During the sixties, seventies, and eighties, MLB pitchers were good, but they didn’t have quite the same stuff as the ones pitching at the moment, during our time.
Every game evolves and changes: with the rise of Statcast, Rapsodo, analytics, and other concepts and tools, pitchers have mastered concepts such as spin axis, spin rate, active spin, pitch movement, horizontal and vertical break/drop, and more.
They know how to make their pitches nastier, faster, with more cut, ride, or break.
As a result, the average fastball this past season was much, much faster than one from the seventies or eighties, for example.
Except for Nolan Ryan, of course.
The man reportedly threw a 108-mph fastball back in the day, but while that hasn’t been checked, he did consistently touch triple digits with his heater.
It was a thing of beauty, and thanks to @mlbelites_, we can see one of Ryan’s fastballs with a view from home plate.
This is what hitters used to see when they faced Ryan:
What the hitter saw when Nolan Ryan threw a fastball: pic.twitter.com/2vmtfiUUlq
— Baseball (@mlbelites_) January 3, 2023
Ryan’s fastball was one of the nastiest pitches of his time.
The most frightening thing (for hitters, at least) about that video is that it seems to be a warm-up session: that doesn’t seem to be a in-game situation.
You can see the sink on his fastball, so it was probably a two-seamer.
That’s as close to unhittable as it gets, and it helped the right-hander post an incredible 3.19 career ERA and a record 5,714 strikeouts.
Do you think you can hit a fastball off Ryan?
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