After attending last night's baseball game and watching Clemens, Penny, Lidge and Backe all bring 94+ heat, I began thinking about who the hardest throwers in the league were. It's very hard to compare a starter versus a reliever, simply because the reliever does not need to hold anything back in terms of effort for future innings. Typically, a starter pitching as a reliever can add 2-3 mph on his fastball. Here is my list (I'm sure there are some glaring omissions here): 1. Billly Wagner 2. Kyle Farnsworth 3. Kerry Wood 4. Brad Penny 5. Josh Beckett 6. Randy Johnson 7. Bartolo Colon 8. Troy Percival 9. Braden Looper 10. Armando Benitez
Does Farnsworth still throw that hard? It seems like a few years ago that dude was gonna be the next big thing, but I guess he could never develop a second pitch.
Farnsworth still gets it up to 98-100 mph, but he has absolutely little to no control over his slider. You pretty much covered all of the really hard-throwers Jorge... only other ones I can think of are Ben Sheets (only against the Astros), and Felix Rodriguez in San Fransisco. Now, you wanna include a list of just pure filthy stuff... you'll have several Astros on there...
Usually, every year, ESPN will come out and rank the best pitches (i.e. Johnson's slider, Wagner's FB, etc.). I would be a lil suprised if Lidge's slider doesn't get some love. When its on. He is unhittable. I think he falls in love with his FB a lil too much.
I haven't followed baseball in a while ... but did Nolan Ryan really throw that hard, or were the clocks different? Wasn't he often up around 105? It seems like people make a big deal nowadays when guys get in the lower-to-mid 90s.
Billy Wagner got clocked at 100 MPH or better over 100 times last year. The next highest pitcher had reached that plateau 12 times. I read that in a fantasy sports magazine.
Here's a good article on the "100 mph club" http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/fastest-pitcher-in-baseball.shtml
I still honestly believe that the home radar guns are jacked up for this. Why?... because I've hardly EVER seen Billy throw 100mph on the road. It does happen, every now and then, but nowhere near the regularity that its been happening in his home games the last two years.
