2026. 10. 6. 15:09ㆍ취미생활/야구
Hello everyone!
Every offseason somebody announces that the fastball is dying, and every spring major league pitchers throw one harder than anyone has ever thrown it. Both statements are true at the same time, and two decades of public pitch-tracking data show exactly how that works. The fastball has become faster and rarer in the same twenty years, and the side effects reach into almost every line of a modern box score.
1. The Record That Falls Every Single Year
In 2026 the average four-seam fastball thrown in a major league game left the hand at 94.8 mph. That was the sixth consecutive season the league set a new velocity record. In 2008, the first season in which every pitch in every park was tracked, the same league average was 91.9 mph.
Three miles an hour sounds like a rounding error, and on a radar gun it looks like one. At the plate it is not. A pitch that arrives faster gives the hitter a shorter window to decide whether to swing, and the margin between being on time and being late in the big leagues is measured in hundredths of a second. The table below pairs the velocity record with the pitch counts that make the change concrete.
| Season | Avg four-seam (mph) | Pitches at 100+ mph |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 91.9 | 214 |
| 2021 | 93.7 | not published |
| 2023 | not published | 3,880 |
| 2025 | 94.5 | 3,701 |
| 2026 | 94.8 | 5,687 |
Source: Associated Press league pitch-tracking summaries, July 2026 and September 2026 (Statcast data).
The right-hand column is where the shift turns violent. In 2008 the entire sport produced 214 pitches at 100 mph or faster across a full season. In 2026 it produced 5,687, more than twenty-six times as many. One pitcher, Milwaukee starter Jacob Misiorowski, threw 1,115 of them by himself, over five times the whole league total from 2008. What used to be a once-a-month event somewhere in America is now a nightly one.
2. Thrown Harder, Thrown Far Less Often
Here is the paradox. While the fastball was getting faster, pitchers were deciding to throw it less. In 2002 fastballs accounted for 64.4% of every pitch thrown in the majors. By 2025 that share had fallen to 47.9%. For the first time in the recorded history of the sport, the fastball is a minority pitch.
| Fastball | 47.9% | |
| Slider | 22.4% | |
| Changeup | 10.0% | |
| Curveball | 8.6% | |
| Cutter | 7.6% | |
| Splitter | 3.6% |
Source: RotoWire analysis of FanGraphs league pitch-type data, 2002 to 2025.
The slider absorbed most of what the fastball gave up, nearly doubling from 12.1% to 22.4%. Put the fastball and slider together and they account for seven of every ten pitches, which tells you the modern arsenal is narrower than it looks: a hard pitch that rides, a hard pitch that breaks, and everything else fighting over the remaining 30%.
| Pitch type | Usage, first year | Usage, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Fastball | 64.4% (2002) | 47.9% |
| Slider | 12.1% (2002) | 22.4% |
| Curveball | 11.2% (2002) | 8.6% |
| Changeup | 9.8% (2002) | 10.0% |
| Cutter | 1.0% (2004) | 7.6% |
| Splitter | 1.7% (2002) | 3.6% |
Source: RotoWire analysis of FanGraphs league pitch-type data, 2002 to 2025.
The cutter is the quiet story in that table, rising from 1.0% of pitches in 2004 to 7.6% in 2025. The curveball moved the other way, squeezed from 11.2% down to 8.6%, because its slower and loopier shape no longer tunnels convincingly with a 95 mph fastball the way a hard, late-breaking slider does. Pitchers did not walk away from the fastball because it stopped working. They walked away because pitch-design labs handed them alternatives that look identical for the first forty feet and then do not behave like a fastball at all.
3. The Off-Speed Pitches Gained Even More Speed
If this were purely a story about arm strength, the fastball would have gained the most velocity. It did not. Between 2002 and 2025 the changeup added 6.4 mph and the curveball added 5.5, both more than the fastball gained over the same span.
| Changeup | +6.4 | |
| Curveball | +5.5 | |
| Fastball | +5.0 | |
| Splitter | +4.6 | |
| Slider | +4.4 | |
| Cutter | +3.4 |
Source: RotoWire analysis of FanGraphs league pitch-type data, 2002 to 2025 (velocity change in mph; cutter measured from 2004).
The entire arsenal shifted upward, not just the top of it. The average major league changeup in 2025 travelled 85.9 mph, which is faster than the average slider did in 2002. That matters for how we read old statistics: a hitter in 2002 who sat on off-speed was waiting for something in the high 70s, while a hitter today waits for something in the mid 80s that moves more. This is also why the gap between a fastball and the pitch that follows it has narrowed, which is precisely what pitch designers wanted.
4. Who Is Actually Throwing the Heat
A league average hides a wide spread. Break the 2026 number apart by handedness, role, age and level and the distribution becomes a lot more informative.
| Group (2026) | Avg fastball (mph) |
|---|---|
| Pitchers aged 25 or younger | 95.9 |
| Right-handed pitchers | 95.3 |
| Relievers | 95.0 |
| All MLB pitchers | 94.8 |
| Triple-A pitchers | 93.6 |
| Left-handed pitchers | 93.5 |
Source: Associated Press league pitch-tracking summary, September 2026 (Statcast data).
Two rows deserve attention. Pitchers aged 25 or younger averaged 95.9 mph, more than a full tick above the league as a whole, which means the trend is being driven by the newest arrivals rather than by veterans adding speed late. And Triple-A pitchers averaged 93.6 mph, within a tenth of what the entire major leagues averaged back in 2021. The minor leagues today throw roughly what the majors threw five years ago, so there is no sign of the curve flattening.
5. What the Velocity Has Cost
Maximum effort is not free. A pitcher who throws every fastball at the top of his range cannot do it for 110 pitches, and the complete game has been the casualty.
| 1981 | 510 | |
| 2003 | 209 | |
| 2015 | 104 | |
| 2025 | 28 | |
| 2026 | 21 |
Source: Associated Press league summaries, September 2026 (complete games, all MLB teams combined).
In 1981 big league pitchers finished 510 games. In 2026 they finished 21, a record low, and only 11 of those were shutouts. The complete game has gone from a routine outcome to a once-a-season curiosity in a single working lifetime, and velocity is the main reason: there is no way to throw 95 for nine innings and still have 95 left.
Here is the part that should give everyone pause. For all that added speed, hitters have not been erased. The league batting average was .243 in 2024, .245 in 2025 and .244 in 2026, essentially flat across the exact seasons when the velocity records were falling. Spin rates told a similar story, dipping slightly from a record 2,322 rpm in 2025 to 2,314 in 2026. The arms race has not collapsed offense. What it has done is redistribute the labor, moving innings out of starters and into a nightly parade of relievers who need to be unhittable for only fifteen pitches at a time.
Final Thoughts
The fastball is not dying. It is being rationed. Pitchers throw it harder than any generation before them precisely so that they can afford to throw it less, saving it for the counts where its shape and speed still beat everything else in the bag. The numbers draw a clear line: 91.9 mph and 64% usage in the 2000s, 94.8 mph and under 48% usage today. If the next decade looks like the last two, the interesting question is not whether average velocity reaches 96, but whether anyone has arms left to throw it. Watch the complete game column. It has further to fall than it looks.
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