The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
100-mph mystique
Fastball wows fans, but Cabrera also knows other skills are needed.
The 100 mph fastball — the pitcher’s nuclear option, the triple-digit grail — is a many-splendored sensory experience.
First, in the bullpen, when they begin to turn up the heat, there is sound.
This is the Braves bullpen coach Marty Reed, talking about when the call comes to get Mauricio Cabrera up and throwing. It is not long before the ball is hitting the catcher’s mitt like a hailstone on a tin roof.
“He gets up there (on the mound) and you start to hear, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ Something’s happening. It’s kinda neat. Exciting,” he said.
There is feel. Sometimes not a pleasant one for those on the receiving end. Asked how often in his life a catcher has complained about a hand set ablaze by his fastball, Cabrera smiled and said, “Plenty of times.”
And his answer to them? “I say sorry, ‘not my fault.’ ”
There is even a slight sense of dread. Alan Butts has been catching guys in the bullpen for the majority of his 25 years with the team. Just this season, for the first time, as he began catching the hardest thrower he said he has ever been around — Cabrera — Butts considered wearing a chest protector in the pen. Thinking it would send the wrong message
to the rookie, something about not trusting the kid’s control, Butts continued to go without the protection.
Seeing such a fastball, of course, is required of those in the batter’s box. Although that can be an issue. It has been computed that it takes a 100-mph fastball a mere 396 milliseconds to reach the plate.
And once the pitch does reach, the number — that magical, mystic number — inevitably flashes large on the outfield wall, thanks to the invisible technology of the radar gun and our own fastball fascination. That sets off a whole different sensory reaction, one that emanates from somewhere visceral, primal, down there at the intersection of awe and disbelief.
Everyone looks up there, especially with Cabrera on the mound. “I’m glancing at it,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “I did it back in spring training because the crowd would be oohing and ahhhing whenever that 100 would pop up. That’s kind of where (Cabrera) works now. You see 99 and wonder if he’s taking something off to get it over.”
Chapman at top?
Thus far this season, major league baseball has seen 28 pitchers break the 100-mph barrier (including the Braves’ Arodys Vizcaino, 22 times, and Mike Foltynewicz, once).
According to MLB Statcast’s reckoning of the 50 fastest pitches thrown this season, 46 belong to Cubs reliever Aroldis Chapman (topping out at a 105.1 mph delivery July 18). Cabrera has the other four (the best, 103.8 mph). At midweek, Cabrera actually owned a slightly higher average fastball velocity than Chapman (100.8-100.7).
Other player measurements have a subjective element. The pitcher’s mental make-up, the soundness of his mechanics, his character — these all require various degrees of interpretation. But the radar gun is an objective certainty. It is gospel. And as the evolutionary process of natural selection grinds on, and the reliance upon that number grows, the hard throwers become increasingly the favored species. As a result, the average MLB velocity increased from 90.1 mph in 2005 to 92.1 in 2015.
“Used to be one guy on a team would hit 95. Now every guy can hit 95,” said A.J. Pierzynski, a Braves catcher and a 19-year major league survivor. “Especially out of the bullpen. That’s just the way the game is. Velocity is easy to come by now. Even in the minor leagues they are throwing really hard.”
The human arm can generate only so much steam. Glenn Fleisig, the research director at American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., has studied the limits. While there always seems room for humankind to run faster and jump higher, it can’t really throw that much harder. The ligaments and tendons that knit shoulder and elbow won’t allow it. But more and more pitchers are pushing themselves toward the limit.
“The physiological limit is about where we are at — 100 mph, give or take five mph or so,” Fleisig said.
“I predicted years ago that the limit would not go up, but the ceiling would get more crowded. And that’s exactly what has happened,” he said.
The 22-year-old Cabrera, who was called up in late June, represents both the promise and the frustration of the 100-mph fastball.
Throwing hard doesn’t equate to pitching well, as much as we may try to force such math.
He has spent years trying to bring that beast of a fastball to heel.
Signed as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic, Cabrera learned much of his mechanics from his brother Alberto, who was in the Cubs and Tigers organizations. Those mechanics, plus being 6-foot-3, 245
The first time at radar measured him breaking the 100mph barrier, Cabrera said, was in a 2013 Single-A game in Charleston. “I think (the Riverdogs) had two major league guys down there on rehab assignment,” Cabrera said through an interpreter. “I don’t know if the emotion of the situation got the better of me, I wanted to go out there and prove myself. That’s the first time I remember seeing it on the scoreboard. It was a very special moment for me.” He still has the ball from that pitch, keeping it like a sacred relic.
But the velocity had never been enough. MLB Pipeline labeled Cabrera “the most enigmatic arm in the Braves system” because of more than five years’ worth of minor league numbers that never were in synch with the velocity. He had a minor league ERA of more than 4.00.
Yet, having never pitched at a level higher than Double-A before his call-up, Cabrera has been among the brighter lights of the Braves bullpen. In 27⅓ major league innings as of midweek, Cabrera had a 2.63 ERA, three saves, a couple of victories and a 2.6-to-1