The Best Fastball, Change-Up, and Curveball.

After looking through the PFX for the Blue Jays, it makes sense to make a completely arbitrary list, right? So, here's the best pitches in the organization. I'll consider run value, velocity, movement, and a handful of other statistics.

Blue Jays Rotation and Pen: The Best Fastball

This one is incredibly tough because Brandon Morrow's fastball averages almost 95mph and garners whiffs and fouls 10% and 21% of the time, respectively. He throws it fifty-eight percent of the time, and relies on it heavily. Yet, Morrow's fastball routinely posts rather average run-values. Meanwhile, Ricky Romero's fastball exhbits quality sink, induces ground-balls 8% of the time and came out on top in terms of run-value.

While it was tempting to go with a Toronto starter, I had to settle on Sergio Santos. Santos' fastball clocks in at 96mph but unlike Morrow's, gets a called strike 25% of the time. Santos' whiff rate sits at a meagre 4.45% but he makes up for it by inducing 7.71% groundballs with the pitch. Santos has the velocity of Morrow with Romero's ability to limit fly-balls and line-drives.


Blue Jays Rotation and Pen: The Best Change-Up


There isn't much of a contest here, but Henderson Alvarez looks to be slowly working his way into the picture. Ricky Romero features the Jays' best change and outpaces his competition in every facet except velocity. Alvarez barely nudges out Romero in terms of velocity but gets less movement on both planes.

Romero gets a terrific 24% Whiff Rate on his change in addition to a 10% Called Strike Rate. The total linear run value on his change-up was 13, almost 8 ahead of Henderson Alvarez.

Alvarez has a pretty fantastic change-up of his own, but Ricky Romero is head and shoulders above the competition as you'd expect.


Blue Jays Rotation and Pen: The Best Curveball


In terms of batted-ball profile, movement, and value, Janssen's curveball comes out on top. Janssen gets a called strike twenty-six percent of the time he throws the pitch in addition to a 15% whiff-rate. Only 1.65% of the curveballs he threw in 2011 were hit square for line-drives compared to 11.57% hit on the ground. Janssen went to the pitch 121 times in 2011 and got 15.42 inches of horizontal movement with -47.99 inches of vertical movement (including gravity.) The pitch only comes in at 77mph, but helped Janssen compile a 4.7 wCB and a 3.89 wCB/C.




Up Next... Slider, Cutter, Sinker.