Volquez Brought the Heat on Opening Night

One of the more interesting developments of Opening Night was Edinson Volquez’s continuing a trend he displayed late last season while throwing some serious smoke.

Statcast had Volquez topping out at 97.5 MPH against David Wright. Thats the hardest pitch hes thrown since 7/27/14. Didnt hit 97 last year

— Daren Willman (@darenw) April 4, 2016

I realize that’s the second time I’ve embedded Daren’s tweet in an article, but a fact like this demands attention. If you’ve been reading along since we launched our little local site, you know that last September and especially in October, Volquez was able to find a little extra oomph on his two-seamer. At the time, it was thought to be a little postseason adrenaline providing the push closer to triple digits. While the Opening Night adrenaline was probably strong as well, it’s impressive he was able to basically pick up where he left off at the end of last year.

He wasn’t throwing October Heat, but it was September Heat, and that’s still plenty hot.

On closer inspection, maybe it was the rush of the Opening Night assignment that propelled Volquez’s two-seamer. He wasn’t able to maintain that velocity beyond the second inning.

The early spike where he approached 98 mph on the graph is from the David Wright at bat referenced in the tweet at the top of the article. He didn’t top 96 mph after pitch 30. He settled into a comfort zone in the third and fourth innings before he lost a little more steam for his final three innings of work. Part of that could be the stress of individual innings. Recall the second inning where Volquez issued a two out walk to Michael Conforto followed by a single to Asdrubal Cabrera before getting out of the inning. The third inning was a carbon copy where Volquez again got the first two outs followed by walk and a single. Neither inning was particularly high stress, but he did require 46 pitches – or 43 percent of his total pitches on the evening – to get those six outs.

According to the PitchF/X data collected by Brooks Baseball, Volquez threw 55 two-seamers with an average velocity of 94.8 mph. He collected 34 strikes with the pitch and generated five swings and misses. By linear weights, it was his most effective pitch of the night. Of the eight times Met batters connected against the Volquez sinker and put the ball in play, only one fell for a hit: A 95 mph strike up in the zone against Yoenes Cespedes in the fourth.

Diving deeper into the velocity, it’s apparent Volquez is feeling the power with the two-seamer. His performance on Sunday night, while he hit a max level unreached in a couple of years, wasn’t a crazy outlier. It was similar to several starts he made early in 2015.

The above chart is each of his starts from the beginning of 2015, through the postseason and into spring training to include his start on Sunday. I’ve removed the four-seam plot because he doesn’t throw it that frequently and it kind of gets in the way of the sinker data. It feels like in the past, whenever Volquez hit 95 mph on the average velocity with his two-seamer, he took a step back in the following start. Not always, but usually. Until last October, at least.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Volquez can maintain his velocity with the sinker. Will he build on his first start, or will he lose a little velocity after he hits what comes close to a ceiling?

It didn’t feel like Volquez was at his best on Sunday. His command deserted him at times, resulting in three walks. That’s something he’s fought his entire career. Although his walk rate has improved dramatically since 2014. It should be noted that both hits allowed came when he was pitching out of the stretch following two of those walks. It felt like Volquez was flirting with the danger zone in the middle innings, but like the wily veteran he is, he battled through and settled in to finish strong. He retired the last seven batters he faced.

Overall, it was a good first start from Volquez. We wondered if he would maintain his October velocity and he came close. Going forward, the question will be how well he can come close to the standard he set in securing the Royals first win of the year.