The Nastiest Pitches of the World Series, Almost Objectively

In any given nine-inning baseball game, there are upward of 250 pitches thrown. More than half of those pitches, more often than not, are going to be thrown somewhere in the range of 90-97 mph. They’re all going to move somewhere between two and 12 inches, and most of them will travel through the same theoretical three-square-foot box. It’s easy for these pitches to begin blending together. That’s why we appreciate the ones that truly set themselves apart. These ones are easy to spot.

This is similar to a post I did last year around this time. The mission: find the 10 individual pitches deemed nastiest by my subjective criteria, hopefully learn something about those pitches and what it is that makes them so effective, and then see them in action so we have a reference point and something extra to keep an eye out for the in World Series.

How it’s done: I expanded a bit on last year’s criteria. Last year’s criteria, it was just whiff rate and ground ball rate, per individual pitch. Those are the two best common results-based outcomes a pitch can have. A complete swing-and-miss, or the weakest contact of the three main batted ball types. This year, I folded in two process-based characteristics along with the results, adding velocity and spin rate, with spin data coming from Statcast. Two big things that make a pitch aesthetically pleasing, to us, are speed and movement. Velocity and spin rate should capture that. Two big things that make a pitch effective, to pitchers, are whiffs and grounders. We’ve got that down. Oh, also, an executive decision I made and forgot to mention: for four-seam fastballs, I substituted pop-up rate for ground ball rate. Felt like the right thing to do, given four-seams are the one pitch, more than any other, thrown up in the zone with no intention of getting grounders. Anyway, I calculated z-scores for each of the four selected characteristics, for each pitch type, added them up, and found 10 pitches that stood above the rest. These are those 10 pitches.

No. 10: Wade Davis – Knuckle Curve

Well hello, old friend. Starting out with a Wade Davis pitch is nice, because Wade Davis dominated last year’s edition of this post, and this pitch wasn’t even on it! It’s thrown about as hard as anyone’s curve, at 85mph, but unlike similarly-shaped curves, such as the ones thrown by Craig Kimbrel and Cody Allen, Davis’ gets about half the whiffs of those. Instead, Davis’ curve is so effective because of the weak contact it generates; more than two-thirds of balls put in play against Davis’ curve this year were grounders. He lets his other pitches get the swings and misses. This is Wade Davis’ third-best pitch.

No. 9: Kelvin Herrera – Changeup

If you know anything about Kelvin Herrera, it’s that he sometimes throws baseballs at 100 mph — and we’ll get to that in a bit. Likewise, if there’s one thing hitters know about Kelvin Herrera, it’s that same fact. That’s why, when he throws changeups in the low-90s with nearly nine inches of armside run, it’s understandable they’d be tough to square up. Like Davis’ curve, Herrera’s change isn’t effective so much due to the whiffs it gets, but rather the velocity and 67% ground ball rate.

No. 8: Yordano Ventura – Curveball

Those same things you just read about Kelvin Herrera’s changeup — you can apply them to Yordano Ventura’s curveball. The 45% whiff/swing rate, and the 62% grounder rate are both likely byproducts of Ventura’s fastball more so than the curve itself. When you’ve got a fastball like Ventura’s it makes the rest of your pitches better, like the other four players on the court with LeBron, and Ventura’s curve is the main beneficiary.

No. 7: Kelvin Herrera – Sinker

When Jeff Sullivan wrote about Jeurys Familia last Monday, he invoked something interesting I’d never considered before — swinging strikes on fastballs in the dirt. You don’t see them too often, because fastballs aren’t too deceptive, insofar as their movement. They’re just hard to hit, because of how fast they are. Familia ranked second in the majors in whiffs on fastballs in the dirt, with just four. Here’s one from Herrera, at 95 mph to Adam LaRoche.

No. 6: Wade Davis – Cutter

Last year’s victor comes in at number six this year, as it didn’t generate nearly the same number of grounders it got last year. Still, this pitch is one of my favorites in all of baseball to watch, and this .gif remains my all-time favorite .gif I’ve produced, which is why this is the third different post in which I’ve used it. I plan to re-purpose it as many times as deemed necessary, and you can’t stop me.

No. 5: Wade Davis – Four-Seam Fastball

You’ve already seen Davis’ other two pitches. Now, think about the fact that half of the pitches he throws are this fastball, sometimes reaching 99 mph. Goodness gracious, Wade Davis. By the way, we gonna get a Met in this post or what?

No. 4: Jeurys Familia – Slider

A Met, a Met! We have a Met! There’s going to be more about this guy, so I’ll put it this away: you’ve seen a lot of Wade Davis so far in this post, because his third-best pitch ranked 10th in this study. Now, we’re down to number four, and this? This is Jeurys Familia’s third-best pitch.

No. 3: Matt Harvey – Slider

It’s tough for a starting pitcher to crack this list, since they’re being compared to relievers who can put maximum effort into every pitch and therefore throw harder, generate more movement, and have better results, on average, than starters. Maybe you think that’s a flaw of this study, but the nastiest pitches are the nastiest pitches, regardless of context. That said, Matt Harvey’s slider is all the more impressive given its competition. Harvey’s slider generates an insane amount of spin, and among starting pitchers who threw at least 200 sliders this year, it was top three in velocity and top two in ground ball rate. Yadier Molina doesn’t take swings like that too often.

No. 2: Jeurys Familia – Sinker

The last two posts written about Jeurys Familia on this website were titled “No One Does What Jeurys Familia Can Do” and “Jeurys Familia in Context Is Unfair.” Those titles are appropriate, because Jeurys Familia can throw a fastball at 99 mph with both considerable armside run and sink. Usually, you have to pick one or the other. Jeurys Familia can do whatever he wants. The swinging strike rate on this pitch is 3.4 standard deviations above the mean, making it, by definition, a statistical outlier. Also, this still isn’t Jeurys Familia’s best pitch.

No. 1: Jeurys Familia – Splitter

Nobody knows what to do about this pitch. I mean, seriously, what is this? It doesn’t even feel right to call this pitch a splitter, because the absolute upper bound of a splitter’s velocity, throughout baseball history, has been around 90 mph. This one goes 94. Jeurys Familia has gone and invented a whole new pitch. Somebody give this thing a name. The velocity is three standard deviations above mean. The whiff rate and ground ball rate are both two standard deviations above the mean — the only pitch in the study that even came close to accomplishing that. The kicker: he just started throwing this thing three months ago. Surprise!

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Finally, a top-20 sortable leaderboard, for interested parties: