Tracking Four-Seam Velocity: The Decliners

Following on from looking at those who have managed to increase the velocity on their four-seamer since the start of the season, it is now time to turn to those losing velocity. Some have not been so fortunate. Whether through wear and tear or potential injuries, these pitchers warrant serious monitoring and potential red flags as we move forward.

So now we turn to the blue lines and the ten pitchers whose four-seam fastball velocity has fallen the most. You can see the risers and the chart explainer in the previous article here.

José Soriano, Los Angeles Angels

José Soriano enjoyed a scintillating start to the 2026 season, coming out of April with a sub-1 ERA. While that was never going to last, a plus-5 ERA in both May and June was pretty concerning. Especially when given the correlation to the drop in velocity.

Unlike those we analysed in the risers article and other pitchers we will discuss later in this piece, Soriano’s four-seam is not his primary pitch. He throws his sinker the most at 27% so far in 2026, but his curveball and four-seam are both right behind at 26% and 24% respectively, and his splitter at 19%. There is an obvious correlation with the drop in velocity between his sinker and four-seam, but he managed to keep his splitter stable, and it is several degrees slower.

While I think this drop in velocity can go a long way toward explaining the drop in his results from April to June, what is encouraging for those with Soriano is that he has found a way to get back on track in July.

Where the encouragement comes from is that in July, he has managed to flip this deteriorating narrative, on face value at least. His HR/FB rate flipped to the other extreme, 0.0%, not a single home run allowed in 23 innings, along with a BABIP of .222 that’s well below what we can expect to sustain. Soriano wasn’t meaningfully better in July than he was in June; balls were just staying in the ballpark more often. So I think he is not one for too much concern in the short term from a fantasy perspective, despite the drop in velocity, somewhat a victim of bad luck (while also a proponent of good luck).

What will be worth monitoring in terms of his fantasy value for 2027 and beyond is that his velocity has decreased year-on-year since 2024, even at the age of 27.

Bryce Miller, Seattle Mariners

Bryce Miller, following his scintillating start to the 2026 season after missing the first month, has cooled pretty significantly in July. Miller’s fastball has always sat around 95 mph. Last season’s injury-plagued season featured his lowest fastball velocity and his worst statistical season. Having added velocity in Spring Training, the question was whether it would hold after another stint on the injured list. He came out of the first game sitting at 97.5 mph on the four-seamer, a career high; seeing if this could be maintained as the season progressed was always going to be the question. Well, the answer is, it hasn’t.

Miller is known for his ability to throw almost every pitch in the book, but he relies heavily on the four-seamer; while it was never likely to have sustained that high, he is a pitcher who should be closer to 97 mph than 94 mph.  The deterioration in his velocity is a concern.

This zoomed-in chart exaggerates the decline a little, but gives good perspective on the velocity drop at play. The cause for concern again comes back to his injury history. Following the decision not to get surgery in the off-season to fix the elbow injury that plagued his aforementioned 2025 season, the bone spurs remain in his right elbow. So it’s difficult to project his future; will the velocity keep declining? Will he be able to find a way to manage the velocity at 95-96 mph? For fantasy, he remains a top 25 starter in my eyes, and the ceiling is still there to go even higher. But being scheduled to start in LA and having to be pushed back a day for recovery purposes is not encouraging. While he did not pitch his best, his average four-seam velocity is up from where he was earlier in July. But I think it’s no coincidence he has performed best when his four-seam was averaging above 96 mph.

You can see in red where he has dropped below 96 mph. Outside of one outstanding start where he was practically touching 96 mph on July 2nd, the rest of the starts have left a lot to be desired. To pair with the dip in velocity is the corresponding dip in spin rate. Spin rate has followed almost the same downward path, sitting around 2550-2580 rpm in his two starts in mid-May before dropping to 2506, 2369, and 2447 across three of his last four outings in July. It’s fair to wonder whether this is a conscious choice to protect the elbow or simply the physical reality of pitching through it, but either way, it seems to be affecting his pitching. I would not say the alarm bells are ringing yet, but this is absolutely worth paying close attention to as we move into August.

Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates

The curious case of Paul Skenes’ 2026 season continues. I wrote earlier in July during the All-Star break a piece comparing the performance of pitchers relative to their rest-of-season projections by OOPSY, and Skenes was at the top of the list of those projected to fare much better. I was pretty bullish in my agreement with the model’s projection. Since then, he has pitched in three games with a 6.06 ERA.

These kinds of results as we enter August would have been unthinkable six months ago, coming off the back of a Cy Young-winning season. Much of Skenes’ decline this year has been attributed to the drop in velocity in his four-seam fastball. As noted in this post, the decline in not only the velocity but the consistency of velocity throughout his starts is pretty striking. He has not hit double digits on 98+ mph pitches in 17 starts.

Across his career, in the 48 starts where he’s averaged 98+ mph on his four-seamer, he has a 1.73 ERA. In the 30 starts where he’s averaged below that mark, it rises to 3.83. The Stuff+ on this pitch is down significantly, from 107 in 2025 to 95 this year, which is no surprise given his velocity has dropped almost 2 mph from last season. But it’s not entirely velocity related; in his rookie season he sat even higher on average, as we can see in the chart above, yet his Stuff+ that year was middling at 99.

But it is not directly the lack of velocity on his four-seam that contributes to his inflated ERA. If you actually compare his four-seam fastball this year compared to last year, the results are eerily similar.

So what is going on with Paul Skenes if his drop in fastball velocity is not the problem?

The pitches that have really regressed the most are his changeup and sinker, which together make up 22% of his arsenal.

The changeup’s vertical drop has fallen from 32.0 inches in 2024 to 28.1 this year, and spin rate has dropped alongside it, from 2044 to 1842 rpm over the same stretch. That’s showing up directly in the results: strikeout rate on the pitch has collapsed from 55.6% to 35.4%. The horizontal break has faded too, from -17.7 inches to -15.5, so the pitch isn’t just dying less; it’s moving less in every direction.

The sinker tells a different story. It hasn’t lost shape, but it has stopped missing bats and started getting hit hard. Whiff rate has fallen off a cliff, from 15.9% in 2024 to just 2.8% this year, and Z-Contact% has climbed from 85.2% to 98.4%; hitters are now making contact on almost every sinker they see in the zone. The results reflect it: a .922 OPS and .398 wOBA against this year, up from .489 and .226 just two years ago, and a 161 wRC+ allowed on the pitch.

These kinds of issues with breaking balls might point to a mechanical issue that might have to wait until the offseason to be fixed. But from a fantasy perspective, I still hold out hope not just in the long term but for 2026 as well despite the velocity drop.