This is the seventh piece in a series of articles looking at Statcast data for batters and pitchers.
Statistics like exit velocity, batted ball distance, and hard hit rate are still relatively new to many daily fantasy players. FantasyLabs Co-Founder Jonathan Bales recently put out a video on how to use batted ball data within our Player Models. This series uses the suite of Labs Tools to explore the DFS value of Statcast data.
Pitch Speed
Pitchers who throw hard are assumed to be good, but are they? Using our Trends tool, Pro subscribers can easily backtest the relationship between pitch speed and FanDuel pitchers over the last 12 months:
No surprise here. Soft-throwing pitchers suck; hard-throwing pitchers do not. Pitchers throwing over 95 miles per hour perform particularly well. As expected, we see the positive correlation between pitch speed and raw fantasy points. However, many other factors need to be considered when looking at a pitcher’s raw points and Plus/Minus, such as wins and innings pitched. It might be possible that the ability to throw hard is correlated with the ability to throw more innings and win more games.
Recent Pitch Speed
A sample with more data usually is more predictive than one with less. Still, is there an edge to looking at pitch speed over just the last 15 days?
This trend gives us a much wider range in Plus/Minus, but that is to be expected as smaller samples often have more variance. The hardest-throwing pitchers once again dominate the trend with the highest Plus/Minus and Consistency Rating. Of course, this subgroup also has higher ownership, which Pro Subscribers can review in our DFS Ownership Dashboard after lineups lock.
Pitch Speed Differential
Pitch speed differential is the difference between a pitcher’s average velocity over the past 15 days and over the past 12 months; a higher number means a faster average recent velocity:
Once again, throwing the ball hard likely leads to more success. Pitchers throwing harder in the short term compared to the long term tend to have more success. One thing worth noting is that ownership does not change much between the different subgroups. There could be an edge for guaranteed prize pools in using this trend to see who is throwing harder in the short term while getting a discount in ownership.
Putting It All Together
In general, we can safely say that historically pitchers who throw the ball hard have more success than those who do not. This is something to keep in mind when using our Lineup Builder as you create your DFS teams. When used in combination with other Statcast metrics, Labs statistics, and Vegas data, pitch velocity is likely to provide a significant edge.
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Previous installments of the Statcast(unate) Event series can be accessed via my author page.
