Belisario, Broxton Boast Best Baseball Fastballs

Chris Moore over at Baseball Analysts did some crazy statistical and graphical analyses to determine that the Dodgers have two pitchers in the top five of players with the best fastballs, according to their weighted x-scores:

#3 Ronald Belisario 4-Seam Fastball

If you don't know who Ronald Belisario is, you're not alone. His fastball averages 95 mph, and crosses the plate in the zone 56% of the time. He has a 1.92 ERA in 65 innings, though with a somewhat low BABIP. We only have 319 pitches to analyze, so he's likely getting somewhat lucky,

#5 Jonathan Broxton, 4-Seam Fastball

Broxton has a crazy good, totally boring fastball. Its all about velocity. He averages nearly 97 mph, and you can see from the value by velocity graph that he can touch 100, where his value spikes. His vertical movement is good, averaging 10 inches. He also has good command, hitting the strike zone 57% of the time. No bells or whistles here, just heat.

Make sure you click through to check out the links, which includes some scatterplot graphs on Broxton that look like a massacred paintball victim. The first graph, horizontal movement vs. velocity (by type of pitch), is pretty neat to see how Broxton's three different pitches achieve variant results.

Oh yeah, and Chris Carpenter is at #19.