Best Fastballs in the Pittsburgh Pirates Minor League System
Tracking velocity, whiff rates, in-zone frequency and contact, and other metrics to evaluate the best fastballs by Pirates prospects.
The latest addition to the new PiratesProspects.com is the addition of a sortable Pitch Data table.
When you go to the Stats page and click the Statcast tab at the bottom, you’ll see a button called Pitch Data. This will give you the breakdown of every pitch thrown across the entire system, MLB to FCL, in the levels that have Statcast data. You can also sort different metrics to see who has the most effective pitch.
That’s exactly what I’m going to do today.
Diving into this new feature, I wanted to take a look at the best pitches in the Pirates’ minor league system. What better way to do this than starting with the fastball?
This article looks at the four-seam fastball. I’ll look at the sinker in a later article.
I limited my search to pitchers with 10+ fastballs thrown, and removed some veterans like Yunior Marte, who has the fourth best velocity in the minor league system. Let’s start by looking at the top five out of 60 qualified pitchers.
Top 5 Avg Velocity
Carlos Mateo - 99.9 MPH
Antwone Kelly - 97.7 MPH
Wilber Dotel - 97.4 MPH
David Matoma - 97.3 MPH
Seth Hernandez - 97.1 MPH
The biggest thing that always stands out when grading the fastball is velocity.
Not all velocity is the same. And velocity isn’t everything. It tends to be the cover of the book that evaluates pitchers, and there is a saying about judging a book by the cover.
The five players listed above are regarded as having some of the best fastballs, due to their velocities. However, the data tells a different story on this group.
Antwone Kelly has the second highest velocity in the minor league system, but only gets a whiff 15.8% of the time, which is one of the 15th lowest rates. He’s in line with Thomas Harrington, who throws 5 MPH slower. Kelly has the velocity, but he’s not overpowering hitters with his fastball. He has a 90.6 MPH exit velocity, which is seventh in the system. That shows velocity isn’t everything. Kelly stands out more for his secondary pitches, which I’ll get to in future articles.
Wilber Dotel is similar to Kelly. He has one of the best velocities, but his whiff rate of 18.9% shows he doesn’t blow his fastball by opposing hitters. His average exit velocity of 89.1 MPH also shows the pitch doesn’t generate weak contact. Both are players who benefit from the effectiveness of their secondary stuff. The fastball velocity probably does play a role in setting up those secondary offerings.
David Matoma looks like another case of elite velocity not being effective. His whiff rate is 13.3%, which is in the bottom ten of the system. He doesn’t get hit as hard at 85.9 MPH, which ranks 13th in the system. He’s also only going up against Low-A hitters, who might have a more difficult time against this velocity than upper-level guys.
I definitely want to focus on top prospect Seth Hernandez, but first, a look at whiff rate leaders and the standout of Carlos Mateo.
Top 5 Whiff Rates
Carlos Mateo - 54.3%
McLane Moody - 47.1%
Reinold Navarro - 46.5%
Isaac Mattson - 41.9%
Dominic Perachi - 41.2%
Whiff rates expand upon the velocity story. They might be more important. If a fastball gets a high swing and miss percentage, it really doesn’t matter how fast it was moving.
McLane Moody, for example, only throws 92.8 MPH, which is just inside the top 40. However, he has the second highest whiff rate in the system. The downside is that he only throws the pitch in the zone 29.8% of the time, and only gets chase swings 12.5% of the time with a 20% contact rate. While the whiff rate is high, Moody is not challenging hitters and blowing it by them. He’s also in his first pro season out of high school, so the promise of the whiff rate is better than the lack of control early in his career.
This type of complete story is needed for every fastball, and every other pitch.
Carlos Mateo has the fastest velocity in the system, along with the highest whiff rate. That makes him an easy candidate for having the best fastball. However, Mateo is only in the zone 38.5% of the time, which is 8th worst in the system among pitchers with 10+ fastballs recorded.
When he is in the zone, Mateo gets the second lowest contact rate. He’s got a fastball that can challenge opposing hitters, but his control is a serious problem. He only gets chase swings 23.7% of the time, which means working out of the zone is detrimental to a fastball that hitters have difficulty against inside the zone.
Reinold Navarro is the only pitcher who faces less contact in the zone than Mateo. He also throws in the zone a bit more at 43.3%. What’s amazing is Navarro is in Low-A and is one year younger than Mateo and the same age as Moody. Navarro’s 96.2 MPH velocity is 10th overall. His whiff rate is third in the system, behind Mateo and Moody. His average exit velocity of 84.7 MPH is seventh best in the system. The impressive thing is Navarro’s numbers are based off the results of nearly 600 fastballs, while the majority of the system has 100 or fewer recorded fastballs. That’s a lot of strong data for Navarro.
The Top Prospect and The Top Fastballs
Finally, there’s Seth Hernandez, one of the top prospects in the game.
Hernandez has the sixth fastest velocity, the 16th best whiff rate, the 11th lowest contact rate in the zone, and pounds the zone at the 12th highest rate. One downside is an 88.6 MPH exit velocity, ranking as the 20th highest.
All of these metrics are based on his time in Bradenton, and don’t capture his more recent work in Greensboro. Hernandez doesn’t dominate in any one category, but he consistently grades well across the board. He throws strikes at a high rate, doesn’t get a lot of contact in the zone, gets an above-average whiff rate on the fastball, and has the velocity to ensure those other metrics have some validity behind them.
I would actually rate Navarro as having the best fastball in the minor league system.
It lacks the velocity of Mateo, and falls behind on whiffs, but Navarro controls it in the zone more often, and it isn’t hit nearly as hard as Mateo (91.5 MPH) or even Moody (86.3 MPH). Navarro also has one of the best spin rates in the system. The elite whiff rate and the lack of contact in the zone set the pitch apart from others in the system.
Hernandez would be second, with consistently good metrics in velocity, whiff rate, in-zone contact, and spin rate. He has been hit around a bit, including in his time in Greensboro. That’s somewhat a concern, but this is also just a 19-year-old pitcher who has been lights out in the lower levels — at least when he’s not pitching at home in Greensboro.
Mateo is an honorable mention, and one of the best development fastballs. His control is a problem, and if it wasn’t so bad, he’d easily have the top fastball in the system. The fact he leads in velocity and whiffs keeps him in the conversation as a guy to watch, even with the control problems.
I also think Moody is an interesting development case. His in-zone rate is worse than Mateo, and his velocity is slower, which leaves less margin for error in the future against better talent. What I like is the projectable 6’ 7” frame. Moody already has the ability to miss bats with his fastball. If he adds some velocity in the future, that could develop into one of the best fastballs in the system.
There are nine recorded pitches thrown across the minor league system. I’m going to give a breakdown of each pitch across the next week.
You can get ahead of me by checking out the new Pitch Data chart on PiratesProspects.com, located in the Statcast section.
Until the next time I go live…
-Tim Williams