Fastballs of the Oakland A’s

I love Fangraphs.com's Pitch Type Linear Weights.

You can read about them here.

Basically, they measure the effectiveness of a pitch in terms of how many runs it prevents per 100 pitches. Zero is average, and the higher the number, the better the pitch.

We often talk about fastball effectiveness as purely correlated to velocity. However, if you took 100 guesses as to who's had the most effective fastball in baseball this year, I'll bet you wouldn't get it right.

It's Tim Wakefield.

Santiago Casilla has the fastest fastball of any pitcher who's pitched on the A's this year, at 94 mph. However, the pitch actually is 2.22 runs below average per 100 pitches, third-wo...

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