I'm not really sure why you think he throws 90-ish. He does, but it's with his MOVING fastball, not his straight one. He's not fooling people out there, he's brutalizing them.
He began his life as a bullpenner with basically one pitch, the mid-90s heat. He first noodled around with a cutter a couple of years ago, which is what one of Jack's scouts saw the same season we got him and why we picked him up in the first place (Jack noted it at the time). And now he's got the curve that he keeps bombing on people.
Dude throws his fastball at 96, his cutter at 90, and the breaking-whatever in the 70s. His problem earlier in the year was getting too much of the plate and being afraid to pitch inside. Thankfully our 41 year old catcher had a word with him, told him to make batters uncomfortable and that he was too good to get lit up like that:
“I had a little rough spell a couple of weeks ago,” Farquhar said. “And he said, ‘With your stuff you need to start pounding hitters in.’ And I really took it to heart and I started applying it. A lot of my success is due to Henry’s talk with me.” Farquhar admitted he was getting too comfortable pitching away to hitters. It’s a common affliction among big league pitchers, leading to predictability and poor results.
“I have noticed that relievers like to tend to stay away in general,” Farquhar said. “Away is a very safe part of the zone. But if you live away, they are going to hit you hard. They are just going to sit away.” So with Blanco’s urging, he started busting hitters inside with his mid-90s fastball and hard cut fastball while mixing in a slow curve to keep them off balance.
“I was mostly going along with what’s comfortable for me instead of making a conscious effort to make hitters uncomfortable in the box,” Farquhar said. “But the talk really woke me up.”
He was Brandon League, who only cared to do what he wanted and didn't get the proper results for his stuff. Since that conversation, in the second half:
1.20 ERA in 15 IP, 23K / 4 BB, batters are OPSing .323 (!) against him. And more than one team's opposing announcers - and players - have gone, "who is THAT guy?" on the air.
Farquhar is for real. Now that he's comfortable throwing the breaker (btw, Doc, he never threw it before, it was all fastballs up in the zone and away) he's demolishing people, as he should with a FB that runs away, a cutter that runs in, and a breaker that cuts the zone like a slow samurai sword.
He has Wilhelmsen's heat with a cutter on the fists to righties and a breaking ball he can actually throw for strikes. No trickery involved, Doc, just eviscerations. When people sit on your 96 MPH heat because it's the only thing they have a prayer of putting wood on, life is pretty good.
The lightbulb went on with Farquhar, IMO. Consider his plateau jumped.
Somebody tell Blanco to talk to Capps next.
~G