The Fastball Has Never Been Faster
There have, of course, been powerful pitchers throughout the history of the game: Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Walter Johnson. Randy Johnson once accidentally blew up a bird with his fastball. Nolan Ryan threw a hundred miles an hour, en route to a record 5,714 strikeouts. But Ryan was an exception. Nobody else was doing it.
Today, better training methods and new technologies, including networks of cameras and radars that can accurately measure a ball’s movement and create three-dimensional models of a pitcher’s mechanics, have helped pitchers learn to throw harder and harder. They spend their offseason in special baseball facilities training their arms or, more often, developing their legs, where most of the power comes from. In 2008, only two hundred and fourteen pitches were thrown at a speed of one hundred miles per hour or more. In 2025, there would be 3,701.
This led to a crisis of sorts, or two. On the one hand, this extra speed – along with a bit of spin, which allowed pitchers to throw harder while deflecting, diving and kicking the ball – gave pitchers an even greater advantage over hitters than before. According to Statcast, there were nearly twelve thousand fewer balls hit in the 2025 season than in 2008, and the lack of offense made the game a little less exciting. What’s more concerning, however, is what throwing with maximum effort does to a human arm. Tendons and ligaments remain weak links, and the harder you throw, the more torque your elbow experiences. As a result, the number of arm injuries has skyrocketed. More than a third of major league pitchers have ruptured their ulnar collateral ligament, requiring so-called Tommy John surgery, the recovery from which can take more than a year. And those who haven’t had it yet can look forward to it. Teams essentially factor these injuries into their expectations of a young pitcher. They can do this because difficult pitchers are becoming more and more fungible. When one falls, there is always another.
Misiorowski, a product of Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri, threw forty-three pitches at speeds of one hundred miles per hour or more in his recent outing against the Nationals. He threw forty-one more against the Yankees, including ten in a row. And last week, against the San Diego Padres, he threw forty triple-digit fastballs again. Hitters can expect him to throw a four-seam fastball: he uses this pitch over sixty percent of the time.
That’s another thing that sets him apart from many of the top starters. Two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal can throw as hard as Misiorowski, but Skubal uses his four-seam fastball less than forty percent of the time. Modern technology allows pitchers to experiment with catches and spins to create stunning swings and ambush hitters with off-speed action. Yankees ace Max Fried throws seven different pitches. Shohei Ohtani too. Misiorowski only throws three pitches with regularity, but he throws his four-seam fastball so hard that the element of surprise is hardly necessary. His fastball not only arrives faster than the blink of an eye, but it also arrives at a tricky angle. When Misiorowski throws, his muscular legs stride down the mound, then his skinny right arm, as loose as a whip, follows. (He’s built like a centaur.) As a result, he throws the ball closer to home plate than any other pitcher. And its length allows it to descend. That, plus the angle of his arm – his arm slot, in baseball terms – adds another layer of deception. His fastball comes flatter than it appears to the hitter, creating the illusion that it’s rising – a ball that appears to be at the top of the zone out of his hand might actually be a few inches above, tempting hitters to go under. It all “makes for a tough day,” as Judge said after facing the young pitcher. Judge called Misiorowski’s fastball one of the best he had ever seen.
