My motivation for this article is two-fold. For starters, I’ve always heard that it’s not great for a pitcher to cut his fastball but that’s always felt like an oversimplification. Surely pitchers are different and can have success in different ways, right? That’s something I’ll dive into with this piece (and that should already make intuitive sense).
My second motivation comes from an article I recently wrote titled “The Cardinals Throw Too Many Fastballs”. Now, I want to take an in depth look at some of those fastballs which may provide some justification as to why the team, or at least certain pitchers, throw so many heaters.