Entry Speed

[lelwell]

I've noticed that while everyone will always tell you that location and movement are the most important skills for a pitcher there does seem to be a minimum entry speed for certain levels. For example DI seems to have an entry speed of 60mph. If you can't consistently break 60 you are probably not going to play DI ball. I'm sure everyone has at least one exception but as a general rule it seems pretty close. What seems to be the entry point for other levels DII, NAIA, DIII?

lelwell

 

[SBFAMILY]

I was at a Divn one pitching camp. Speed was not what they used. It was spin. Unless you can spin the ball at least 20 RPS then they didn't care if you threw it at 70! His point was he has seen pitchers throw 65 , but throw a flat fast ball and get pounded! One that threw at 57 and had great spin and was tough to hit.

 

[sluggers]

First, "good" pitchers need to throw 60+ for D1 and D2, and 55+ for D3. Remember that D1 and D2 pitchers can get full rides, so there is not much of a difference as far as speed. The top D2 pitchers could play successfully at the D1 level. A top D3 pitcher would struggle at D1.

The quality of pitching at the D3 level is very inconsistent. There are some pitchers at the D3 level that couldn't play on a good HS team.

True story: A girl had a tremendous rise ball, but only threw around 55 MPH. She couldn't make it at the D1 level, but had tremendous success at the D3 level.

NAIA is extremely inconsistent competition levels. The best NAIA teams has pitching that rivals D1 except for the top 5 or 6 NCAA teams. (Oklahoma City has four softball Olympic medalists as alumni.) But, the quality drops off rapidly after you get past the top three or four NAIA teams.