Last week, I asked readers for suggestions on which pitchers to look at in my velocity charts series. Based the responses I got, here's the order I'm going in:
- Tsuyoshi Wada
- Toshiya Sugiuchi
- Top closers: Kyuji Fujikawa, Takahiko Mahara, Hitoki Iwase
- Tetsuya Utsumi
- A look at Nippon Ham's secondary pitchers: Sakamoto, Tadano, and Sweeney
You can see all the velocity charts I've done so far here.
So let's take a look at Wada's most recent outing, a loss to the Rakuten Eagles in which he was outdueled by Satoshi Nagai. Here's Wada's velocity chart:
And a break down of his pitches:
| result/pitch | Changeup | Curveball | Fastball | Forkball | Slider | Grand Total |
| Ball | 1 | 20 | 11 | 10 | 42 | |
| Double | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Flyball Hit | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Flyout | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 | ||
| Foul | 1 | 23 | 7 | 4 | 35 | |
| Foul Bunt | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Groundout | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 | ||
| Home Run | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Line Drive Hit | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Lineout | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Sacrifice | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Strike Looking | 1 | 14 | 2 | 4 | 21 | |
| Swinging Strike | 10 | 3 | 1 | 14 | ||
| Walk | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Grand Total | 1 | 2 | 77 | 28 | 25 | 133 |
I was surprised to see how much Wada relies on his fastball, and how many strikes he gets with it. I didn’t see this game, but I’m inferring that he uses his slider and fork to set up his fastball. He also only threw three off-speed breaking pitches.
![[Chart]](http://www.npbtracker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/image0013.gif){kind=link}