Tigers Pitching Leaders

One of the interesting features of the Bill James Handbook is the unique leader board section. Today, I was looking at the pitch type leaders. The table below lists the Tigers pitchers who were among the leaders in the American League.

The are no real surprises and I will do no in depth analysis here but it's nice to see our impressions backed by numbers. Joel Zumaya is the hardest thrower in the league. Justin Verlander is one of the hardest throwers. Kenny Rogers is one of the slowest. Jeremy Bonderman has a great slider and Fernando Rodney and Justin Verlander have a great changeups.


Table 1 - Detroit Tigers Pitching Leaders in 2006

Category	Rank	Player	#
Fastest avg. fastball - relief	1	Joel Zumaya	98.6
Fastest avg. fastball - starters	2	Justin Verlander	95.1
	5	Jeremy Bonderman	93.3
Slowest avg. fastball	2	Kenny Rogers	85.2
Pitches 100+ velocity	1	Joel Zumaya	233
	3	Justin Verlander	19
Pitches less than 80 MPH	3	Kenny Rogers	901
Lowest % fastballs	3	Kenny Rogers	49.5
Highest % changeups	1	Kenny Rogers	29.0
Highest % sliders	2	Jeremy Bonderman	33.0
	5	Nate Robertson	22.5
Opponents BPS* vs. fastballs	1	Joel Zumaya	.514
Opp. BPS* vs. changeups	2	Fernando Rodney	.378
	9	Justin Verlander	.568
Opponents BPS* vs. sliders	9	Jeremy Bonderman	.397

*BPS = Batting Average plus Slugging Average