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!
Logan Gilbert’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/coldfemalecanvasback
Logan Gilbert twirled the best start of his young career on Thursday, throwing seven innings of one-hit ball along with eight punchouts. With those eight strikeouts came a 28% CSW and multiple options to be featured in this article. In the end, this slider bearing away from Luke Voit proved to be the nastiest, moving like a frisbee and sending a player having a great series back to the dugout.
Sandy Alcantara’s Changeup
https://gfycat.com/whimsicalforkedbasilisk
While Sandy Alcantara did not have a great outing on Thursday, he did display his nasty changeup, which always seems to make its way into a nastiest pitches article. Here we see this changeup dance down with Cody Bellinger swinging straight through it where even the catcher couldn’t handle the nastiness of it.
Julio Urias’ Curveball
https://gfycat.com/maturebitterballpython
Julio Urias was incredibly sharp in seven strong innings with nine strikeouts and an impressive 38% CSW. With that high of a CSW comes a large amount of whiffs and here we see a breaking ball fade out of the zone causing a very weak hack by Jazz Chisholm to send him down for the second time of the game.
Blake Treinen’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/unsightlymindlessamericanmarten
Blake Treinen helped to look down the win for the Dodgers as part of their shutdown bullpen on Thursday with a shutout 8th inning. To get himself out of a jam he dropped this slider bearing down and in, causing Jesus Sanchez to be unable to hold up his swing and unable to cut the deficit.
Frankie Montas‘ Splitter
https://gfycat.com/gaseousdefenselessafricanparadiseflycatcher
Leading the way on Thursday was Frankie Montas with a 42% CSW along with 10 strikeouts in the win over the first-place Houston Astros. Part of his impressive performance came via his splitter which sported a 46% CSW of its own and produced many punchouts, like this one getting Carlos Correa to swing out of the zone and go back to the dugout.
Tarik Skubal’s Slider
https://gfycat.com/glasssafebison
Tarik Skubal continues to shine as part of this young Tigers’ rotation. While his outing on Thursday wasn’t exactly his best, he did show off an impressive three straight sliders to Trevor Larnach resulting in this slider down and away which Larnach found himself out in front of.
Jake Cousins‘ Slider
https://gfycat.com/evenfaintchickadee
Jake Cousins continued his impressive start to his career quickly moving up the circle of trust in Craig Counsell’s bullpen. Part of this impressive outing consisted of two strikeouts in 1.2 innings of work keeping the game close so that the Brewers could come back to eventually win this game. Here we see some incredible movement on the slider, moving all the way from the center of the plate to the other batter’s box making Jonathan India look pretty foolish unable to hold up his swing.
Devin Williams‘ Changeup
https://gfycat.com/carefreecourageousequine
What kind of nastiest pitches article would this be without featuring Devin Williams and his changeup. Williams came on and pitched a 1-2-3 inning in order to hold the Brewers’ lead in their win Thursday over the Reds. During such inning, he struck out two batters among those being Kyle Farmer on this back foot changeup which Farmer swung right through.
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns of Twitter)