Jonathan Papelbon Brings the Heat
If you watched tonight’s Red Sox-Angels game, you might have seen Jonathan Papelbon’s electric performance in the ninth inning, and you might also have seen that he hit 100 mph a couple of times on the NESN radar gun. You might also have discarded that velocity reading as juiced — if the camera adds 10 pounds of weight to a starlet it also adds 3 or 4 mph to a pitcher’s fastball, right?
Not so in this case. The pitch f/x data from MLB Gameday backs up the velocity readings pretty solidly as you can see below, with Papelbon throwing 11 pitches (one is missing for some reason) — all above 98 mph and topping out at 99.7 mph, or if you round up, the big 1-0-0. Pretty impressive.
