Shota Imanaga’s fastball and the 5 most unhittable 2024 pitches

From Shota Imanaga’s fastball that doesn’t light up radar guns, we now move to one that leaves a smoke trail. Oakland Athletics closer Mason Miller has taken the baseball world by storm in 2024, throwing consistent triple-digit heat and holding offenses to absolutely nothing, with a 12-appearance scoreless streak still going strong.

What’s really scary about Miller is that his fastball isn’t even his number one pitch by run value. That would be his slider, which is a +4 in run value, has a .074 opponent batting average, and a 57.1 strikeout rate. But the reason the slider works so well is that everyone is trying their darnedest to catch up to the high heat, and with little success.

At 100.8 miles per hour on average, Miller’s four-seamer is a full 0.7 mph faster than any other pitch in the big leagues this season, which is a staggering margin at the game’s highest level. He generates a 53.1 percent strikeout rate on the heater as well, which is another number you just don’t see in the game nowadays. The fastball allows him to make the best hitters in the game look powerless, which is the sign of a truly special talent in the pitching profession.

Corbin Burnes, cutter

Corbin Burnes has been doing this for a while now and his cutter has continued to reign supreme at the game’s highest level. His cutter has been worth 80 runs since he burst on the scene in 2020 and it’s already up to ten this season, just behind Imanaga for the most valuable pitch in the game.

And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the pitch is so effective. Burnes throws it 95 mph on average, with 37 percent more break than the average cutter in MLB. It’s pretty much a perfect pitch and it has to be for big league hitters not to figure it out within a five-year window.

And given how good he’s been for such a long time, it truly is amazing that Burnes is still pitching on his rookie contract. He’s got a lot of incentive to keep dominating as the summer progresses and he’s sure to keep throwing a bevy of cutters to help him get to where he wants. And he just might help the Baltimore Orioles win a pennant while he’s at it.

Dylan Cease, slider

There are a lot of great sliders in MLB, but only one has a poem written about it. Dylan Cease fell in love with his slider so much he decided to author an original composition dedicated to it, called “O Slider Slide,” and to the slider’s infinite credit, it’s a pitch worth waxing poetic about.

In fact, Cease’s has been the most valuable slider in all of baseball this season, in addition to the 11th-most valuable pitch overall. It’s got a +7 run value, .119 batting average allowed, and 45.6 percent whiff rate. Nobody’s touching the slider and because Cease is back to throwing consistent strikes with all of his pitches, that nasty put-away pitch is enabling Cease to once again be one of the best hurlers in the league.

So what makes this slider in particular so nasty? Well, it breaks within an inch of the league average both vertically and horizontally, so it’s not so much the amount of movement Cease generates. But the 2795 RPM spin rate Cease is able to induce makes the pitch much more difficult to discern out of the hand, so often, hitters are swinging at air. Want to throw a nasty slider in 2024? Make it look like a fastball until the last possible moment.

Ranger Suárez, changeup

There’s something beautiful about a changeup, which is why we simply had to put one on the list. It’s one thing to dominate a hitter with a pitch thrown as hard as possible, or with as much break as possible, but sometimes it’s more fun to just dangle the carrot in front of the horse’s nose, only to watch the horse fall to a knee as he whiffs at one in the dirt.

And you can’t talk about changeups in 2024 without bringing up Ranger Suárez. The lefty is the only pitcher in the game with seven wins to his name as of Monday and he’s doing it without a blazing fastball or wicked breaking stuff. His changeup has a +6 run value despite only throwing it 17.6 percent of the time, with hitters going 1-for-35 against it so far this season.

Suárez’s changeup actually wasn’t unhittable a season ago, but there’s.an obvious reason it is now: that thing’s dropping like crazy. It went from 34.9 inches of drop to 39.1 in a single offseason, and it’s actually moving more than two inches fewer horizontally. So to hitters, it pretty much looks like the pitch is dropping straight down an elevator shaft, and nobody can do anything but wave at it. As long as that’s the case, Suárez may just keep throwing it more and more often.