The Slider That Won’t Age
When we tell our kids about Randy Johnson, we’re going to start with the height, the hair, and the velocity. In his prime, he regularly threw 100 MPH fastballs with varying amounts of command, making him one of the most intimidating pitchers in the history of the game. At 46, he’s seen his fastball desert him, as the guy who used to throw harder than anyone else now has a fastball that averages below 90 MPH. Here’s a look at how his fastball velocity has decreased since 2002.
There’s a couple of precipitous drops in there, as he’s lost 5 MPH off of his heater in the last eight years. As he’s battled injuries the last few years, the decline has become rapid. Time has caught up with the Big Unit, and his fastball is now a below average pitch.
However, Johnson’s still racking up the strikeouts, because the fastball has never been his out pitch. His slider has been the one that he’s leaned on when he wants to put a hitter away, snapping off a nasty breaking ball that eats lefties alive and even gives problems to right-handed hitters. For whatever reason, that slider just refuses to age.
He lost velocity on it from 2002 to 2003, but since then, it’s been constant at around 84.5 MPH. Even as age has eaten away at his fastball, the slider has held its ground, and could still be described as a power breaking ball. And it’s that pitch that allows him to still put hitters away when he needs to.
Johnson may choose to hang up his spikes and walk away. As a 46-year-old free agent with a long line of health problems, he’s got some incentives to retire. But if he decides to come back for one more year, he’s still got a major league out pitch. For reasons that I certainly can’t explain, his slider just refuses to age as his fastball has.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I think even if he doesn’t have the stamina to start anymore, his slider makes him a superstar LOOGY or all star reliever.
I wonder what effect the narrowing velocity gap between his fastball and slider has…?
It is also travels about as straight as a pitch can, (0.5X, 2Z).
Sabathia (-5, -0.5)
Kazmir (0.4, 4)
Zambrano (4.4, 3.6)
Grienke (4.4, 0.9)
Jimenez (3.6, 1.7)
Slider is such a misnomer as it travels as straight as a pitch can, it is all relative.
What are you trying to say?
“Slider is such a misnomer as it travels as straight as a pitch can, it is all relative.” Relative to the movement of other sliders?
I’ll probably mention that time he accidentally killed a bird with a pitch.
And he didn’t just kill it, he made it explode. And change its velocity vector by 90 degrees instantaneously. Somewhere in avian heaven that bird is still being honored for giving up its life in such a spectacular fashion.
Jamie Moyer could kill a bird with a changeup. Big deal. Now a black bear would impress me.
As a Mariners fan, here’s my dream scenario:
Randy and Griffey both decide to retire this winter. Both are easy first-ballot HOF candidates. And in 5 years, the writers finally figure out that Edgar is HOF worthy.
Griffey, Randy and Edgar all going into Cooperstown on the same day. One can dream, right?
How much less break is on the slider since 2002? There are different grips and different breaks a pitcher can put on a slider. I would imagine his current slider does not resemble his past slider.
I would think movement would tell us a lot more about the quality of his slider than the velocity would.
One thing I’ve always wondered about the pitch f/x movement data is that it seems to only measure the movement of a pitch from release to the plate, as though it travels along a straight line. It’s unable to describe a pitch’s path. Basically, two pitches could register the same pitch f/x movement, but one could be travelling on a straight line and the other could for all we know be on a sine curve. Is this true or am I reading it wrong?
And so in Johnson’s case, could it be his slider has an exaggerated or irregular path, but the final movement registers as being very little?
Basically yes. It’s movement relative to a equally fast knuckleball in a vacuum. Since such a pitch would only fall as fast as gravity, and would not change its direction of travel, pitchfx is the measure of how the seams affect the movement of the pitch.
It’s all relative. Johnson’s fastball has a whole bunch of tailing movement because he throws sidearm, but doesn’t sink much if at all. This gives the illusion that his fastball is more like Jered Weaver’s when it really isn’t, and a slider which actually doesn’t move at all will just mess with a hitters mind. The fact that it’s usually thrown to the opposite side of the plate increases the illusion, the pitch moves 4 feet horizontally from release point to catchers mitt.
Edgar totally deserves HOF. There needs to be an Edgar statue outside of Safeco.
This post doesn’t really tell us much of anything about his slider quality (and the way it’s aged), just its velocity. You’d really need to look at its movement, or even just mention the fact that it’s retained value by pitch-type linear weights, or something. There are plenty of pitchers who throw garbage sliders at 84mph.