Patrick Corbin's missing Fastball?
 

So far in both PT 19 and PT 20, Patrick Corbin's card has come sans a fastball. :confused:

I don't know many, if any, pitchers who don't have a fastball in their pitch arsenal. Corbin uses his fastball a lot in RL too.

What happened with his card? Where did the heat go? And how does it affect his performance in PT? It's strange to imagine a pitcher not having a fastball to set up breaking pitches with, it seems like it would be a pretty big disadvantage not to have one.

Is Corbins main fastball a 2-seamer? If so, the game calls a 2-seam fastball a "sinker".

It does? Because I can't think of any other cards that don't have a fastball pitch, and 2 seamers aren't really known to sink, it's more lateral movement.

Which other pitchers are like Corbin?

Also there are tons of pitchers that have both a fastball and a sinker pitch in OOTP/PT, and many of them throw 2 seamers (or both 2 and 4 seamers).

So I still think the Corbin card is an oddity. I'd be for seeing 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs being listed as separate pitches though, that would be kind of nice actually.

A 2-seam fastball is quite often referred to as a "sinking" fastball. Hence, the confusion. Pitchers who have a sinker and fastball listed throw both varieties. Someone with only a sinker only throws a 2-seamer. They are rare, but do exist.


I may be wrong on this, but I believe Jose Alvarado of the Rays throws a 2-seamer and a slider, without a 4-seamer IRL. I may be mistaken as I can't watch Rays games often, but every fastball I've ever seen from him has a ton of sinking movement.


The fastballs with lateral movement are cutters and "running" fastballs. The 2-seamer, as long as I can remember, has always been a sinking fastball.

OK so which cards other than Corbin support that position?

IE which other OOTP cards that don't throw 4 seam fastballs have no "Fastball" pitch but instead a Sinker pitch?

Diekman from OOTP20

Matt Grace OOTP19

I haven't checked Grace, but notice with Diekman, his fastball % exactly matches his "sinker" %:

https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.asp...003&position=P

Which means to me he throws only 2 seamers, and his get sink. Not all do:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/players-...he-same-pitch/

Corbin however doesn't have the same % of fastball to sinkers - he clearly also throws fastballs that don't sink, so either he uses some 4 seamers, or he throws the 2-seamer with slightly different grips:

https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.asp...323&position=P

So where is his 4 seamer in OOTP/PT? PT has been around for 2 years, he's thrown fastballs that don't sink about 20% of the time in those 2 years.

I haven't watched Corbin IRL to see his fastball usage, but fangraphs tends to be pretty accurate with Pitch/fx, so I'm unsure of any further comment with regard to why he doesn't have a 4-seamer in the game. I only know it is not only possible for a pitcher to only have a 2-seam sinker, it's actually pretty common (particularly lefty specialists/GB specialists/sidermers). Beyond that, as I said I do not know.