MLB Starters Are Throwing 100 MPH More Than Ever This Postseason

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Yankees RHP Cam Schlittler (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

The never-ending rise of MLB velocity keeps forcing us to recalibrate what is considered top-tier velocity. Broadcasts uses to use flame graphics to highlight pitches that were in the upper 90s. Now, that’s just routine.

But even by today’s velocity standards, these playoffs are already special. This is the postseason of the 100+ mph starting pitcher.

Triple-digit heat was once reserved for the game’s best closers. Then it filtered down to other relievers. Now, it’s a benchmark multiple starters can reach, even if they throw more than 75 pitches.

During the 2025 regular season, starting pitchers fired a record 761 pitches at 100 mph or harder, nearly triple last yearâ€s total of 264. As recently as 2018, there were fewer than 200. The velocity surge is widespread: a record 23 starters touched triple digits this season.

That has carried into October. In the wild card round alone, starters have already unleashed 51 pitches at 100+ mph. That’s more than the entirety of the previous record in the 2020 postseason (48) with three rounds left to go in 2025.

That’s more 100+ mph pitches than starters and relievers combined to throw in the entirety of the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 postseasons. Maybe that isn’t surprising when you consider how much harder pitchers thrown now than they did just 10-15 years ago.

But it’s also more 100+ mph pitches than starting pitchers threw in the 2021-2024 postseasons combined. There was just one all last postseason (Michael Kopech). This week we’ve seen Hunter Greene (28), Tarik Skubal (11), Cam Schlittler (11) and Garrett Crochet (1) all join the postseason Century Club.

Schlitter’s 11 100+ mph pitches in his postseason debut is already tied with Skubal for the ninth-most triple-digit pitches by a starter in the Statcast era (2008-2025), and more than twice what he managed in 73 regular-season innings. Greene and Skubal have both reached 101 mph this October, something only eight other postseason starters have ever done. And with Skubal advancing and Shohei Ohtani readying to make his first October start, more are likely coming.

But for all of this premium velocity, the gold standard of Statcast era postseasons remains Yordano Ventura. The Royals righthander joined Justin Verlander as the only two starters to throw 102 mph as a postseason starter. Ventura’s 10 101+ mph pitches in 2014 remains the postseason record for starting pitchers, as does his 32 100+ mph pitches in that postseason.

Ventura passed away in a car accident in Jan. 2017, but he left a lasting mark on the game and plenty of wondering of what could have been.

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