Lindstrom’s Slider

Matt Lindstrom throws harder than anyone else in baseball. His average fastball velocity is 97 miles per hour, and he breaks triple digits regularly. No one else in baseball is even with 1 MPH of Lindstrom’s average fastball – Jonathan Papelbon is next at 95.6 MPH. The heat is his calling card, and not surprisingly, he throws it a lot – 71% of his pitches are fastballs.

Like a lot of power relievers, Lindstrom’s second pitch is a slider. He throws it 22.2% of the time, and realistically, it’s the pitch he’ll throw you if he’s not going to try to light up the radar. However, Lindstrom’s slider checks in at a more modest 83.9 MPH velocity. That’s not slow by any means, but it’s not even close to being among the hardest in the league – the BIS data here on FanGraphs has him throwing the 101st hardest slider in baseball. Some of those are miscategorized fastballs and cutters, so he’s probably closer to the top 80, but the velocity difference of 13 MPH between his fastball and slider is still pretty staggering.

The people he shares a similar slider velocity with include Bill Bray (91.3 MPH fastball), Seth McClung (93.1 MPH fastball), Jason Frasor (93.9 MPH fastball), Jeremy Guthrie (92.8 MPH fastball), Leo Nunez (94.2 MPH fastball), and Jason Hammel (92.0 MPH fastball). Lindstrom’s 97.0 stands out from that crowd like a sore thumb.

For whatever reason, Lindstrom just doesn’t throw the slider with the same power that he dials up his fastball, and that’s likely one of the main reasons his strikeout rate is lower than you would expect with a guy who can pop triple digits. When he’s bringing the heat, it’s pretty straight, and when you get something that moves, it’s simply not a dominating power pitch anymore.