This is the nastiest pitch in baseball. A new metric proves it

Mason Miller is the nastiest reliever in the game today, and by extension, perhaps the nastiest who ever lived.

We won’t say “pitcher,” because Jacob Misiorowski exists, but also this is maybe what it would look like if Misiorowski was coming out of the bullpen. Miller leads the Majors in strikeout rate, at a wild 51%; earlier this year, he continued a scoreless streak that ran to 34 2/3 innings, one of the longest by a reliever in history; last fall, he threw the hardest postseason fastball on record, one so perfectly placed that it was often described as maybe the best pitch anyone has ever thrown.

When you average – average! – 101.2 mph on your fastball and can put it where you want, maybe you don’t need a whole lot of other context as to what makes you so dominant. But it’s really not Miller’s fastball that’s been his most effective pitch over the last few years. It’s his slider, which was, on a rate basis, the most valuable pitch in baseball in 2025.

Today, we can share a little more about just how deadly that pitch is, thanks to Statcast's newest release that shares the distance by which a pitch misses the bat, and in what direction. Miller’s slider doesn’t just miss bats by a little. It doesn’t even miss bats by a lot. It misses bats by nearly a foot on average, and by considerably more than any other pitch in baseball.

• 8 of the nastiest pitches on new miss distance leaderboard

(All stats in this article are up to date through Tuesday's games.)

That, again, is just on average, which means that the outliers here get pretty wild – like last month, when he got St. Louis outfielder Jordan Walker to miss by 34 inches, Miller’s biggest single miss in the three-plus years data exists.

Or, what he did to Angels infielder Oswald Peraza, on a slider so nasty that the eye test really does tell the story here. And the data backs it up by saying it was missed by 28 inches – or more than 2 feet.

Or, and perhaps our favorite of all, what happened two pitches prior to Cubs catcher Carson Kelly having to watch that 104.5 mph for a called third strike last fall – the aforementioned fastest pitch in postseason history. Maybe Kelly was never going to catch up to that pitch anyway, but what absolutely could not have helped is that on the 1-1 pitch, after having already seen a pair of 102 mph fastballs, Kelly had to deal with a slider that did this.

He did not deal with it. He missed it by 28 inches.

Obviously we already knew that Miller is elite and that his slider is a deadly combination with his fastball. But it’s one thing to “miss a bat,” and another thing entirely to say “by a whole lot more than anyone else on the planet.” It’s that we can show exactly how he’s missing the bat. It’s a little about making batters swing too early, and a whole lot about making them swing over the ball.

The data also shows how that pitch works in concert with his fastball.

In terms of in/out – of getting misses in on the hands or off the end of the bat – neither pitch is really that much different from one another. But, as you’d expect when comparing a fastball to a breaking ball, the fastball makes you late (while the slider makes you early), and the fastball makes batters swing under, while the slider is over. There are so many dimensions to cover here, and batters mostly can’t compete.

But it also tells you something about how Miller’s slider has gotten better over time. This data goes back to the middle of 2023, and Miller keeps missing by more and more each year.

Miss distance (inches) on Miller’s slider

• 2023 // 6.0
• 2024 // 7.7
• 2025 // 9.3
• 2026 // 10.6

He keeps getting batters to swing over it more and more, mostly -- 54% in 2026, after just 29% in 2023. That 54% rate of "batters swinging over the pitch?" Tied for the third-best in baseball.

If you think about the three categories here – in/out, early/late, and over/under – and realize that the batters really want to be correct in all three areas (centered, on time, and lined up), then conversely, pitchers really, really want to prevent all of those things. When they do, when they incite a swing that is not centered and not on time and not lined up, that’s what we call a "flawed swing." It’s the kind of swing that’s not just ‘a miss,’ it’s one where the batter misses in every conceivable way.

Across the Majors, sliders get flawed swings 14% of the time. Against Miller’s slider, it’s 37% – the only pitch higher than 30%.

Highest rate of flawed swings, 2026

• 37% // Miller's slider
• 30% // Garrett Whitlock's slider
• 28% // Jason Adam's slider
• 26% // Chase Burns' slider
• 26% // Erik Miller's slider

That improvement, the somehow increasing ability to get batters to miss by more and more, comes with different pitch shapes, too. In 2023, Miller’s slider dropped 3.5 inches more than comparable pitches at his velocity, and moved to his glove side 4.1 inches more than average. This year? That’s 6.1 inches in both cases, which is to say that he’s getting half a foot more movement than average in both directions.

Pair that with heat that can get up to 104 mph, and you’ll find exactly what Kelly did. It’s simply not possible to cover the zone against both pitches. No one, as it turns out, has. They’re not just striking out. They’re striking out in a way that is not even close to the ball.

It tells you a little about the domination, here. Step one, for a hitter, isn't even making contact. It's managing to miss by less. That, by itself, would count as progress.