To Reach the World Series You Have To Bring Up Fire Ballers?

Over the past week or two we have looked at ways for the Yankees to conceivably and realistically be more like these two teams so they can contend in 2015 and beyond and this may be another aspect of that. The great writers over at Fangraphs.com compile the fastest average fastball velocities year by year and found that five of the Top 15 hardest throwing pitchers in all of Major League Baseball are in this year’s World Series between the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants. That’s a stat that is eye opening to me and a stat that I had absolutely no idea about.

Yordano Ventura, the Royals Game Two starter, can reach 100 MPH with ease on his fastball although he averages around 96 MPH on his fastball. Ventura throws the second hardest among starting pitchers only behind the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim starter Garrett Richards. The Royals Kelvin Herrera can also hit 100 MPH and has some devastating late movement on his pitches making him so hard to hit this season and into the postseason.

The Giants counter with Hunter Strickland out of the bullpen and his average fastball velocity 97.5 MPH. Interestingly enough Strickland did not make his major league debut until September, 1^st of this season and impressed enough to not only make the postseason roster but pitch in huge spots in this playoff run. While the results haven’t been what manager Bruce Bochy would have hoped for the fact that he is on the postseason roster speaks volumes to how that bullpen has been constructed. Strickland can hit 100 MPH on the gun and is still very much a work in progress as this is his first full season as a relief pitcher and not far removed from his May, 2013 Tommy John surgery.

The Yankees already have Dellin Betances on the club who can hit 100 MPH and the organization went through a phase where all they wanted to draft was big, thick, hard throwing relief pitchers in the MLB Draft. Maybe the Yankees caught on to this trend before I did or maybe they got lucky, either way with Betances, Jacob Lindgren on the way, and others the Yankees bullpen may be keeping up with the times and setting trends before we know it.