The 100 MPH Man

Well, that was quite a show, eh? Seven innings of just unbelievable, dominating stuff. Even the four hits felt like flukes as the opposing hitters just played self defense and hoped to slap the ball the other way. Pitch F/x doesn’t give out many legit 100 MPH readings, but it did it on multiple occasions, and the fastball averaged over 97 MPH for the night. Contrast that with a nasty change-up around 90 MPH and a knee buckling 82 MPH curveball, and you have major league hitters looking foolish with regularity.

Yes, that May 3rd start by Ubaldo Jimenez, where he just shut down the San Diego Padres, was a thing of beauty. Wait, were you thinking of something more recent?

Hey, look, I was as impressed by Stephen Strasburg as anyone else last night. But, in the rush to hyperbole, I noticed that it’s become common to talk about how Strasburg’s stuff is just so much better than anyone we’ve ever seen. That would be true if Ubaldo wasn’t walking around the planet right now.

Here’s his velocity graph from Brooks Baseball from that game against the Padres.

There’s 120 pitches in there. He hit 99.8 on the 117th pitch of the night. He struck out 13 hitters on the evening, by the way. While he issued three walks, he was also not facing the Pirates Triple-A line-up, so we’ll call that even. All in all, it was a very similar start to the one that went down in D.C. last night.

This isn’t to diminish Strasburg’s debut in any way, shape, or form. He was remarkably good, and will continue to be, I’m sure. But I think that it’s important that we recognize that the stuff isn’t once in a lifetime. It’s not even once in 2010. Strasburg has a great arm, but so does the Rockies ace, even if he comes with just a wee bit less hype.