Every week we review the nastiest pitches from the previous week in glorious HD GIFs. Don’t forget to vote for your favorite pitch and check back Saturday to see if it will be in contention for the GIF of the First Half Contest. Week 15’s winner was Blake Treinen’s Fastball again. That’s four weeks in a row for Treinen. Wow.
Did we miss your favorite pitch? Send us a tweet next time @PitcherList and we’ll GIF it up + give you a shoutout here in the article.
This week’s pitches include a couple breaking balls with ridiculous lateral movement and a few well spotted fastballs thrown at a high velocity. Check back next Saturday to see which GIF our readers picked as the nastiest pitch of the week.
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Mike Foltynewicz’s Fastball – Here’s a tasty 98 mile per hour gas can from Folty that runs a ridiculous amount down and in to Jose Bautista. This pitch is borderline untouchable, and was the nastiest of Folty’s five strikeouts on the day.
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Jakob Junis‘ Slider- Junis has continued to struggle after looking like a somewhat reliable fantasy option early on in the season, but the movement on this Slider to Yolmer Sánchez is crazy. He actually hits him with the pitch on strike three.
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Trevor Bauer’s Fastball – It was an unusual start for Bauer on Tuesday, who posted a quality start but only struck out three. One of them was this nasty two-seamer that froze Jake Cave and got an emphatic strike three call.
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Aaron Nola’s Curveball – Aaron Nola was awesome yesterday against the Red Sox, as per usual, pitching eight innings of one-run ball with just one walk and six strikeouts, including this beautiful curveball.
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Lance McCullers’ Curveball – The Astros starter didn’t look to have quite the movement we’ve come to expect on his two-seamer, but no worry—he was still chucking his signature knuckle curve to great effect. He netted 14 of his 20 induced swings-and-misses on his hook, including this one from Texas’ Jurickson Profar.
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Jordan Hicks‘ Fastball – It was tempting to include this 100 mph sinker, but though it shattered Albert Almora Jr.’s bat, it ended up as a ball in play—however weak the result was. So we’ll have to settle for 103 mph heat with movement that came at Jason Heyward’s expense.
Which was your favorite pitch? Vote below and the winner may be featured in the GIF of the Third Quarter Contest.
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