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. If your suggestion is included the next day, you’ll be entered into a weekly drawing for a free t-shirt. If you’re not already a PL+ member, you’re missing out!
Germán Márquez’s Knuckle Curve
Márquez has always faced the challenge of pitching for the Rockies, but many believe that with stuff like this he would become an upper echelon SP just about anywhere else. His curveball has been very good in 2022. A 39.6% O-Swing%, 20.0% Swinging Strike%, and .157 wOBA are all very impressive.
Marcus Stroman’s Sinker
Stroman throws his sinker nearly 40% of the time. While it’s usually nothing special, it is an above-average sinker. His location heat map shows that he throws it all over the zone. It’s known more for its vertical movement, but this one moves inside more than Grichuk expects, resulting in this swing.
Justin Lawrence’s Slider
Lawrence gets good horizontal movement on his slider and when he places it like this it’s going to generate a lot of swings and misses. On the season it has a good 42.4% Whiff%.
Michael Wacha’s Changeup
This is a nasty changeup from Wacha, something he’s done regularly this season. It has a 20.1% Swinging Strike%, .153 AVG, and .210 wOBA. Unexpectedly to most, Wacha has been one of the better SP in baseball this year.
Jonathan Heasley’s Curveball
The Royals’ long quest to find pitching continues with Heasley. His curveball is league average for the most part, but it does get about 3″ more vertical drop. He has not been good so far in his career, but Friday was better.
Corey Kluber’s Curveball
Kluber’s curveball continues to be one of the better in MLB. It has a 37.7% O-Swing% and gets 4.3″ more horizontal movement than the average curveball. We’ll have to see if it is around in 2023.
Triston McKenzie’s Curveball
Leading up to this pitch Gordon fouled off several curveballs at the bottom of the strike zone. Here, McKenzie bounced it and finally got him to whiff in a big spot in this game. Mckenzie has been quite good this season.
Justin Verlander’s Slider
Verlander continues to amaze. His slider is his 2nd most used pitch and has resulted in a .193 AVG, .217 wOBA, and .225 xwOBA. It’s almost unfair how much success he’s had.
José Alvarado’s Cutter
Alvarado threw some of the highest velocity pitches of the evening, topping 100 with his sinker multiple times. Pair that with this type of cutter and batters are going to struggle. It has a 44.8% O-Swing%, 28.8% Swinging Strike%, and .105 xwOBA.
Max Fried’s Curveball
Fried has one of the prettiest curves in baseball. He uses it to make even Harper look silly here. He’s thrown about 550 of them so far in 2022 and has yet to give up a home run on it. In fact, he’s given up only one home run on it in the past three seasons. He’s thrown about 1,400 of them over that period.
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns of Twitter)