The Rays just added a much needed flame thrower to the bullpen after two straight years having one of the lowest average fastball velocities for relievers. Rafael Soriano is a power pitcher bringing a well located (more on that later) low-mid 90s fastball that he can throw as a two-seamer as well. His primary offspeed pitch is his slider which is a little slurvey coming in around the low-80s and decent movement separation from the fastball. Soriano rarely throws a changeup with only seven tracked by MLB Gameday. But this season Soriano added a cutter which has a little more cut from his fastball, and a little better outcomes with (SSS).

So here are some basic pitch movement numbers for Soriano's three pitches.

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Some movement visuals of his pitches.

From The Rays Party

Although I can't separate the two fastballs by clustering yet, we can see that Soriano clearly throws a two seam fastball. That should make Hickey's job a whole lot easier.

Now for spin axis vs. velocity chart.

From The Rays Party

The fastball/slider velocity separation is a little slower than average even though the movement is very-very similar to the average slider.

And some basic stats for each pitch.

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Small sample size but the cutter produces some really excellent results compared to the fastball which can get beat up at times with that high SLGCON(slugging on contact or TB/BIP). Soriano seems to get hitters to swing outside the zone at his pitcher for an above average rate, more specifically the slider. The MLB average for OSWING for a slider was 30.8%. Soriano has almost five percentage points more. We can also see that Soriano is a flyball pitcher, getting a decent amount of infield flyballs on the fastball and cutter.

Remember when I said Soriano had well-located fastballs? I believe it is a huge reason for his great splits against both left-handed and right-handed hitters.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/10/2009.

Well we can see that command visually through pitch f/x.

From The Rays Party

From The Rays Party

Not exactly Mariano Rivera, but this is very good. You can watch this in action in this short clip from MLB.com.

Update:I didn't know Andy Hellickson also did one already but I was working on my database all afternoon. I have more numbers yet he has the better visual.