The nastiest pitchers in baseball miss bats by a lot.
We finally know exactly how much "a lot" is thanks to the new swing timing and miss distance leaderboard on Baseball Savant.
Mike Petriello explains all of the cool new stats here, but just know that we can now answer questions like:
- Which pitchers get the most extreme whiffs, and with what pitch types?
- Which pitchers disrupt hitters' timing the most?
- Which pitchers induce swings in the wrong location the most?
There are some really good names on those leaderboards. Let's take a look at some of the aces whose signature pitches are big whiff-inducing weapons.
Here are eight standout pitches, thrown by eight standout pitchers, that highlight the many different ways a pitcher can miss bats.
1) A slider that misses bats by more than any other pitch: Mason Miller
Miller is the prime example of the impossible task facing hitters today: You have to be ready to hit pitchers who throw harder than ever before, but also somehow be able to hit the wipeout breaking and offspeed pitches that those pitchers actually throw more often than their heaters.
So while Miller's fastball is averaging over 101 mph this season, it's his slider that has an argument as the nastiest pitch in baseball. What's inarguable is: It misses bats by more than any other pitch. The average miss distance against Miller's slider is 10.5 inches. When hitters whiff against Miller, they really whiff. And they whiff a lot -- the swing-and-miss rate against Miller's slider is over 60%. Maybe that's why he's throwing it a career-high 55% of the time.
2) A 4-seam fastball that explodes past hitters: Jacob Misiorowski
Fastballs just don't miss bats by as much raw distance as secondary pitches. That makes perfect sense. At the end of the day, they are the straightest pitches, after all. Hitters just don't wave at heaters like they do at the nastiest sliders or splitters. But a great fastball can do one of two things: It can make a hitter late, or it can cause a hitter to swing under it.
And you know whose fastball is really good at that? The Miz. On nearly two thirds of the swings against Misiorowski's heater (63%), the hitter swings under the ball -- that's one of the very highest rates of "under" swings generated by any pitch type. (Hitters are also late a lot against the Miz's fastball, too.) That's a product of Misiorowski's extreme velocity and extreme extension. He releases those 100-plus mph fastballs from 7.5 feet in front of the rubber, so they just take off up and past a hitter's bat before he can react.
3) A changeup that hitters don't get close to: Tarik Skubal
Skubal is on the verge of returning to the Tigers, which means the return of one of baseball's best pitches: The Skubal changeup. Just like you might expect from the signature pitch thrown by a back-to-back Cy Young winner, Skubal's changeup misses bats by a ton and throws hitters' timing all out of whack.
We'll go back to last season, since Skubal has missed time this year. Since the start of 2025, Skubal's changeup has gotten hitters to "flail" -- swing for a pitch that's beyond their barrel -- on 68% of their swings. His changeup fades away from the bat at one of the highest frequencies of any offspeed pitch. When hitters flail at Skubal's changeup, they flail by over 10 inches on average (in other words, the ball ends up 10 inches outside the sweet spot of the barrel).
4) A splitter that plummets to earth: Trey Yesavage
Yesavage's calling card since he first got called up late last season is the splitter that looks like it comes "from the sky." Coaches would say that about Yesavage's splitter because the Blue Jays phenom releases it from extremely high above the ground and with an extremely over-the-top arm angle. And that extreme delivery creates some extreme swings-and-misses on the other end.
Yesavage's splitter starts as high as can be and ends as low as can be. This season, he's inducing a 42% whiff rate with it, and those whiffs are by an average of 6.7 inches -- the biggest miss distance for any starting pitcher on an offspeed pitch (the only reliever to get larger misses than Yesavage is Fernando Cruz, who has one of MLB's best splitters). Over one in five swings against Yesavage's splitter is a completely "flawed" swing, meaning the hitter's timing is completely off: the bat is neither on time with the pitch, nor lined up with it vertically, nor centered horizontally.
5) A curveball that hitters wave over the top of: Nolan McLean
McLean throws the highest-spin curveball in the game, first of all (3,262 rpm since he debuted last season), and that spin generates tons of movement, both vertical and horizontal break. And all that spin and movement translates to hitters not being able to put their bat in the right place at the right time.
It's not so much about the raw miss distance for McLean's curveball as it as about the poor timing he creates with it. Since last season, only 10% of the swings against his curve have resulted in "perfect" contact, where the hitter's swing is on time, centered and lined up. McLean's rate of preventing perfect contact with his curve is top-five in the Majors since 2025. McLean uses his curveball to get hitters to swing over the ball 55% of the time, plus they're early against it almost half the time and flail at it outside over a third of the time.
6) A sinker that jams hitters inside: Hunter Brown
Like Skubal, Brown is also inching closer to a return from injury, which will give the Astros their flamethrowing ace back. And if you remember, one of the biggest reasons for Brown's big breakout is the sinker he's added to his pitch arsenal.
Brown takes a very modern approach to sinker usage: He uses his 96 mph sinker to bust right-handed hitters inside. In 2025 and through his first two starts of 2026 before he got hurt, Brown was tying up hitters on 37% of the swings against his sinker, second-best in the Majors -- sandwiched right between Zack Wheeler and Paul Skenes. Brown's is a sinker designed to get in on the hitter's hands, and the swing timing data shows it does exactly that.
7) A cutter that snaps off the barrel: Emerson Hancock
Hancock is a breakout pitcher for the Mariners this season largely due to dropping down to a sidearm delivery that mirrors Chris Sale's. But one of the other key changes he's made is swapping out his old, low-80s slider for a harder, mid-80 cutter.
Hancock's new cutter is now missing bats by an average of 4.3 inches, one of the highest marks for that pitch type. And it does an excellent job at, well, cutting away from a hitter's barrel, inducing "flail" swings 36% of the time, also one of the highest marks for cutters in 2026.
8) A sweeper that hitters still wave at: Blake Treinen
Treinen's Wiffle ball movement has made his sweeper famous, and he's still got it, even at age 37. To this day, very few pitchers can induce as extreme whiffs as Treinen's sweeper, which in 2026 still misses bats by over eight inches on average.
Treinen's sweeper generated similarly large miss distances last year, and the year before that. And we're guessing that, in the years before Statcast's bat tracking came online, he was doing the same thing.