*well, sort of — you will see what I mean.
I have a short post today, but hopefully a fun one. I was looking at the stats for St. Louis Cardinals newest reliever Phil Maton on Baseball Savant. Specifically I was looking at Run Value to try to determine what some of his best pitches might be. It isn’t a perfect measure for that, but it can usually give me an idea of a pitch a pitcher might be going to to get outs when in jams and how that pitch performed in those moments. Tangotiger explained Run Values more here. My understanding is that every plate appearance has the potential for a run to be scored. That potential is higher based on factors like number of outs or runners on base — the run expectancy. The change in the run expectancy from the beginning to the conclusion of a plate appearance gives the run value for that plate appearance. This can be drilled down further to an individual pitch level. Run Value shows what pitches allowed or prevented the most runs from being scored (for pitchers a negative Run Value actually used to be a good thing, but Baseball Savant thankfully switched it so that positive Run Values just mean positive results — it is a little easier to understand that way).
As I looked through Maton’s pitches I got to thinking about other Cardinals pitchers and that gave me an idea. I could use run value to try to determine the most valuable pitch on the Cardinals; the pitch that has prevented the most runs; the pitch you might even say is the best pitch from the Cardinals roster? What better overall measure of a pitch than its run prevention right?
I didn’t want to go through every pitcher on the Cardinals roster and record the career Run Value for every pitch they threw though, so I started with just 2024 to narrow it down. Here are the best Cardinals pitches in 2024, according to Run Value Per 100 pitches:
From there I looked at the total Run Value of these pitches every time they were thrown to try to figure out which one has been the best, throwing out pitchers that are not on the St. Louis Cardinals roster for 2025. Here is what I found:
The most valuable pitch on the Cardinals according to Run Value per 100 pitches is Ryan Helsley slider, which is not exactly surprising. If you asked me objectively what the best pitch on the Cardinals is, that would likely be my answer. It has a 51.1% Wiff rate and a .171 batting average against and it is released from the same delivery that throws a fastball over 100 mph. It is a nasty pitch.
Sonny Gray’s sweeper being in the top five also was not surprising. Sonny Gray was the most valuable pitchers on the roster in 2024, naturally one of his pitches would be one of the most valuable as well. Most of the value for this pitch was actually amassed in 2023 when the pitch was valued at 21 runs. In 2024 it had a 44.4% Wiff rate with an average exit velocity against of 85.5.
The surprise to me was Andre Pallante’s fastball not only making an appearance but making a strong case. In his three seasons so far, his fastball is becoming one the most valuable fastballs in the game. In 2024 his fastball Run Value was in the 93rd percentile in all of baseball. It only has a 16.5% Wiff rate so batters are not necessarily swinging and missing at it. When Pallante is in a jam though, he goes to his fastball and more often than not, it gets him out of it.
I hope you all enjoyed this brief explainer about Statcast’s Run Value! Happy Sunday!