Image credit: IMAGE IMAGES via Reuters Connect
This season left plenty of time for us to unpack. It was an ugly picture in the American League, when the Astros looked like a shell of their former glory, the Yankees hit the glass ceiling again, different faces of excitement and exasperation in the colorful Sox, and the guards proving once again that no one can hurt them on the field. In the National League, you have the Phillies grasping at straws as the stubborn hooves of Father Time draw closer, the good but flawed Braves and Cubs outclassed by superior competition, the Padres proving once again that they can’t really carry that momentum, and the Dodgers looking surprisingly matched against a smaller, faster, and possibly unlucky team.
Logically, most of the attention on the last two, even now we quickly determined, or perhaps confirmed, that Milwaukee was simply better than Tampa Bay. The 2016 World Series was short; It’s not impossible to make a compelling story in five games, but it really beats all of your story by a good margin if you’re going to do it. He didn’t make the final round this year. It had all the ingredients in theory: two franchises aiming for their first title, teams built heavily around speed and offense, star power on both sides, plus a philosophical thread that runs exceptionally well between these two franchises. (funny enough, some people believe that this is the Anti-Analyst of the World Series. No comment).
The dynamics of the World Series itself can be analyzed ad nauseam, of course, as can the public’s particular relationship with “analytics” as a word—what it means to some versus what it really means, the spirit of the data processes, etc. And maybe I will do that at some point. Now I want to look at some hard data fresh from the oven.
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Pitchers used to throw harder in 2026. Cheeky, I know. But since we have precisely measured and updated data since 2008, it’s always good to show this because it’s almost hard to believe how hard the balls are throwing now.
The rate of federal growth is more important than simple steady progress. Obviously the velocity moving slowly but steadily upward in the early-to-mid 2010s played no small role in the growing years of those natures, of course — part of it was the proliferation of a deeper bullpen, part more information, and part was the result of a league whose talent pool hadn’t been depleted by expansion or anything like that in a generation. I can’t help but notice the presence of a fairly long period of stagnation in the second half of the previous decade, which essentially coincides with a steep drop in pitcher usage and the rise of the juiced ball season. Is there a direct relationship? Probably not. Things changed a ton between 2009 and 2019, but we were only scratching the surface of the possibilities to make the data more up-to-date.
It has often been said that positions have changed more in the past six or seven years than in the 30 years immediately preceding them. This can be seen in many forms, from the way teams are surrounded by intel and physics, to the relentless optimization of every pitch out there. Few arenas are a better example of the speed and sometimes dizzying rocket that is modern speculation and development than raw speed; after stagnating for a while around 93 mph, the federally posted speed saw a giant spike shortened directly following the 2020 season.
Perhaps more interestingly — or endlessly, depending on your point of view — there are no signs of this trend reversing anytime soon, as the pace has actually been climbing at a faster pace over the last two seasons. (The average top four right-handed hitters in the big leagues in 2026 was 95.3 mph.) Secondary pitches also spike in velocity; they’re usually under 88 mph, while curveballs once cleared the 80-mph barrier and are approaching 81 mph.
You probably already knew all this. Anyone who watches baseball these days and isn’t in a constant state of denial about radar guns (which they don’t even use ridiculously now) can see that pitchers are exercising power that is as completely unheard of as the sharpest edged sword in modern sports. What I really wanted to focus on was;