead in what was ultimately, I wanna say, a 5-2 Yankees win that gave them a 4-game sweep over the Red Sox.
I dunno…if it isn’t that, then I’m stumped.
He threw just as hard game 1 and had a ton of movement
He also didn’t pitch poorly game 5, just missed on a couple pitchers, bautista fouled off some tome pitches and Tulo came through big.
5 innings, 3 hits, 4 walks, 2 strikeouts, a home run, and a HBP…how is this not a bad game?
Mark: if you watched the game you would understand. The ump wasn’t giving him the call on the outside edge of the plate and before the 5th inning he was great.
I was looking Volquez’s pitch fx for Game 5. Compared 1st & 6th innings. There was basically no difference in vertical or horizontal break on the fastball between the start of the game and when Volquez got pulled. In fact the 4 fouls by Jose all had vertical break between 6 and 9 inches which was his range for the whole game. I think Jose was just thinking he was seeing less break, or perhaps hoping he was. Jose thought the pitch was going to drop more and but he still kept getting under it.
Also to note about Aaron Sanchez: he pitched the first part of the season (over 70 % of his innings) as a starter and consequently wasn’t throwing as hard. I can’t seem to split up velocity as starter vs. reliever but looking at his velocity charts I don’t think there would be much of an increase in velocity in the postseason if you only look at his relief innings this season.
this – I’m pretty sure the 94 mark comes from his time as a starter. He sits around 96-97 as a reliever in general, not just this post-season.
Re Young and Matz – aren’t both pitching with much longer rest than normal?
Pitchers typically are throwing 1+ MPH faster by the end of the season compared to the beginning, right? Maybe we should only be comparing to post-ASB velo. For instance, Syndergaard averaged 97.7 on his fastball in his final 6 starts of the regular season, with half of those starts averaging at least the same 98.2 he’s averaged in the postseason.
With Volquez, he only passed 95 MPH in a game once all season, and it was back in July. He sat in the low to mid 94’s in his final 6 starts of the regular season, and then all of a sudden he’s at 95.2 in the playoffs. He’s hitting 97 regularly which he hasn’t done in years.
Good point, but you lose another .5+ mph in September usually http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=13380
And if I’m reading that chart right, your September velocity usually = your seasonal average.
Also fair to point out that Volquez’s top two avg velo playoff games were in Houston, where it’s always hot, and in Toronto, where it was actually pretty warm in the dome even though it was a cold mid-October Canadian day outside. Same goes for Syndergaard; noticeably faster in LA vs NY. Ambient temperature seems to matter more than time of year.
Part of Syndergaard’s velo bump could attributed to his relief appearance when he was touching 100mph.
In fact, the goal for many pitchers changes in the postseason. In the regular season, the goal is to pace yourself to get deep into ballgames to save the bullpen. In the postseason, your goal is to just get to an inning where the bullpen can take over.
So it could be more than just adrenaline, it could be that pitchers are going all out because they don’t need to go as long.
There is no tomorrow / there is no next inning / this is a huge inning is impossible to tease out, for sure. I’ll call it adrenaline but you’re right it’s more nuanced and role changes are huge.