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Florida State’s Jamie Arnold (Photo by Brian Westerholt/Four Seam Images)
A year ago, I used some of the under-the-hood data we now have on college players to explore fastball quality for top college starters in the 2024 class.
It was a fun, and hopefully informative, exercise that I wanted to repeat for the 2025 class.
On our current top 100 draft list, we have TrackMan and Synergy data for 17 pitchers from the 2024 spring season. LSU righthander Chase Shores is the lone ranked player with no data, since he didn’t pitch because of an injury.
A quick note on the noise involved with college data: Many of the fastballs here have more extreme movement profiles than analysts expect to see of the same pitches once players are throwing in pro ball where tracking environments are more consistent and precise.
For example, there were 485 players in the majors in 2024 with at least 100 four-seam fastballs thrown. Of that group of players, only one had total movement (induced vertical break + horizontal break) north of 30 inches: Phillies lefthander Matt Strahm at 30.6.
In our 17-player college sample, there are five players with total fastball movement north of 30 inches. It’s certainly possible that this year’s college pitching class has an outlier bunch of lively heaters, but the much more likely scenario is that their fastball movement data—especially induced vertical break—is a bit overheated.
In looking at this pitch data, it’s probably best to use it to provide a general understanding of a fastball’s strengths and weaknesses rather than a 1:1 that you can compare directly to big league fastballs.
Our first table comes from TrackMan and includes fastball velocity (Velo), release height (RelZ), extension (Ext), vertical approach angle (VAA), induced vertical break (IVB) and horizontal break (HB). It is sorted by average fastball velocity by default.
| player | pos | school | velo | Relz | ext | vaa | ivb | hb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nate Snead | RHP | Tennessee | 96.2 | 65.5 | 5.73 | -5.18 | 7.9 | 17.7 |
| Cam Leiter | RHP | Florida State | 95.7 | 69.7 | 6.68 | -5.11 | 15.2 | 8 |
| Gabe Davis | RHP | Oklahoma State | 95.3 | 76.2 | 6.7 | -5.51 | 17.3 | 8.6 |
| Tyler Bremner | RHP | UC Santa Barbara | 95.1 | 70.8 | 5.57 | -4.6 | 19.7 | 13.4 |
| Kyson Witherspoon | RHP | Oklahoma | 95.1 | 71.4 | 5.85 | -4.74 | 18.1 | 7.1 |
| James Ellwanger | RHP | Dallas Baptist | 94.5 | 75 | 6.34 | -4.88 | 16.4 | 5 |
| AJ Russell | RHP | Tennessee | 93.7 | 59.2 | 6.33 | -4.24 | 13.3 | 17.6 |
| Matt Scott | RHP | Stanford | 93.6 | 81.8 | 6 | -5.69 | 22.5 | 7.6 |
| Jamie Arnold | LHP | Florida State | 93.2 | 52.9 | 6.2 | -4.46 | 7.9 | -17.3 |
| Landon Beidelschies | LHP | Arkansas | 92.6 | 73.1 | 5.59 | -5.45 | 18.5 | -11.7 |
| Zach Root | LHP | Arkansas | 92.5 | 72.5 | 6.02 | -5.54 | 12 | -17.3 |
| Kade… |