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Cam Schlittler (Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
He located. At times, he baffled. But most importantly, he simply blew Boston hitters away with pure, unadulterated velocity.
When the year began, Schlittler sat 93-94 mph with his fastball and touched 96. But every month this season, heâ€s added velocity. He began touching 99 mph in May. By June, he was sitting at 96 mph. In July in the majors, he was sitting 97 and touching 100 for the first time. By the time the postseason arrived, he was sitting at 99 mph, touching 101 and introducing himself to fans on a national stage with one of the best fastballs we’ve seen this year.
Schlittler is one of the most intriguing “Where did he come from?†stories the game has seen in years. A somewhat-promising potential back-end starter for much of his early pro career, he pitched his way into being a Top 100 Prospect by the end of June. And now that heâ€s added another 6 mph to his heater, heâ€s pitching like an ace.
Schlittler may be a pop-up prospect, but as a starter who is throwing 99 mph, he has officially arrived. In fact, if that kind of velocity holds, he is actually very well positioned to have a long and productive MLB career now.
Some understandably may worry that throwing so hard will put him at risk of having a spectacular but brief and injury-plagued career. But in reality, the opposite is true.
The most important determining characteristic for MLB success as a starting pitcher is how hard a player can throw. Knowing that, what we find is that starting pitchers who throw as hard as Schlittler are much more likely to have long MLB careers. So, if you were to try to predict which star starters of today will last the longest, the pitchers who throw harder than everyone else would be your best bets.
Why? The reasoning is actually pretty straightforward.
If you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have success. If you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have a better peak to your career. And if you throw harder than normal, you are more likely to have durability and, thus, a longer MLB career.
Now, I know that the durability part of that equation is going to trip a lot of people up. But I promise, weâ€ll explain it all thoroughly. So, let’s take a closer look at why throwing hard is so important for a pitcher’s long-term success.
Before we begin, I’d like to issue an important disclaimer: Please do not read this as a manifesto calling for 12-year-olds to start chucking it as hard as they can in front of radar guns.
This is not about that. Weâ€re talking about professional pitchers here. These are adults who are getting paid to play baseball in scenarios where the rewards for MLB success are significant.
On the other hand, a middle or high school pitcher who throws extremely hard runs a risk of blowing out a physically-undeveloped body and never reaching pro ball. Even for fully-mature and filled-out pro pitchers, chasing velocity increases risk of injury. Throwing harder ups the stress put on a pitcherâ€s elbow. That’s just how it is.
But when it comes to pro pitchers looking to establish a career, the risk of injury pales in comparison to the risk of ineffectiveness. For all the understandable concerns about the rate of elbow injuries among pro pitchers, telling them to throw softer to reduce injury risk is the equivalent of telling a race car driver that they will reduce their risk of crashing by driving more slowly. They may crash less often, sure. But they also are more likely to be replaced by a faster driver.
As more than one pro pitcher has put it to me over the years: Would you rather risk injury to be a major league pitcher or be a healthy pitcher who has been released?
Ok, with that said, let’s bring this back to Schlittler. In 2023, when he was pitching in Class A, he went 1-2, 4.11 with more hits (49) than innings pitched (46). He sat at 90 mph and maxed out at 92.
By adding a remarkable 8-9 mph of velocity since then, Schlittler went from a fringe back-of-a-rotation profile to going 4-3, 2.96 this year with a .217 opponent average in the majors. Between the majors and minors, he struck out 183 batters this season.
Clearly, throwing harder has made all the difference for him. Thatâ€s not surprising, as there is a linear relationship between how hard a fastball is thrown and how successful it is.
In general, MLB hitters turn into something like Oswald Peraza when facing a 100 mph fastball from a starting pitcher. And when they get a sub-90 mph heater, they hit better than Bobby Witt Jr. The data shows a direct relationship in which hitters are increasingly successful as fastballs get softer:
avg veloAVGOBPSLGWHIFF%100+ mph.141.213.21628.498-99 mph.208.292.33324.596-97 mph.247.323.40120.994-95 mph.260.336.43318.792-93 mph.275.351.46616.290-91 mph.293.373.52014.3Under 90 mph.301.383.52512.8Source: Baseball Savant
There are many who want to believe the key to MLB success as a pitcher is elite command, dastardly movement or an exquisite feel for pitching. Those are useful traits, but they donâ€t match the ability to throw hard. In fact, they donâ€t really come close.
Throwing hard makes it more likely a pitcher will have a devastating secondary pitch. And throwing hard does nothing to prevent pitchers from having command or feel to pitch. Having a foundation of elite velocity makes it easier to master other aspects of the game. On the other hand, working off of below-average velocity requires that a pitcher master most of the other aspects of pitching just to survive.
To better illustrate this, we can look at all MLB starting pitchers with 100-plus innings pitched in 2025. We selected 100 innings to ensure we’re only comparing established starters who were in rotations for most of the year.
If we divide the resulting player pool into five buckets based entirely on average fastball velocity, we find that the hardest-throwing starters averaged more fWAR and more innings pitched. Overall, the relationship between WAR and velocity was largely linear:
velocityPitchersAvg
WARMEDIAN
WARMAX
WARMIN
WARAVG
IP97+ mph113.32.96.61.715895-96 mph252.72.45.8-0.615493-94 mph501.91.94.1-0.314891-92 mph201.91.65.5-0.4151< 90.9 mph81.11.12.5-0.3141
Now, these numbers don’t do anything to account for movement, command, quality of secondary pitches, etc. Logically, starting MLB pitchers who donâ€t throw as hard should be better at some of those other attributes, as they arenâ€t able to rely on elite velocity but still made it to the big leagues. The gameâ€s best changeups, for example, often come from pitchers with less stuff.
Elite control and command donâ€t always pair with top-tier velocity, but this year, there was no such thing as an ineffective 100-inning starter who threw 97-plus regularly. Perhaps just as important is that was also no such thing as an exceptional pitcher who sat under 91 mph.
Year after year, the best starters are the ones who throw really hard. Consider that the best pitchers in the majors in 2025 were Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. Both sit at 97-98 mph and can reach back for triple digits. Of the best 15-20 starting pitchers this season, only Logan Webb and Ranger Suarez have significantly below-league-average velocity.
This isnâ€t a new trend. Of the Cy Young winners over the past 15 seasons, only knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (NL, 2012) and lefthander Dallas Keuchel (AL, 2015) did so with below-average velocity. Of the past 30 Cy Young winners, 17 threw 2+ mph harder in their award season than the average MLB starter. This year will likely make that 19 of 32.
The trend is only getting stronger, too. From 2021-2024, Cy Young winners have threw 2.9 mph harder than average MLB starters. If Skubal (+4.6 mph) and Skenes (+3.9 mph) win this year, as expected, those numbers will climb even higher.
But we donâ€t just have to look at the best of the best to see this play out. To examine the trend further, we studied every starting pitcher who debuted in the majors from 2008-2015 (see below for more details).
We chose those end points because 2008 is the first year of the pitch-tracking era, which means we have velocity data that is measured on the same scale as it is today. And 2015 is far enough back that the vast majority of pitchers who debuted during this timeframe have already pitched out the entirety of their careers. Of the 236 pitchers in the study, only 45 were still pitching in 2025, and that includes pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, who went on to announce his retirement.
For every pitcher, we looked at average fastball velocity in their debut season and compared it to the overall average fastball velocity for starting pitchers who threw with the same hand that season. In this way, we created a velocity delta for each pitcher. For example, when Stephen Strasburg debuted, he threw 6 mph harder than the average righthanded starter. Lefthander Alex Wood had exactly average velocity for a lefty starter in the year he debuted. Lefty Mike Fiers threw 2.8 mph softer than the average lefty.
Sorted into five distinct velocity buckets, here’s how those those 236 pitchers performed over their careers:
velo compared
to MLB avgTOTAL PITCHERSERAH/9BB%SO% 2 mph543.828.618.31%21.44%
We see that pitchers who threw harder had a better ERA, fewer hits per nine innings and a higher strikeout rate, albeit with a slightly higher walk rate. This suggests, again, that if pitchers throw harder, hitters have a tougher time. And we can see that the truly elite starting pitchers are almost always the ones who throw extremely hard.
But that doesnâ€t answer everything. Thereâ€s still one big, nagging question: What about their durability?Â
After all, if these starters with elite velocity are great for a season or two and then flame out because of injuries, is it worth the tradeoff?
Thatâ€s not whatâ€s happening. What we find instead is that harder throwing starting pitchers are the ones who have longer MLB careers.
Understandably, this is the aspect of our findings that will seem the most counterintuitive to readers. As multiple studies have shown over the past 20 years, the harder a pitcher throws, the more stress he puts on the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. So, if throwing harder increases the risk of Tommy John surgery, how does throwing harder make pitchers more durable?
The answer is pretty simple: The biggest threat to an MLB pitcherâ€s career is not a career-ending injury—itâ€s ineffectiveness.
By the nature of this study, we tried to ensure we werenâ€t including data brief MLB callups. Every pitcher included recorded more starts than relief appearances in their first two MLB seasons and every pitcher had to have 60-plus innings pitched. These were starters who made 10 or more MLB starts. All but 35 of them made 20-plus MLB starts.
Within those parameters, something became quite clear: Soft-tossers donâ€t get to stick around. Consider that:
Now, a pitcher with a 200-inning MLB career may be one who had some longevity, but 500 innings means a pitcher stuck around for three or more seasons. But even with that expansion scope, the same trends apply. Less than 30% of pitchers who debuted throwing 1 mph or more softer than average failed to reach 500 innings. Among +1 to +2 mph starters, 67.6% reached 500 innings. Among pitchers who threw more than 2 mph harder, 79.6% made it to the 500-inning mark.
And what about for pitchers who reach 1,000 career innings? To do that, a player has to be excellent for a long time, showing both durability and longevity. It’s a much rarer thing, as only 57 active pitchers have 1,000 or more MLB innings.
While that is a very high bar to clear, 50% of pitchers in the > 2 mph bucket reached 1,000 innings. Among pitchers with -1 mph velocity or worse, only 15% reached that mark.
Lastly, if you raise the threshold to 3 mph or more harder than average, the success rate goes up even further, with 57% of those pitchers reaching 1,000 innings. Of the 29 pitchers in the study who fit that description, their average career innings pitched (so far) was 1,139. And with the likes of Gerrit Cole, Kevin Gausman, Zack Wheeler and Eduardo Rodriguez among that group, the average career innings pitched number will only continue to climb.
To study this even further, we ran regression analyses that looked at pitchers’ age at the time of their MLB debut and how their fastball velocity compared to the league average (for starters of that same handedness in that year). In each different way we studied the data—including instances that controlled for age at MLB debut—there was always a positive correlation between throwing harder and increased career longevity.
Of the top 20 pitchers in career innings pitched included in the study, eight threw 2+ mph harder than average. With that in mind, here’s one other stat we left out of that previous chart:
velo compared
to MLB avgAVG
CAREER IP 2 mph1074
So, what does all of this data tell us?
Throwing harder does increase injury risks, yes. That’s just the nature of the game. But for every pitcher whose career is ended prematurely by injury, multiple other pitchers will have gotten released or demoted due to ineffectiveness. And effectiveness, clearly, is predicated largely on how hard a pitcher throws.
Ultimately, the clearest path to being a successful MLB pitcher is to throw harder than your peers.
MLB velocity climbs year after year. This only adds to why there is such an attritional effect for soft-tossers. If a pitcher debuted throwing 1 mph harder than league average, that pitcher will have average velocity before long if they just maintain their stuff.
For example, if a pitcher debuted throwing 91.5 mph in 2008—which was average velocity for a righthanded starter at the time—by just maintaining that velocity over the course of their career, they would have been throwing 1 mph softer than average by 2015. And if they were still around in 2025, throwing 91.5 mph would have them throwing 2.8 mph softer than average.
On the other hand, a pitcher who debuts throwing 2 mph harder than average can comfortably know that simply maintaining their velocity will keep them above-average for years, even if the league will eventually catch up to them.
And the hardest-throwers who do suffer injury? Because their stuff is better than most, they have more margin to still have effective stuff post-injury, even if they never get back to being 100% of their pre-injury self.
Take Jacob deGrom as an example. One of the most effective pitchers in history, heâ€s had multiple Tommy John surgeries and averaged under 50 innings per season from 2021-2024. Some may point to him as a cautionary tale of a pitcher who threw too hard.
But, despite those injuries, deGrom has thrown 1,540 innings in his MLB career, which is good for 22nd-most among active pitchers. And as his 2025 numbers show, he was still pitching effectively as a 37-year-old. While deGrom has had injuries, his career (47.9 bWAR and 46.4 fWAR) is one that almost any debuting rookie would love to emulate.
Itâ€s much harder to find examples of soft-tossers who can pitch for that long. Injuries donâ€t have to derail them—their lack of velocity does the trick. Yes, Jamie Moyer was a wizard many years ago, and so was Mark Buehrle. But they were outliers. In the modern game, it’s very hard for even the most successful soft-tossers to carry success into their mid 30s.
Consider that there are 32 starters who debuted between 2008-2015 and have compiled 1,500+ career innings. Aaron Nola, Mike Leake, Kyle Hendricks, Dallas Keuchel and Trevor Cahill are the only pitchers in that group who debuted throwing 1 mph or more softer than average velocity.
Leake was out of the league as a 31-year-old. Cahill’s last effective season was as a 30-year-old.
Keuchel is a perfect example of a pitcher who dominated without exceptional velocity. He won a Cy Young in 2015 and was excellent from 2014-2020. But that 2020 season as a 32-year-old was his last year of effectiveness. From 2021 on, he was 13-19, 6.24. Keuchel never threw hard, but as his velocity started to dip just a bit, his hard-hit rate skyrocketed.
Hendricks was excellent for the Cubs from 2016-2020. But from his age-31 season in 2021 until now, he’s 36-43, 4.79 with 2.5 bWAR in five seasons. From 2015-2020 he had a better than league average ERA for six straight seasons. He’s been worse than league average in ERA four out of five seasons since.
In Nola’s case, he quickly added velocity to get to league average. But when his fastball dropped to 91.8 mph in 2025, his effectiveness waned, and he posted a 6.01 ERA that was more than two runs above his career average. As a 32-year-old, he likely needs to regain velocity to regain effectiveness.
Among the 1,500+ inning club pitchers who are no longer pitching, the average final season for the hard-throwers came as 36-year-olds. Among the soft-tossers, the average age of their final season was 33.
Among the hardest-throwing members of the 1,500-inning club, there were plenty of examples of pitchers who carried success into their mid 30s and beyond. Justin Verlander, for example, won two Cy Youngs and finished as runner-up twice more from ages 32 to 39. Kevin Gausman’s best seasons have come in his 30s. Zack Wheeler went 65-35, 2.90 in 908 innings from ages 31-35. Nathan Eovaldi hasn’t posted an ERA below league average in his age 30-35 seasons.
A similar trend is true across all the pitchers in the study. While it may seem logical to think the hard-throwing pitchers would be the first to lose effectiveness because of the wear and tear of throwing so hard, they actually have the most longevity. That may be because the ability to reach top-tier velocities generally requires a good combination of strength and solid mechanics.
Excluding any pitcher who pitched in 2025 (and therefore is still active), we found that pitchers who threw the hardest pitched in the majors until they were older than the other pitchers. However, unlike almost all our other examples, this trend does not come with a linear progression. Pitchers with average velocity stayed in the majors until they were older than those who threw 1 to 2 mph harder than average:
velo compared
to MLB avg Avg AGe (final season)Avg MLB seasonsmedian MLB seasons> 2 mph32.810.1101 to 2 mph31.9910-0.9 to 0.9 mph31.98.38-2 to -1 mph30.66.15< -2 mph30.66.14
So, when you watch Cam Schlittler or Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal, marvel at how they can dominate by throwing 100-plus mph, a number that once was reserved for a few relievers pitching in short stints.
But don’t worry too much about whether they are going to burn out too quickly. The evidence actually shows that these are the type of pitchers more likely to have lengthy careers.
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