Pitching aging curves and peak fastball velocity

[Robideaux]

Does anybody have any data on how a player's peak fastball velocity affects his aging curve, if at all? I did a little bit of digging via Google, but I couldn't really find what I was looking for (found article by Kalk and a few things over at Tango's place).

 

In discussions about whether extend Marcum, there seems to be two main (and directly oppositional) arguments being made:

1. He will age better than "average" because he relies more on location and craftiness than a blazing fastball to get hitters out than

2. He will age worse than "average" because losing a few MPH off of an already below-average fastball will make it difficult to keep batters honest.

 

My purely gut instinct is that how a pitcher ages (the shape of his aging curve) is more highly influenced with how good he is to begin with rather than his peak fastball velocity, per

se. (Of course, there is probably a strong relationship between velocity

and effectiveness as well, so it is hard to isolate each variable without a bunch of regression analysis that is beyond my pay grade.)

 

I suppose a corollary of this is whether there is velocity threshold that pitchers need to exceed in order to be effective--and, if so, what is it? There almost assuredly is (you don't see too many guys throwing 65 MPH in the big leagues), but is a drop from an 87 MPH to an 85 MPH deadly in most cases or can pitchers compensate by throwing more off-speed stuff? For what it is worth, it looks like Marcum is using his fastball less and less as he ages and relying more on the change-up and (this year) the curveball.

[rluzinski]

Those are all great questions but I'm not sure how much I can add. I've seen studies that have shown the average pitcher loses about .5 MPH per year and I've seen an average dun value be associated for that drop (independent of the absolute velocity). I think the fact that almost no (non-knuckleballer) major league pitchers throw below 86-87 MPH suggests that there is some minimum threshold. Greg Maddux is the only guy that comes to mind and he was excellent in every other regard.

[greeg35]

And he was given up to nine inches on the outside corner....granted, he was good enough to hit that spot consistently; but it would help an aging pitcher last.