Velocity

Velocity, often shortened to "velo", is a Latin word that means speed. It refers to the speed of a pitch as measured by a radar gun. All things being equal, a pitch with more velocity will be harder to hit that a similar one thrown at a lower speed, so teams are always looking out for pitchers who can "light up the radar gun", as the proverbial saying goes.

Until the 1970s, a "hard-throwing pitcher" was one who could throw his fastball at or above 90 mph on a regular basis. there were always a few freaks like Nolan Ryan, Goose Gossage or John D'Acquisto who could push that to the upper 90s or to triple digits in Ryan's case, but the conventional wisdom was that trying to achieve more speed came with a loss of control (D'Acquisto was a case in point) and that the trade-off was not really worth it.

With the improvement in training method, and the development of specialist hard-throwing relievers, of which Gossage was a prototype, these numbers began to creep up. By then end of the 1990s, a fastball at 95 mph was no longer anything remarkable, and in the 2010s, pitchers who could achieve 100+ mph on a regular basis were regularly seen, with Aroldis Chapman being the new ideal.

The move to ever-greater velocity comes with some controversy however. There is a consensus that it is probably not possible for a human arm to throw a pitch above 105 mph, and an even greater one that continually relying on pitches of extreme velocity is extremely detrimental on a pitcher's elbow. The perfection of ligament replacement surgery, or Tommy John surgery, now routinely performed on pitchers who are still in college or high school, has helped to keep the supply of hard throwers rolling (pitchers are no longer afraid of "blowing out their arms", and if they do, they know that there is a very good chance that they can come back within a couple of years). But still, relying on pitchers whose arms could give up at any time is not something front offices are overly fond of. Secondly, with the multiplication of pitches in the upper 90's or low 100's, batters are much more familiar with these, and their overall effectiveness is not as great, particularly if they are not mixed in with different types of pitches to keep batters off-balance.

Further reading

• Devin Gordon: "Arms Are Flying Off Their Hinges: Baseball is stuck in a velocity trap.", The Atlantic, April 10, 2024. [1]
• Jeff Passan: The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2016. ISBN 9780062400369