Last week, in watching an old Twins game against the Red Sox, I found myself thinking a lot about all the information we didn't get about games played as recently as 2007, but which we can obtain with a few well-directed clicks for any game of the last 17 seasons. It's obvious, to anyone who grew up with the game before computers began meticulously capturing and documenting the action in numbers, that pitching has changed a lot in the time since then. As I watched, though, I was increasingly struck by the feeling that some of the non-obvious changes to the way pitchers throw fastballs were the most important ones.
For those who didn't read the above-linked article, the game I watched and reflected on was a clash on the day of the 2005 trade deadline, and Brad Radke took the ball for the Twins that day. If you're reading this, you probably have at least a generational memory of Radke; he was a fixture for the team for over a decade. He was one of the great FIPsters of the era just before FIP gained wide acceptance as an indicator of real talent. He struck out a good number of batters, for a pitcher without overwhelming stuff, and he issued very, very few walks. His ERAs rarely fully reflected his brilliance in those regards, though, because he gave up a lot of home runs. It was as much part of his style as were the good strikeout and walk numbers, but it felt unfair. He was doing everything right, except the most important thing, and so he was much more often good than great.
Radke was, perhaps, a little ahead of his time. He used the high fastball to set up the rest of his arsenal, which tended to bend and tumble toward the bottom of the zone. He accepted the homers he allowed as part of doing business, because he didn't have five extra miles per hour laying around or anything, and he couldn't enjoy as much success with his soft stuff except by throwing the high heater.
In the two decades since Radke slipped into his senescence, the landscape of pitching has changed in some radical ways. There are plenty of modern pitchers who do some version of the same calculus Radke did and accept the same tradeoffs, but the way those tradeoffs actually take shape has changed quite a bit. Let's talk about how.
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