Resident flamethrower for the St. Louis Cardinals took to Twitter last night to spark an interesting discussion amongst MLB’s best pitchers. If you could choose any five pitches from any pitcher in baseball history, what would your five pitch arsenal look like? I thought it would be fun today to create my dream five pitch arsenal. As you can see above, Flaherty would have Chapman’s fastball, Jose Fernandez’s slider, Wainwright’s changeup, Pedro’s changeup, and Mariano’s cutter. That’s his five pitch frankenstein pitcher and I have to say I’m not sure anyone would be able to hit that type of pitcher. You can click on the link and look at the thread to see all of the other pitchers who created their pitch mix. Below is my dream five pitch arsenal.
Fastball : Nolan Ryan
Nolan Ryan can be considered one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball and part of that was the fact that he had one of the most electric fastballs in MLB history. Ryan had set an all-time records for strikeouts (5,714), walks (2,759), hits per nine innings (6.6), and no hitters (7) in a 27 year long career. Ryan also holds the single season record for strikeouts (383) and topped 300 strikeouts six times, tied with Randy Johnson and led the league in strikeouts eleven times. Ryan’s most dominant pitch that to all these strikeouts was his fastball. In 1974 when Ryan was in his prime, the concept of the radar gun was born. Using infrared beams we would be able to accurately tell just how fast a pitch was going. On August 20, 1974, against the Detroit Tigers, Ryan threw an eleven inning complete game 1-0 loss. During that game he was clocked at 100.9 mph in the ninth inning! There’s only one problem, when they first started measuring using this radar gun it was 9 to 10 feet from home plate. Today pitch speed is measured at the standard distance of 50 feet from the plate. Ryan’s 100.9 would translate to 108.1 mph today. That’s 3.5 mph faster than Chapman’s fastest pitch on record.
Slider : Adam Ottavino
I’m definitely not going for a power slider as most people may have on their lists. Not that it’s not a good pick, a DeGrom slider is so overpowering because it averages a speed of 92.5 mph, that’s faster than most peoples fastballs. I wanted to go more for movement with my slider and there’s no better pitcher for this than Yankees reliever Adam Ottavino. The reason why his slider is so devastating is the fact that it breaks a foot and half sideways, coming in at around 83 mph. His slider moves more than 10 inches than the average MLB slider. MLB hitters had just a .157 batting average with 46 strikeouts against it last year. The reason why this pitch is so effective is because it has such an intense break. Most of the time a pitch that looks like a strike to begin with but will most likely end out of the zone, thus making it almost impossible to hit.
Curveball : Clayton Kershaw
Clayton Kershaw has one of the most picture perfect curveballs I have ever seen and he can be seen on many pitchers dream curveball list. There’s no better definition than a 12-6 six curveball than his and it his main go to for a strikeout. What makes his curveball so effective is the fact that it comes in at around the mid 70’s, while his fastball comes in around the low 90’s. Whether it is a knee-buckling curve in the strike zone or a pitch that starts in the zone and ends in the dirt, Kershaw’s curveball is most certainly Hall of Fame worthy. You know you threw a filthy curve when the hitter turns thinking the ball is going to hit him and it ends up in the middle of the plate. Add that to an over 100 mph fastball and devastating east to west slider and we are looking pretty good so far.
Changeup : Pedro Martinez
Pedro really had an arsenal of three Hall of Fame type pitches and one of those included his devastating changeup. To me the change-up is one of the best pitches in baseball if you can throw it properly. The fact that it looks like a fastball until the last second where it completely drops off the table can make it one of the more deceptive pitches in baseball. Unfortunately the changeup has lost some of its appeal because it can be hard for a young pitcher to get a feel for the grip, or many will go to the ever enticing slider or curveball. To me there is no better strikeout pitch, especially for lefties, than a change-up that starts on the outside part of the plate, then just disappears away from the hitter’s bat. A great change-up can be thrown in almost any count as well. If you’re behind in the count, you can throw a changeup because most likely the hitter is sitting fastball and you will disrupt their timing. As you can see from the video, a devastating Pedro changeup can also be used to strike a ton of people out.
Cutter : Mariano Rivera
Now on to one of the best closers in MLB history, my final pitch in my mix, is Mariano’s cutter. Mariano made his career as becoming baseball’s greatest closers with basically just one pitch, his cutter. It was his ability to perfect the pitch every single time that made him so successful, hitters could know it was coming and still not be able to hit it. A cutter basically moves like a fastball until the last second where it has a sharp movement of about 3 to 5 inches, just enough to miss the good parts of a hitters bat, thus leading to many shattered bats. Both Mariano’s four seam and two-seam fastballs had movement, so the fact that Mariano was able to mimic his cutter to look exactly like his fastballs led to a lot of his success. He stands as the career leader in saves (652), games finished (952), and a career era of 2.21 (13th overall). But the most impressive statistics come from the postseason where in 96 appearances and 141 innings logged, Mariano had an incomprehensible ERA of 0.70 and a WHIP of 0.76. One of the craziest stats you will ever see in sports is the fact that after facing 527 batters in the playoffs, only 11 of those players have scored off of Mariano. So more men have walked on the moon (12) than have scored off of Mariano in the postseason.
Presence : Randy Johnson
As a bonus for fun I wanted to add a players presence on the mound I would love to have with my dream five pitch arsenal. To me there was no one more intimidating to face then 6’10 lefty, long haired Randy Johnson. Johnson had the perfect mixture of power and wildness that struck the fear of god into hitters. The fact that he could spot a 100 mph up at your chin one pitch and then a devastating slider on the corner the next was just unfair. Johnson was particularly hard against lefties because the way he threw the ball it looked like it was going to hit you, but it would end up over the plate. Also fun fact, Johnson is the only player to hit a bird that was flying through the stadium with a pitch. Yup you read that right, that should make him intimidating enough.
The Washed Up Athlete 