All season I have been keeping an eye on the radar of the Pirates starter's pitches, mainly their fastballs. The case with pretty much every starter has been that their velocity has been down a bit from last year. Now that's understandable with one or two guys, but when all five starters are seeing declines in their velocity, you have to start wondering if something is up here. Let's look at our starter's average fastball velocity from last year as compared to this year.
| Pitcher | 2011 | 2012 |
| Bedard | 90.4 | 89.4 |
| Burnett | 92.7 | 92.5 |
| McDonald | 92.7 | 91.7 |
| Correia | 90.6 | 89.6 |
| Morton | 91.2 | 89.8 |
Again, that consistent difference just isn't logical. So let's look at the numbers from these pitchers at home against on the road. I looked at each individual start for each pitcher, noted their average fastball velocity for that night, and then sorted them by velocity. Here's the results:
Charlie Morton is the only one whose fastball isn't obviously slower at home. That data is from his two seamer as well, which varies in velocity more than a four seamer would, so it doesn't surprise me that the data is inconsistent around him. I'd say that Erik Bedard pretty much proves this one. His top three are away and bottom three are at home. Correia's top three are at home, and three of Burnett's top four are road starts.
So there you have it. Don't get worried when the Pirates pitcher's don't seem to have their best velocity at home anymore, because the radar gun is around a mile an hour slow in PNC Park.
