Every morning we review the nastiest pitches from the previous day’s games in glorious HD GIFs. Don’t forget to vote for your favorite pitch and check back this weekend to see if it will be in contention for the GIF of the First Half Contest. 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.
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Blake Snell’s Curveball – Evan Gattis may be the hottest hitter in baseball right now, but he got stifled by this nasty yo-yo curveball from Snell. Snell struck out six and walked seven in this topsy-turvy start, only allowing one earned run.
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Chris Sale’s Slider – Twins catcher Mitch Garver must have left the back door open on Tuesday, as Chris Sale put one of his trademark sliders right on the outside black. Good luck hitting that, even if you tried. Sale struck out 11 in seven innings of work.
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Domingo German’s Fastball – It’s easy to see why German remains such a tantalizing fantasy arm. He stifled the hot-hitting Mariners on Tuesday, striking out nine in seven strong innings. He tossed plenty of these wicked two-seamers in on the hands of the Seattle hitters.
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Mike Clevinger’s Curveball – It’s nearly impossible to not include Clevinger’s Uncle Charlie in these posts. Here he bends a breaker down and out of the zone, getting Jose Abreu to chase. That was one of Clevinger’s 10 strikeouts on the day, his second consecutive game with ten or more strikeouts.
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Justin Verlander’s Slider – Remember when we all thought Verlander was done a few years ago? I know I wasn’t expecting to make GIF’s of Verlander throwing an explosive 88 mile per hour slider in 2018. But here we are, and JV is fanning ten across 6 2/3 innings and holding down a 1.61 ERA. Wow.
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Jameson Taillon’s Curveball – Taillon didn’t earn himself a quality start after only going five innings, but he did manage to fan seven. His big loopy curveball was on point, here just scratching the inside corner to buckle Christian Yelich.
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Jordan Hicks‘ Fastball – Two-seamers that run in onto a hitter’s hands are some of the toughest pitches to handle. When those come in at 102 miles per hour, well that’s just flat-out rude.
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Rich Hill’s Curveball – Hill fanned six in six shutout innings, his first outing since mid-May. His traditional huge, loopy curveball was back to normal, as you can see by this GIF of it sweeping clear across the strike zone, generating a huge swing and a miss from Kris Bryant.
GIF Of The Night
Which was your favorite pitch? Vote below and the winner will be featured in the GIF of the First Half Contest.
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