Rays Pitchers Are Not Feeling The Heat

While some of our hitters are off to fast starts, a lot of our pitchers are off to slow starts; as in velocity. Overall, the ranked sixth in fastball velocity in 2008 with an average of 91.2 mph. This group was lead by Grant Balfour, Edwin Jackson and Matt Garza, who all had average heaters of 93 or better. Balfour lead the way at 94.6. In 2009, the Rays have dropped down to 27^th in the velocity ranking with an average fastball of just under 90 at 89.6. Once again, Balfour is your leader, but he comes in at 92.5, a full 2.1 ticks lower than last season. To be fair, there have been a number of changes on the Rays staff, so I broke it down a bit further. Here is the list of pitchers who tossed over 40 innings for the Rays in '08 and returned to the team in '09.

Overall, the 2009 returnees are down an average of about a mile per hour. As you can see we have eight candidates with all eight being down in velocity. The decreases range from Andy Sonnanstine who has lost just 0.1 mph on his fastball to Balfour and Scott Kazmir who have each lost about two miles on the heater. A decrease in velocity doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing, but for a team that had concerns over work loads it's not a trend you would like to see continued.

Just for reference, I check on three arms that logged over 40 innings for the Rays in ‘08 and have moved on.

As you can see Edwin Jackson and Trever Miller are slightly up while Jason Hammel is down. Once thing to note is none of these three put in much work in the playoffs.

There are a few things that could be in play here. One could be a team wide effort into holding a little velocity back in order for better control or to conserve ones' arm over the season.  We have seen instances of both in the past with Jim Hickey as the coach, especially with some of the harder throwers on the team. Another reason could be that certain pitchers are just now getting their full arm strength back. A few weeks ago, James Shields said he was overcoming a "dead arm." Since then Shields has raised his velocity from 87-88 back to the 89-90 we are accustom to seeing.

Joe Maddon has almost gone out of his way to say everybody on the staff is healthy. Unless there is team wide conspiracy to hide arm injuries for each pitcher on the list, I wouldn't look much into the overall lack of velocity. However, in individual cases like Kazmir and Balfour, there might be a slight concern starting to creep in.