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.

Postseason and Regular Season Velocities

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

SOURCE: PITCHf/x

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.