Quote Originally Posted by Dawg61 View Post
I haven't watched the Reds but maybe twenty games this year and Billy Hamilton has created more runs himself than I can count. Speed absolutely matters. A walk for him turns into a triple very quickly and it's no coincidence that Todd Frazier has suddenly become arguably the best 2 hole hitter in the NL. Frazier gets pumped fastballs so the catcher can have just a slight bit of chance to throw out Hamilton and Frazier ain't been missing many. I saw Hamilton tag up and score on a popup on the edge of the grass where the 2b plays. I had to watch it three times I couldn't believe what I just saw. Try to explain how speed doesn't matter when you are on base after watching this.

This is why we have numbers. The bolded part is not true. Frazier has been thrown a fastball 52.8% of the time, up a whopping 0.8% from last year when he saw a fastball 52% of the time. Contrary to the traditional though, having speed on the bases does not increase the amount of fastballs thrown to hitters behind the speed guy.