Pitchers Most Vulnerable to Velocity Drops

Looking back on my pretty glowing piece on the return of Bryce Miller from his injury earlier in the season, there is a lot to take away from it on reflection. In hindsight, I may have been guilty of falling into a few traps. Having followed his offseason with great anticipation after hearing he had added some extra velocity, I actually drafted him and stashed him in a league. I was guilty of confirmation bias when he returned and looked the way he did with his velocity playing up, and I may have gotten carried away.

What I ignored, and the biggest lesson I learned, is that pitchers with an increased likelihood of re-injury or of injury affecting their performance, should really be treated with extra caution.

In fairness, Miller posted Cy Young-caliber numbers for nearly two months’ leading up to the All-Star break. Not that he was ever in contention for the award, but his numbers for that period, if elongated to a season, would be worthy of Cy Young consideration.

Especially for a pitcher like Miller, who is so reliant on his fastball and having good velocity on that pitch, any drop can quickly exacerbate those problems, as we saw by the end of the season.

Outside of a couple of starts against the Angels and Rockies, every time Miller dropped below his average of 96 mph, his ERA suffered massively. So, outside of not getting too carried away with offseason hype and resisting some personal bias, what can we learn from this going into future seasons?

I think the major lesson is that some pitchers are much more impacted by velo dips than others, and some may drop below the average more often. So, using the current top 200 starters ranked by NFBC for 2027, who else is affected by these velocity drops? How frequently do these drops happen, and what does that mean for 2027?

Below are the 15 pitchers whose results were most affected by velocity drops. The blue dot on the left is the ERA when their four-seam fastball velocity is at or near their peak. The orange dot is the ERA when they drop 1.5 mph below their peak. Using the peak as the baseline avoids the circularity that a declining pitcher’s season average gets dragged down by the low-velo starts. A peak is the highest velo from across a start, not any individual pitch.

The low-velo ERA is total earned runs across his low-velo starts divided by total innings pitched on those starts, and then multiplied by nine.

The other important note is the percentage of low-velo starts. Someone whose velocity drops often is obviously much more likely to be susceptible to these big outings. Using Miller as an example again, while his ERA difference wasn’t as big as others, his low-velo start % was 57%, more than half of his starts in 2026, and the largest of the group below. Nolan McLean is an example of a pitcher who had a big ERA difference when his velocity dropped, but his low-velo start percentage was almost zero, so it had almost no impact.

Of course, ERA over a small sample of starts can be volatile, so these splits aren’t necessarily predictive on their own. However, they can help identify pitchers whose results have been particularly vulnerable when their fastball velocity drops.

I had also written a piece on velocity decliners in August where I did pull back on my Miller hype slightly, and as we can see from the game log above, results did not improve in August and September.

Why I wanted to touch on this piece again is that I had highlighted José Soriano as a big velocity decliner, but I did not share the same concerns I had for Miller, and stated that he was more a victim of bad luck. This position held for the rest of the season, and as you can see, he is not in the chart above. Despite 72% of his starts classifying as low-velo starts, his ERA barely moves, so he is a good example of a pitcher not affected by losses in velocity.

Paul Skenes also featured in that piece, but unlike Soriano, Skenes can be seen above. A lot was made of Skenes declining velocity last year, relative to the 100+ mph starts he was churning out in 2024 and 2025. His average start was 96.8 mph in 2026, and his low-velocity starts made up close to 20% of those. As we can see by his ERA, he is a big-profile name who seems to rely on his velocity. His ERA went up to 5.45 on those low-velocity starts. With the dollar value that he commands, 2027 will be a massive season for Skenes from a fantasy perspective. Whether he is able to get his velocity up through some mechanical fixes or he finds some other solutions, we will have to wait and see; his current pitcher rank on NFBC is still in the top 10, with an ADP of 32.

Young Guns

The names to watch most closely for me for 2027 will be the younger crop of pitchers on this list. Paul Skenes, Chase Burns, Gage Jump, and Kyle Harrison. Skenes we have covered. Chase Burns’ low-velo start percentage is pretty low, and his ceiling as one of the best pitchers in baseball makes him an interesting option, provided he can stay healthy. Significantly for Burns, he can also lean heavily on his slider if his fastball velocity is down, which is one of the best in baseball.

But Harrison and Jump are two pitchers that certainly have bags of potential, but have their own drawbacks.

Jump’s biggest drawback is obviously the ballpark; he is basically a streamer option only for any start away from Sacramento at this point. When pitching at home, he strikes out fewer hitters, walks more, and gives up more home runs. But he is punished extra when his velocity drops. Jump’s worst starts of 2026 tracked his velo almost perfectly. For Jump, his four-seam run value is not great; it’s one of his weakest pitches, and he has much better breaking balls. If you look at his movement profile, its shape sits very close to league average. When he is at 97 mph, that is ok but at 94-95 he gets hit hard. Throwing it over 40% of the time, his fastball shape is something he must look to work on.

Kyle Harrison is also a young pitcher with much better breaking balls than fastballs, but with a more unique shape that runs more arm-side, I think he can get away with a velo drop more than Jump. However, he throws his fastball more than 57% of the time, and it already sits much lower than Jump’s in velocity. His ability to establish himself in the Brewers’ rotation next year will be paramount for his fantasy impact in 2027, and that hangs on his fastball.

Mid-Career Volume Starters

This group of Joe Ryan, Bryce Miller, Reid Detmers, MacKenzie Gore, Matt Liberatore, Joey Cantillo, Sean Burke, and Trevor Rogers has some pretty distinct tiers, which is reflected in the current ADP.

Ryan and Detmers are rightly the most valuable of this group moving into 2027. Interestingly, I prefer Detmers going into next season. Given their susceptibility to velocity drops on their fastball, Detmers has the more well-rounded arsenal to help him get out of it when his four-seam velo is not there. Ryan, who did reintroduce his knuckle-curve to great success this year, doesn’t have quite as deep an arsenal to help him get out of trouble if his four-seam is getting hit hard. If he can continue to build on the knuckle-curve, then it could be a different story.

Of course, Miller has his issues as discussed, but the ceiling is there, and going into pick 100, there is good value to be had, I think. His xFIP and xERA suggested he was a victim of some bad luck in addition to velocity drops last year. Trevor Rogers also fits into that category, and is a pitcher I wouldn’t go so far as to say I would be targeting, but I would happily pick up at the right cost.

A big portion of this group sits around the 100 mark and up in NFBC pitcher rank, so you are not expecting significant production from the likes of Cantillo and Gore, and I think given this exercise they are not pitchers I will be looking to add.

Veterans

Then there are the veterans on this list. Kevin Gausman, Jack Flaherty, and Tyler Mahle are all free agents, but could still have value in 2027; they all sit around 93 mph in four-seam velocity well below league average at this stage of their careers. Their landing spots will be interesting, with the number of teams that will be looking at starting pitching in the offseason, but given their velo is already trending down, their ERA will take a hit when it drops further.

Gausman is the exception because he leans so much on his splitter; velocity drops won’t affect him as much, so he is the only one of the three I would take at his current value. The splitter is still great, and the xFIP gap says buy. Mahle is probably a fade. He performed valiantly in Atlanta, but his profile is not one to age well, and I won’t be drafting Flaherty at this point.

This kind of exercise I found very beneficial when looking at my early bandwagoning of Miller and to remember the importance of external factors, particularly related to injuries for pitchers who lean fastball-heavy.