Best Pitches

ESPN's Christopher Harris does a nice weekly fantasy rundown of starting pitchers. This week he looked at the pitches that they throw.

Accoring to Harris:
Best Fastball- Josh Johnson
Best Curveball- Adam Wainwright
Best Slider- Ryan Dempster
Best Cutter- Roy Halladay
Best Change- Tim Lincecum

Lucky for us, fangraphs has a tool to help measure this- Pitch Type Linear Weights.
The leaders in runs above average per pitch type are:

Fastball
1.) Dan Haren 16.5
2.) Josh Johnson 15.3
3.) Justin Verlander 14.0
4.) Matt Cain 13.4
5.) Zach Greinke 13.4

Curveball
1.) Roy Halladay 11.5
2.) Adam Wainwright 11.1
3.) Javier Vazquez 9.9
4.) AJ Burnett 9.1
5.) Chad Billingsly 8.1

Slider
1.) Zach Greinke 11.2
2.) Ryan Dempster 10.2
3.) Adam Wainwright 7.7
4.) Paul Maholm 7.6
5.) Matt Garza 7.3

Cutter
1.) Roy Hallday 12.0
2.) Scott Feldman 10.7
3.) John Danks 6.8
4.) John Lester 5.8
5.) Dan Haren 5.3

Change
1.) Tim Lincecum 14.8
2.) Brian Tallet 9.7
3.) Zach Duke 9.7
4.) CC Sabathia 9.7
5.) Felix Hernandez 7.7

Damn nice work by Harris. His choices were all in the top 5 according to pitch value, and his honorable mentions were all in the top 10. This also confirms how damn good Halladay, Haren, and Greinke are. Easily the 3 best pitchers so far this year, it shows up in their pitch types. All have 2 pitches that rank among the leagues best. Halladay has arguably the best cutter and curveball, Greinke the best fastball and slider, and Haren the best fastball and cutter. So if you want to be a top pitcher all you need to have is one pitch that is better than anyone else in the game, and another pitch that ranks in the top 10, easy enough.