Once Unthinkable, Eye-Popping Pitching Velocity Has Become The Norm

Image credit: Hunter Greene Photo by Jeff Dean/Getty Images)

The first time I purchased a cell phone, it wasn’t by choice.

I had taken a new job in a new town in a new state. My work hours could be described as almost endless. But even if I left the office, my new job meant that I had to be reachable at pretty much any hour. So I was required to have a cell phone.

At the time, it seemed like an imposition and an adjustment. If my boss or anyone at the newspaper needed me, I was always available. Those days of hopping into my car for a two-hour drive and being in a cocoon of my own with the radio were over.

Within a decade of that first cell phone, I got my first smartphone. Nowadays I, like everyone else, cannot imagine the idea of being without the device that serves as my connection to the internet, camera, camcorder, recorder, email inbox, book, TV and, yes, even an old-school telephone.

But if you think back, it’s hard to even place in time where exactly we went from the era where no one had a smartphone to the time where everyone did. 

Watch a sporting event from the early 2000s, and you’ll notice no one is looking at their phone. Watch a game from a decade later, and the faces in the crowd are recording key moments on a tiny screen.

If you picked any of us out of 2002, popped us into a time machine and dropped us into 2025, our 2002 selves would be blown away by how smartphones have utterly altered all aspects of our lives.

But there wasn’t one, specific day when I realized that the world had changed forever. I didn’t buy my first smart phone and think that my life would forever be altered. Dramatic change happens sneakily, one day at a time.

I couldn’t help but think about that as I watched Jack Leiter and Hunter Greene battle on Wednesday. Yes, the wind was blowing in, but it was one of those extremely well-pitched games that makes a 1-0 score thrilling.

Leiter topped out at 99.1 mph in facing just one over the minimum over five scoreless innings. He left after just 70 pitches because of a blister on his pitching hand.

That 99.1 mph pitch, while very fast, only was the 53rd-hardest pitch thrown by a starter in the game. Greene had 33 pitches of 100+ mph and another 19 of 99.2 mph or harder. Greene was also exceptional, allowing one run on three hits in seven innings of work.

If you had taken me from 2005, popped me into that same time machine and dropped me off at Great American Ballpark on Wednesday, it would have blown my mind.

In 2005, I would make two-hour drives to MiLB ballparks in hopes of seeing one 100 mph pitch on my radar gun. It would take me another five years before I’d actually achieve that goal. When Joe Boyle did it in an MiLB game I was at on Tuesday, it seemed semi-normal. I’ve already seen in-person multiple pitchers touch 100 mph this year, and so has most everyone on the BA staff.

Because velocity just keeps increasing every year, it’s easy to not notice how the baseball world has been revolutionized. Nowadays, 95-96 mph is often the price of admission to pitch as a pro.

It’s ordinary.

The idea of seeing two starting pitchers get to 97+ mph inning after inning once seemed impossible. Now it’s normal.

Yes, Leiter vs. Greene had more velocity than a normal game, but Pirates starter Paul Skenes was also sitting at 97-99 mph at the same time in a different game. Royals lefty Cole Ragans was topping out at 98 mph while Brewers starter Freddy Peralta got to 97 in another day game head-to-head matchup.

MacKenzie Gore topped out at 97 mph for the Nationals. Padres starter Dylan Cease reached 98. Tigers lefty Tarik Skubal almost got to 99 (98.8) while Red Sox lefty Garrett Crochet touched 98. Zack Wheeler settled for a little under 97 (96.6), and so did Blake Snell.

This was just an early-season Wednesday, and we saw starting pitchers reaching velocity numbers once reserved for only the hardest-throwing relievers in the game.

It’s not just the majors. In Triple-A, six starters on Wednesday touched 96 or higher.

Throwing 96 just isn’t special anymore. There have been 195 MLB pitchers who have thrown a pitch 96+ in the first week of the season. There have been 140 Triple-A pitchers who have done so.

It’s not even just pros. The Arkansas college staff has seven pitchers who have reached 96.

Even 98 mph has become pretty routine. We’ve seen 91 pitchers reach that mark in the majors roughly one week into the season. Another 37 Triple-A pitchers have been to 98, and that season is just five days old. 

And 99 mph? Four pitchers on Tennessee’s college staff have touched 99. So have four from Georgia.

There have been 10 Triple-A pitchers who have topped 100 mph so far to go with 18 big leaguers in the century club. We’ve seen multiple high school pitchers get to 100+ mph this year already.

There already have been more 101+ mph pitches in the majors this year as there were in the entirety of the 2008 season. At this rate, the number will top the 2009 and 2011 season’s 101+ pitch numbers before the end of April.

Torpedo bats? Give hitters all the help they can get. It’s a miracle that anyone can get a hit these days, because pitchers now normally do what we once thought was incredibly rare.

Savor it. We’re seeing pitchers do incredible things, even if they do them so often now that it’s hard to remember how special it is.