Who has the most effective curveball? Taking all the curveballs together, the average outcomes in terms of Home Runs allowed, Swings and Whiffs, B:CS ratio were calculated.

First, the benchmarks - league averages.

Swing Rate 40.8%
Whiff Rate 25.3 %
B:CS 2.1:1
HR% 4.6%

So, if you're better than average on all these, you throw strikes, get hitters to swing and miss, and don't give up homers.

Who makes the cut? Ten pitchers. Some superstars, some not. Here is their PFX chart - I'm using the absolute value of pfx_x to show lefties and righties together.



Here are the numbers for each pitcher














name thrown HR% Swings% Whiff% B:CS mph pfx_x pfx_z spindir spinrate
Ruddy Lugo 156 0.0% 45.5% 28.2% 1.5 75.5 7.7 7.4 226.6 1093.7
Juan Gutierrez 38 0.0% 47.4% 27.8% 1.5 76.0 6.3 7.4 219.7 1009.8
Pedro Martinez 42 0.0% 54.8% 39.1% 1.7 71.1 7.3 5.7 228.6 990.7
Justin Germano 306 0.3% 42.5% 26.2% 1.4 68.1 7.9 7.6 226.3 977.2
Roy Halladay 192 0.0% 42.2% 39.5% 1.9 77.8 7.3 3.2 244.9 865.3
Bobby Seay 105 0.0% 41.0% 34.9% 1.3 76.8 6.8 3.0 115.3 802.7
Ben Sheets 144 0.0% 45.1% 26.2% 1.9 80.1 4.4 4.3 225.8 694.6
Eric O'Flaherty 22 0.0% 40.9% 44.4% 1.2 80.2 2.2 2.8 153.5 688.5
Manny Parra 70 0.0% 54.3% 31.6% 1.5 76.2 3.5 4.5 144.7 627.3
Victor Santos 22 0.0% 45.5% 30.0% 1.4 76.1 3.8 4.1 220.9 601.1



Wednesday night I'll post on Impressive Curves. Hill and Zito come to mind.