On Saturday afternoon the Cincinnati Reds took on the San Diego Padres on the road. The game featured Amir Garrett and Robert Stephenson, who combined for all nine innings pitched. That in itself was interesting to see. But what was perhaps the most interesting was that the Padres had their pitch tracking system running during the game. That gives us plenty of new information to look at for both pitchers.
The Fastball
Let’s go back in time real fast: Remember when Robert Stephenson had a huge fastball in the low minor leagues that routing sat in the mid 90’s and touched the upper 90’s with regularity? Those were the good ole days. Over the past few seasons he’s taken a step back to try and reign in the control and we saw him average 94 MPH with his fastball last season in the Major Leagues according to Brooke Baseball. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s still better than average velocity, and he topped out at 97.18 in April. Still, there was a time when he’d almost sit at 97 for innings at a time.
Let’s hit the fastforward button back to the present. On Saturday, Brooks Baseball had Robert Stephenson averaging 95.6 MPH with his fastball. That’s significantly better than any game he pitched in last year. And it’s the middle of March. It’s worth noting that Brooks Baseball uses corrected data and it isn’t to be compared 1-to-1 with the data you will see on Fangraphs, for example. It’s also worth noting that he knew he was only going to throw four innings in the game, so he could have been pacing himself a little differently. He topped out at 97.6 MPH, which was the fastest he’s thrown since a 1-inning stint in the 2014 Futures Game (99.1).
Small sample size alert: The fastball on this day had more sink and more armside run to it than what he was throwing last year on average.
The Curveball
The pitch resembled the one he was throwing at the Major League level in 2016. Tight breaking action in the 12-6 fashion. The big difference was that it was faster. It averaged 83.8 MPH. Last season it was only at 81.9 MPH.
The Splitter
Most change ups are slower than a fastball, have more sinking action and more armside run to them. The splitter, while it shares the same “less velocity and more sink” to them aspect that a change up does, it doesn’t have that same armside running action to it. Instead, it cuts a little bit while sinking. Small sample size alert: On Saturday the pitch had more sink and bite to it than it did in 2016.
Pitch Breakdown
| Pitch | Usage | Strike Rate | SwingK / Thrown |
| Fastball | 54% | 62% | 2 of 29 |
| Curveball | 11% | 83% | 2 of 6 |
| Splitter | 35% | 79% | 7 of 19 |
Other Notes
The velocity being up was very good to see. Pitchers don’t tend to peak with their velocity until mid-season. If Robert Stephenson can follow that trend it could be a very interesting season for him.
As noted in the first paragraph, Amir Garrett also pitched in the game. I wrote a little bit about what the data said on him for Redleg Nation (it will be posted at 8am ET), so you can read all about that over there if you’d like.