There have been numerous pitchers with sweeping breaking balls and blazing fastballs throughout baseball history. For those who love watching nasty pitching, there’s arguably no better time to be a fan of the game than now. Twenty different players have hit 100 mph on the radar gun this year (including the Reds’ own Tanner Rainey), Noah Syndergaard is flipping up 92 mph sliders regularly, and Shohei Ohtani is doing this.
As I watched Ohtani go deep at the plate on Sunday Night Baseball to give the Angels the go-ahead run in a 4-3 win, I searched for some of his pitching highlights (side note: here’s hoping we don’t have to wait until 2020 to watch him throw again) and began to wonder which Reds have the nastiest pitches.