Every morning, the We Love Baseball crew reviews the Nastiest Pitches from the previous day’s games in glorious high-definition GIFs. We want to bring you the highest caliber of nastiness possible, so if you see a nasty pitch, please tell us about it. You can tweet @PitcherList to let us know and we’ll give you a shout-out here in the article if your tip makes the cut.
As a bonus for PL+ members, let us know about a pitch on the PL+ Discord in the Nasty Pitches Channel, and if your suggestion is included the next day, you’ll be entered into a weekly drawing for a free T-shirt!
Clay Holmes‘ Sinker
https://gfycat.com/ambitiousverifiablegoldenretriever
Look at that thing take off! Yeah, there’s a bit of camera angle magic going on here, but we’ll ignore that and enjoy this beautiful sinker from Clay Holmes. I was wondering why Dansby Swanson was trending on Twitter on Monday night, and now I believe this wicked strikeout has to be why.
Wily Peralta’s Changeup
https://gfycat.com/gravelightheartedlangur
Savant classifies this as a changeup, but the wonderful camera work by the team in Texas clearly shows that Wily Peralta uses a splitter grip for the pitch. It seems more and more pitchers are utilizing the split-change this season, and if this is going to be the result then I’m all for it.
Bailey Ober’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/perkyrepulsivebaiji
José Abreu’s main weakness is against sliders down and away. If pitchers aren’t attacking him with this pitch in every at bat they’re doing something wrong. Well, Twins fans, have no fear because Bailey Ober isn’t afraid to go there. There were a couple curveballs and a changeup I could have included here from Ober’s outing, but this slider was one of the nastiest pitches I saw all night. Ober looks legit to me and I’m glad I swiped him up in a handful of leagues.
Aaron Loup’s Curveball
https://gfycat.com/bewitchedscientificichidna
The camera angle isn’t great, but this pitch starts off on the inside part of the plate and almost ends up on Staten Island. Ridiculous. No, I’m not familiar with New York geography. Staten Island may actually be on the other side of the frame. I don’t know. Stop reading this and move on.
Tyler Matzek’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/bitterinexperiencedbighorn
The look of absolute pain on Jacob Stallings‘ face as he realized he couldn’t check his swing helped make this pitch just a little bit nastier. Not that it really needed it, because this back foot slider broke very sharply at the last minute after looking like a strike for the majority of its flight time.
Walker Buehler’s Cutter
https://gfycat.com/unripelikablegiraffe
The pitch is a little inside, but look at that movement. Woof. It almost hit Jazz Chisholm on his back knee. Not his front knee, his back knee. I keep watching this on loop but I really kneed to stop… and you probably want me to stop with the puns too, right? NEVER.
Kevin Gausman’s Splitter
https://gfycat.com/helpfulringedincatern
I like to see splitters a little further down in the zone, but this one from Kevin Gausman moves so much left to right that it still generates a huge whiff to get out of the inning. Gausman may have earned the loss, but a 38% CSW on his splitter yesterday is still pretty dang good.
Edgar Santana’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/enormousmilkylcont
Are you as mystified about the movement on this pitch as I am? No, that’s not a changeup. That’s a slider. Edgar Santana hasn’t thrown a changeup all season. Both ESPN’s gamefeed and Baseball Savant have this listed as a slider. How? What? I don’t have an answer for you, but it’s filthy.
Rich Hill’s Curveball
https://gfycat.com/leftwelcomefalcon
Let’s wrap this one up with two nasty curveballs. First, everyone’s favorite slow-hurling lefty down in Tampa Bay had another strong start on Monday night, and he struck out the first batter of the game with this wonderful slow hook. Please excuse the shoddy camera work, they were too busy admiring the folks in Texas.
Dylan Cease’s Knuckle Curve
https://gfycat.com/ickygrotesquecaecilian
Finally, we wrap it up with a knuckle curve from Dylan Cease that moves approximately zero inches horizontally but practically drops all the way from Luis Arraez’s head to his toes. That’s simply unfair.
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns of Twitter)
Santana’s pitch looks a lot like Honeywell’s screwball
Going frame-to-frame while the GIF is paused, I do see arm-side pronation that I’d expect to see from a screwball, but if that’s what he’s doing and he decides to do a lot of it, at that velo he’s gonna wreck his arm soon. Given that there are about a hundred different grips associated w/ a screwball, the pronation is pretty much all there is to definitively label one.