Every morning, the We Love Baseball crew reviews the Nastiest Pitches from the previous day’s games. If you see something you think should be included here be sure to tweet @PitcherList to let us know. Or, if you’re a PL+ Member and part of our Discord, shout it out in the Nastiest Pitches channel.
Colin Rea’s Sinker
Rea’s sinker isn’t known for its stuff, but this one gets great horizontal movement and seems to keep sliding away from Benson. With a 3.61 ERA and 1.15 WHIP, Rea is in the midst of the best season of his career.
Nick Martinez’s Changeup
This is a true Bugs Bunny changeup. At 80.2 mph it’s one of the slowest changeups in baseball, but it gets great results. It has a 94th percentile O-Swing%, 92nd percentile SwStr%, and 93rd percentile ICR.
Jake Irvin’s Sinker
Irvin gets above-average iHB on his sinker, but this one was especially good, resulting in a futile swing by Bellinger.
Reynaldo López’s Curveball
López does have good stuff, but he’s not known for his curveball. This one seems to fade away from the batter at the last second.
Taj Bradley’s Fastball
Bradley’s four-seamer gets 17.9″ iVB. That helps make its PLV 95th percentile and contributes to a Fan4+ of 137. He still struggles with command a bit, but he’s young.
Max Lazar’s Curveball
Lazar has too few innings to say much about his curveball. If he keeps throwing them like this he’ll have success.
Devin Williams‘ Changeup
It’s nice to have Devin Williams back. His changeup makes Nastiest Pitches easier. It’s still one of the best pitches in the game to see.
Carson Spiers‘ Changeup
Another good changeup tonight. Another whiff. Turang probably hasn’t seen many ones like this in his short career.
Tanner Houck’s Sweeper
I’m not sure what was going on tonight, but I saw several horrible swings where the bat seemed to miss the ball by a foot. Torkelson hasn’t lived up to his pedigree, but this is a wicked sweeper from Houck.
Sean Reynolds‘ Slider
Reynolds got a bunch of whiffs on his slider tonight. It looks like he can really spin it early in his career. I expect he’ll be making more appearances on Nastiest Pitches with stuff like this.
Photos courtesy of Icon Sportswire
Adapted by Kurt Wasemiller (@KUWasemiller on Twitter / @kurt_player02 on Instagram