Atley Donald and Van Lingle Mungo were early hard-throwers that were actually measured. "To understand how Dalkowski, a chunky little man with thick glasses and a perpetually dazed expression, became a legend in his own time". If hed been relieved a little more, maybe he would have lasted longer. Mostly, pitchers tended to save themselves for key situations. Baseball Almanac is pleased to provide you with a velocity calculator which you can use to convert these various formats and compare pitchers - both modern and historical. He threw 283 pitches in a complete game against Aberdeen and once threw 120 pitches in only two innings. However, he is still just 23 years old. But The Freak is a monster when it comes to pitching. Power is only part of the pitching equation, and Ryan scores higher than anybody else in MLB history. In baseball, the dead-ball era was the period from around 1900 to the emergence of Babe Ruth as a power hitter in 1919, when he hit a then-major league record 29 home runs; only three players since 1890 had even hit 20. I looked at the stats for the Pirates (cuz theyre my favorite team), and this past year they averaged 133 pitches/9 innings (or about 4.75/out). Pitchers before 1930 (or so) regularly finished their starts, too. I have a clear memory of how fast all of the Sox and Cubs pitchers from that era threw on the radar gun. **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign. Yeah pitching is about speed and arm and shoulder flexibility. Wow that fast! Obviously, if it was done on a closed off road in a. Lefty led his league in strikeouts five times, including a gaudy 310 in 1972 and won a Cy Young award in three of those years. There have been pitchers who can throw harder than Ryans 100.9 mph fastball. - Joe Tinker talking about Rube Marquard. During his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2010, the righty struck out 71 batters in 69.1 innings and walked only 18. He drifted to various jobs and landed in Bakersfield, California, where he was arrested many times for fighting. Williams swore he never saw the ball and claimed that Dalkowski probably was the fastest pitcher who ever lived. David Roark is a passionate and knowledgeable individual when it comes to sports. The Baby Braves might be ready ahead of schedule, Real or Not? Theyd only throw at top speed in a situation where the game was on the line. He even saved four games for good measure. Pre-WW2, there were probably only a handful of guys who could crack 90. Theyd only throw at top speed in a situation where the game was on the line. Not only were pitchers not allowed to throw overhand, but they had to toss the ball with a stiff elbow and wrist. In 1946, he started the season with a three-hit, 10-strikeout shutout, kicking off what he called his greatest season. (Yes, nitpickers, Im aware that John Wheeler ghosted Mattys book.). The moment a baseball leaves a pitchers hand, it starts to slow down because of drag. The average hitter today is an absolute monster compared to the average hitter back then. "A kid pitcher has to have a fast ball to succeed in the big leagues," said Bradley, "for he can never learn how to pitch faster. In addition to being incredibly fast, modern-day pitchers can also throw very hard. Here's a photo of Feller throwing into the machine. Bench continuously called for breaking balls and Maloney continuously shook him off. And that makes the 100 mph pitches Nolan Ryan threw in 1974 (as measured by Rockwell laser/radar instruments relatively close to the plate) even more remarkable today. All rights reserved. Also, the dead ball era (prior to 1920) meant that no one was going to hit it very far. For one thing, if Feller threw that hard, or something close to it, I think that would be reflected more in the numbers. Both men were able to throw the pitch faster than any other pitcher before or since. Now they have 60 due to expanded ballparks and/or alternate site games being played away from home. Jimmy Foxx, Jim Tabor, and Roger Cramer made it a clean Boston sweep with a first-place tie in yesterday's fielders contest. Theres a reason the kid had two Cy Young awards by the time he was 25. The former Dodgers closer once converted a record 84 straight save opportunities and was as close to untouchable as a pitcher will ever be. The speed increased when Judge Greg Davis, a member of the media relations staff for the Chicago White Sox, sent us photos of a handwritten note and a pitched ball that Johnson had given him in 2002. document.write(update); After nine years of erratic pitching he was released in 1966, never having made it to the Major Leagues. Its not often you find a starter who can throw up to 102 mph in any inning in any count on any day. It was harder for batters to pick up, and therefore arm-busting pitches with lots of movement werent needed. Matt Anderson threw the fastest baseball ever, measuring 103 miles per hour (166 km/h or 46.0 m/s). Despite over 3,000 career punchouts Gibson finished his career averaging just 7.3 SO/9 and only led the league in strikeouts once. Stephen Louis Dalkowski Jr. (June 3, 1939 - April 19, 2020), nicknamed Dalko, was an American left-handed pitcher . Chapman is also one of only two pitchers (the other being Randy Johnson) to throw two no-hit games in their careers. Over the course of the past decade, Chapmans fastest fastball had gotten faster by nearly a mile per hour. The next year, Andy Pettitte of the New York Yankees broke this record again with a ball that traveled at 103.3 miles per hour (167.4 km/h or 45.5 m/s). Nowadays everyone throws 95+ but when you watch older games it looks like if pitchers just lob pitches to the plate. Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Jose Lima of the Los Angeles Dodgers both reached this mark twice. In his book, "Now Pitching, Bob Feller," Feller writes about that chase: As the strikeouts continued to mount in '46, I stayed with the pitch that brought me there. But Major League Baseball now registers that pitch as a 105.8 mph fastball. He didn't even have the highest strikeout rate in the league in 1946; that belonged to Newhouser, who struck out 8.46 batters per nine innings compared to Feller's 8.44. The 610 left-hander topped 300 Ks five times in his career (including an eye-popping 372 in 249.2 innings in 2001) and led his league in Ks nine times in 22 major league seasons. Feller once mentioned that he was clocked at 104 mph at Lincoln Park in Chicago. There will be a contest for pitchers later. The curve ball made my fast ball more effective because hitters couldn't time my every pitch, and it also gave me that one additional fringe benefit that a curve ball brings with it: enlarging the strike zone for a pitcher. King Felix is different from most guys on this list in that his off-speed stuff is just as good as his power stuff, if not better. So how was pitching different back then? - Ford Frick, "Smokey Joe (Williams) could throw harder than all of them." He was the definition of unhittable and is still only 23 years old. Feller's second pitch was the fastest one, clocked at 98.6 mph. I woudl suggest that it is in fact simply that they let the pitchers pitch so much back then. Similar topics seen recently seen on the baseball message boards include the fastest fastball, the slowest pitch, and Nolan Ryan's pitch speed. During the 1999 baseball season, this moment was recorded. Walter Johnson, often cited as the fastest throwing pitcher in Major League history by experts, believed that Wood was faster than himself and once said, "Mister, no man alive can throw a baseball harder than Joe Wood." Early comments about fastball pitchers can be found in many old newspapers and offer some interesting insight into who was considered fastest during this early era: "He (Lefty Grove) was the fastest pitcher who ever lived." Satchel Paige, who could bring on the heat himself, believed Feller was the fastest and told teammates, "If anybody threw that ball any harder than Rapid Robert, then the human eye couldn't follow it." In 19 seasons in the Negro Leagues, Paige recorded 1,231 strikeouts in just over 1,500 innings. Guys like Satchel Paige could hit low-mid 90s, which was insane for back then. Other pitchers, however, just reared back and threw as hard as they good. He struck out 276 batters in 218 innings as arookiein 1984 and then came back the next season to win the Cy Young award by striking out 268 batters in 276.2 innings. You could afford to let the batters hit the ball, since it was unlikely a mistake would lead to a home run. Modern pitchers however exert themselves on every pitch. His dominance only lasted about three seasons (2002-2004), but during that time, Gagne was simply overpowering. I'll buy that he could throw 100 mph, although it's impossible to know whether he did that consistently within games. The Rocket struck out 4,672 helpless batters during his career, third all-time. A rookie catcher named Johnny Bench was behind the plate and eight-year veteran Jim Maloney was on the mound. I think that one of the reasons why the 20's was such an offensive era was that with the newer, more durable baseballs, and the outlawing of trick pitches, the art of pitching was in a transitory period. The best throw was 86 feet a second, the second best 84. Source: Richmond (VA) Times Dispatch, June 7, 1939. How were the arms of starters spared? As for other hard numbers for those days: two hours and 15 minutes was considered an ordinary game back then. Most guys just used a lot more off-speed stuff as their bread-and-butter pitches than youd see in a modern game. b) Travel pervaded the season more in those days pitchers got a lot of rest while sitting around on trains. Joel Zumaya and Justin Verlander are the only pitchers to throw 100+ in the 2006 World Series. How fast do you have to throw a curveball. The Speedgun, developed by Decatur Technologies (a long-time maker of police radar guns) measured closer to the plate than the JUGS gun. Fascinating accounts, stories, and even myths about how fast - or not so fast - a pitch has gone are common in the annals of the game. How fast does a pitcher usually throw? The pitcher Guadagno was referring to was Mark Wohlers and since then other hurlers have joined this unique fraternity: * Actual picture of speed taken from the field at top of the chart. That year, Amos Rusie led the National League with 482 innings. . The Fastest Pitcher in Baseball by Baseball Almanac 2003-2007. Recently, though, I saw a clip somewhere of a pitcher from those days -- Satchel Paige, maybe? The official reading was in 2006, and its doubtful that Zumaya can come anywhere close to that figure now, but for a time, you could call Zumaya the hardest thrower ever. Ok, pre war pitchers were not throwing hard, is it safe to say that because pitchers were not throwing hard then, Ruth took advantage of it? His career 11.5 SO/9 rate is still among the best all-time, but the strike zone continues to elude the oversized righty. Frustrated, the two met at the mound where Bench bluntly said, "Your fastball's not popping." In a game against the Detroit Tigers on August 20, 1974, the then-Angels . Papelbon wouldve been a great starter, but the hard-throwing right-hander makes a pretty terrific closer too. Wohlers was a failed starter who came out of seemingly nowhere to be a lockdown closer for the Braves in the mid 1990s. Ted Williams once stood in a spring training batting cage and took one pitch from Dalkowski. The 65 lefty was a true strikeout artist during his heyday, leading his league in Ks five times and twice topping 300. The right age to start throwing a slider or curveball is between 14 and 15 , which gives a player enough time to develop the pitch (takes 1-3 years) so that it's good by the time the college recruiting process heats up. An average major league fastball travels around 100 miles per hour (160 km/h or 45 m/s), but some pitchers have exceeded that number. Youre definitely on to something here. Her best was 40 feet per second. He redefined what it meant to be a power pitcher and laid the groundwork for guys like Clemens and Johnson to take over the league. Like Gangster Octopus says, we remember the exceptions. All times are GMT-8. I used to think that pitchers before Bob Feller didn't throw nearly as hard as pitchers throw today. Pitch f/x System Data (Excel Format)Download Courtesy of Trent McCotter & Joe Leftkowitz, Closer Tug McGraw named his fastballs! Diamondbacks primed to bury Dodgers, Losing Corey Seager leaves Dodgers' season on the brink. But then again throwing is mainly a talent thing and is not supposed to be improved by modern training very much. Current world-class pitchers such as Mark Buehrle, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Josh Beckett, and Jake Peavy can reach back and toss a pitch 100 mph. Real or Not? So that 100 mph pitch could be measured at 100 mph (at the pitchers hand), 99 mph (at 50 feet from home plate), 94 mph (midway on its journey) or 91 mph (as it crosses home plate)the rate of decrease varies based on atmospheric pressure, so a pitch at the altitude of Denvers Coors Field slows less than a pitch at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. If a pitcher attempted to throw too fast, he'd be booed off the village green. He also claimed he was clocked at 107.9 mph in a demonstration in 1946 at Griffith Stadium. Dave has the ability to make even the most complex topics easy to understand. The top fastallers might have topped out at 85 mph or so, anyway. New York Yankees How hard did pitchers throw back in the day. Despite his failure, he has been described as the fastest pitcher ever. He had no problem lighting it up with one of the most violent deliveries you will ever see. In a decade when major league pitchers endured tough times, here's 10 players who reigned in relative anonymity. Up until that year the pitcher's position was known as the pitcher's box. No-hitter the latest feat in James Paxton's rise, Deal ends Matt Harvey's roller-coaster ride with Mets, Sizing up potential trade fits for Manny Machado, Real or Not? If the stats existed, I think youd find that a lot more batters hit it into play or fouled out on the 1st or 2nd pitch. The most widely quoted response is Nolan Ryan, whose fastball was "officially" clocked by the Guinness . His arm was pretty much toast in his mid-30s. His 10.0 SO/9 IP career ratio is also good enough to place him among the top five inMLBhistory. No-hitter the latest feat in James Paxton's rise, Deal ends Matt Harvey's roller-coaster ride with Mets, Sizing up potential trade fits for Manny Machado, Real or Not? For the period between 1893 and 1902, the major-league leader in innings pitched averaged 408.5 innings. The top speed is 90 miles per hour. He was loyal to the Indians, but only because they paid him. Originally Published: February 2003 on Baseball Almanac. But any time you have someone who throws a 90 mph changeup, he has to be included on a list of the games hardest throwers. In 1893 the pitcher's rear foot was moved farther from home plate to its current distance of 60 feet, 6 inches. He was sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history and had a fastball that probably exceeded 100 mph (160 km/h). "I won the All-Star Game in Boston. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Cardinals righthander Jordan Hicks became the second major league pitcher to be clocked at 105 mph when he did so once in a 2018 game. The strikeout king (5,714) is so far and ahead of everyone that as impressive as his record seven ho-hitters are, theres only one guy (Randy Johnson) within even 1,000 Ks of his lifetime mark. Hey guys, does anyone now of the speed of the best old time pitchers(let's say till 1950s). The best workhorses of that time approached 700 innings and they werent even playing 154 games in a season yet. In the 1940s, pitchers decided to throw batters off their game with another style of pitch: the changeup. Stephen Louis Dalkowski Jr. (June 3, 1939 - April 19, 2020), nicknamed Dalko, was an American left-handed pitcher. All Rights Reserved by Baseball Almanac, Inc. Privacy Policy. WAG, but I think its the same reason old-time boxers and wrestlers went so much longer than their modern counterparts: 1) their understanding of training and rest was different 2) the technical aspects were significantly less strenuous (your a & c). I dont imagine it was easy pitching back then, but its got to be more grueling today. The Dodgers released him after one season because of concerns about his age (38) and injury history. The first radar guns that began appearing at ballparks in the late 1970s and early 1980s measured pitches much closer to the plate. They are also some of the most widely debated by historians, researchers & experts alike. I almost missed Matt Kilroy 513Ks in 1886!. Two and a Half Miles a Minute: That's the speed at which a pitched ball travels. In 995 minor league innings, he walked 1,354 batters and struck out 1,396. We asked the experts. Then there is no pitcher among the top 100 until 1964. "Batting slumps? Scoreboards in nearly every ballpark - including High Schools - now flash pitch speeds for the world to see. Bigger pitchers don't only throw harder in general, but they also release the ball closer to home plate, by virtue of their longer limbs. Plus, it's hard to know, 70 years later, how precise the Lumiline Chronograph was. Most of them would quickly burn out, but most of them burned out a hundred years ago, too. It all depends on what pitch the pitcher is throwing, fastball are faster than curve balls, changeups. **, Press J to jump to the feed. A man of about 60 years old did a foot for each of his years. During his Cy Young season in 2003, Gagne struck out 137 batters in 82.1 innings for a SO/9 ratio of 15.0. Feliz's fastball was once clocked at 103.4 mph during a game at Rangers Ballpark, a speed that is third all-time behind only Aroldis Chapman (105.1 mph) and Joel Zumaya (104.8 mph). After gettibg basic mechanics training will only bring marginal improvements. Could a 108 mph fastball soon be in the future? Threw as hard as they good the period between 1893 and 1902 the! Is also one of the most widely quoted response is Nolan Ryan, whose fastball was & quot ; &. 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