Matt Harvey’s High Fastball Dominance

The hard-throwing, 24-year-old Matt Harvey has quickly become a must watch when he toes the rubber for the Mets. Called up in late July of last year, Harvey and his blistering fastball (94.6 average velocity) currently sport a 31.3% strikeout rate and an ERA- of 25 — no, not 75, 25. In 2013, Harvey has made four starts, lasting at least seven innings in each appearance. He has only allowed one home run and a paltry 10 hits in 29 innings.

Harvey does feature a number of pitches, but he’s heavily reliant on his four-seam fastball, throwing that pitch 60% of the time. That ranks him fifth among all qualified pitchers in 2013. And that fastball has been deadly.

According to the PITCHf/x leader boards at Baseball Prospectus (powered by Brooks Baseball), Harvey has induced a .042 ISO (2nd best) and a .167 BA (3rd best) against when using his fastball. David Golebiewski from Baseball Analytics recently wrote about Harvey’s ability to win with the high fastball. The numbers were eye-popping. Harvey so far this year has induced whiffs on high fastballs 48.4% of the time, and he’s throwing upstairs over 50% of the time.

I was curious how this compared to others this year and in previous years. So I did some digging.

I wasn’t sure what vertical cut-off David used to code pitches as “high”, so I just used my own–pz > 3.3.

Since Harvey joined the Mets he’s induced 104 swings on high fastballs, making hitters miss 39.4% of the time. Average velocity of those fastballs? 94.8 mph. Compare that to the rest of league (2012-present) — 29.5% whiff rate and 91.5 mph average velocity — and you can see how elite Harvey’s high heat has been.

Among pitchers that have thrown at least 250 pitches in 2013, Harvey’s high-heat rate (Fastballs where pz > 3.3 / All Pitches) ranks third (17%) behind Zach McAllister (19.7%) and Shelby Miller (19.1%). Harvey also ranks fifth in terms of the velocity of his high fastballs — 95 mph.

Only 26 pitchers have featured a high fastball over 10% of the time in 2013. Among those 26, only Trevor Rosenthal has a higher whiff rate (56.3%) than Harvey (52.9%).

Pitcher	SwgStr%	Swg%	Average Velocity	All pitches	% of All
Trevor Rosenthal	56.3%	48.5%	97.4	268	12.3%
Matt Harvey	52.9%	42.5%	95.0	470	17.0%
Shelby Miller	42.9%	47.7%	92.8	461	19.1%
Dillon Gee	42.9%	25.9%	87.8	423	12.8%
Madison Bumgarner	42.3%	52.0%	90.7	479	10.4%
Erik Bedard	41.7%	40.0%	90.1	262	11.5%
Wade Davis	41.2%	43.6%	90.9	324	12.0%
Zach McAllister	37.5%	32.9%	91.7	370	19.7%
Gavin Floyd	36.8%	32.2%	90.8	474	12.4%
Travis Wood	35.3%	34.7%	87.9	446	11.0%
Tim Lincecum	35.3%	34.0%	90.7	463	10.8%
Ian Kennedy	33.3%	32.1%	90.4	485	11.5%
Stephen Strasburg	27.3%	38.6%	95.8	514	11.1%
C.J. Wilson	25.0%	31.3%	90.5	542	11.8%
Clayton Kershaw	25.0%	29.9%	92.4	627	10.7%
Barry Zito	23.3%	41.1%	82.1	454	16.1%
Jason Hammel	22.7%	32.8%	92.4	456	14.7%
Rhiner Cruz	22.2%	34.6%	96.4	257	10.1%
Wade Miley	18.8%	34.0%	91.3	450	10.4%
James McDonald	17.6%	35.4%	89.7	414	11.6%
Matt Moore	17.4%	31.1%	92.6	502	14.7%
Evan Scribner	15.4%	43.3%	88.3	279	10.8%
J.A. Happ	15.4%	32.5%	89.9	474	16.9%
J.J. Hoover	13.3%	37.5%	92.0	254	15.7%
Ubaldo Jimenez	12.5%	34.8%	92.3	378	12.2%
Vance Worley	11.1%	40.3%	89.1	461	14.5%

Harvey is certainly inducing whiffs at a blistering pace with his high fastball, but how does this compare to the previous few seasons?

Between 2010 and 2012, 91 pitchers threw a high fastball over 10% of the time (min. 2,000 pitches). Of those, the highest single-season whiff rate on high fastballs was achieved by Jonathan Sanchez in 2011 (44.6%). High velocity certainly helped when it came to inducing a high whiff rate, but it wasn’t the only cause — correlation between whiff rate and velocity was .28 for this group. A table with the top 30 whiff percent seasons is below:

Pitcher	Season	SwgStr%	Swg%	Average Velocity	All pitches	% of All
Jonathan Sanchez	2011	44.6%	29.2%	89.9	2203	11.5%
Drew Pomeranz	2012	42.6%	40.6%	90.9	2149	13.2%
J.A. Happ	2012	40.6%	43.4%	90.6	3075	11.6%
Matt Moore	2012	40.5%	37.9%	94.3	3740	10.8%
Brandon Morrow	2010	39.5%	38.8%	93.6	3105	10.3%
Brandon Beachy	2011	39.1%	42.3%	92.1	2914	13.1%
Zach McAllister	2012	38.9%	36.9%	91.8	2579	11.9%
David Price	2010	37.5%	43.2%	94.9	4090	11.3%
Jason Hammel	2012	36.5%	38.1%	93.6	2343	10.8%
Ian Kennedy	2012	36.4%	37.7%	90.1	4175	11.9%
Cliff Lee	2011	34.5%	33.9%	90.1	4023	12.3%
Brandon Morrow	2011	34.4%	39.1%	93.7	3814	12.7%
Tim Lincecum	2012	33.6%	29.5%	90.3	4105	11.5%
Ubaldo Jimenez	2010	33.5%	36.2%	96.2	4377	10.9%
J.A. Happ	2011	33.5%	41.6%	89.8	3658	11.8%
Johnny Cueto	2010	33.3%	31.6%	93.2	3790	10.5%
Felipe Paulino	2011	32.5%	37.5%	95.3	3026	10.3%
Cory Luebke	2011	31.8%	43.1%	91.4	2837	14.4%
Jordan Zimmermann	2011	31.0%	41.0%	93.3	2989	10.5%
Wei-Yin Chen	2012	30.9%	48.0%	90.8	3817	11.1%
David Price	2011	30.8%	34.7%	94.7	4425	10.4%
Jonathan Sanchez	2010	30.6%	35.4%	90.6	3965	13.9%
Derek Holland	2011	30.5%	37.1%	94.2	4029	10.3%
Michael Pineda	2011	30.0%	43.9%	95.0	3232	10.6%
Alfredo Aceves	2011	29.9%	41.4%	91.4	2236	13.7%
Phil Hughes	2010	29.7%	48.8%	92.1	3623	13.4%
Homer Bailey	2010	29.4%	51.2%	92.8	2357	10.4%
James McDonald	2012	29.2%	35.1%	91.6	3405	12.0%
Josh Beckett	2011	29.0%	36.8%	92.4	3612	14.0%
Clayton Kershaw	2012	28.8%	42.4%	92.9	4276	10.5%

Harvey’s and Rosenthal’s current whiff rate pace certainly appear abnormal compared to even the best full seasons over the past couple of years, but the rate at which they are throwing high fastballs appears more or less in line with the top seasons of the recent past.

What does that mean? Simplistically, we certainly shouldn’t expect those whiff rates to remain above 50% (not a shocking revelation considering it is still April). However, they don’t need to be that high for either of these pitchers to continue to be as successful as they have been to this point. Both have exceptional fastballs, and while hitters may begin to make more contact on their high fastballs, the quality of that contact is likely to be muted.

Be sure to watch Harvey’s next start — tonight against the Dodgers — if you have the chance.

UPDATE: Harvey thew 103 pitches in Wednesday night’s game against the Dodgers. 45 of those were fastballs. Of those 45, 10 were high fastballs (22% of fastballs, 10% of all pitches). Batters offered at five of those fastballs (50%) and whiffed at two (40%). Here’s Harvey’s updated high heat numbers for the season:

Swg%: 43.3%

SwgStr%: 51.3%

% of All Pitches: 15.7%