Hi. My name is Mike Fast, and this is my site to post comments and data about baseball. I’ve been a Kansas City Royals fan since 1986, and I was introduced to my love of baseball analysis by Bill James through his Baseball Abstract series.
I have not been regularly updating this site since 2007 and do not plan any further updates. As of February 2012, I am employed by the Houston Astros.
I wrote for Baseball Prospectus from October 2010 to January 2012. My Baseball Prospectus article list can be found here. I wrote for the Hardball Times from March 2008 to October 2010. My Hardball Times article list can be found here (listed by year).
I wrote for MVN’s Statistically Speaking blog from December 2007 to February 2008. The old MVN site is defunct, but the StatSpeak articles have been copied here. I’ve also republished some of my pieces from StatSpeak on this blog.
Fast Balls RSS
Fast Balls 
August 2, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Woo! What a lot of baseball analysis going on …
August 7, 2007 at 12:29 pm
impressive stuff… for a luddite.
August 23, 2007 at 4:54 pm
great stuff. are you going to make a RSS feed available?
August 23, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I’m still learning how WordPress works, but according to the documentation, there should be a feed available at https://fastballs.wordpress.com/feed/
September 7, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Man there’s some serious posting going on here!
October 20, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Mike,
Do you have a complete data set from pitch-f/x from this year or can you compile one that you would like to sell? The format I would like is something like:
Date or game ID, hteam, vteam, park, d/n or time of game, inning, top/bottom, pitch count, pitcher, batter, count, result of pitch, pitch type, speed, vertical break, horizontal break.
I’m not sure if there are any other data about the pitch that I am forgetting.
Obviously some of that data I can cross reference from other databases or calculate from the other data (like pitch count).
Thanks.
Mitchel (MGL)
P.S. I wrote the same letter to John Walsh of THT and Joe P. Sheehan.
October 24, 2007 at 12:19 pm
ditto MGL’s request and data set desired. Have one compiled to sell?
December 3, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I was wondering if there was any database that gave the type of pitch, the velocity and location for every pitcher in the last year.
December 4, 2007 at 10:03 am
Sam,
The PITCHf/x system collected data for about a third of the pitches thrown in the majors in 2007, more in some parks than others. This data is all available on an individual game basis from MLB, and includes velocity and location for each pitch. It does not include pitch type, and that’s a matter of some subjective evaluation.
As far as I know, there is no publically available, downloadable database of this data. Josh Kalk and I and maybe others are working toward this end, but we’re not there yet.
If you’re interested, you can download the data and create your own database according to the instructions I give here:
December 26, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Mike- ever looked at MLB injury data? I have some good 2010 stuff- struggling to find 2011 postings.