Pitching Ninja’s filthiest relievers: Félix Bautista’s downright dominance

Rob Friedman

FOX Sports MLB Analyst

Starting pitching might get most of the attention, but MLB bullpens are home to many of the filthiest pitchers in baseball.  Here are a few of the MLB relievers that have stood out to me this season. Every hit off these pitchers is a minor miracle. 

Félix Bautista, Baltimore Orioles: Fire on the Mountain 

Bautista has been the most dominant closer in baseball in 2023. He has a 0.85 ERA this season, with an American League-leading 30 saves and an amazing 17.4 strikeouts per 9 innings. He’s putting together one of the best seasons by a closer in recent history and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get at least some Cy Young Award attention. 

The 6-foot-8 closer, aptly nicknamed “The Mountain,” has a fastball that averages a blazing 99.4 mph with a 39.4% whiff rate, which is MLB’s highest whiff rate among fastballs (minimum 500 pitches thrown). 

[Gerrit Cole, Spencer Strider lead Pitching Ninja’s Cy Young candidates]

Bautista’s fastball is a real outlier. It has the least drop on the way to the plate of any fastball in the majors, only dropping 7.3 inches with gravity, and it’s also released from approximately 7 feet off the ground, the highest release point in MLB. These pitches are absolute lasers!

Bautista is more than just a flamethrower though. His splitter has the highest whiff rate in baseball of any splitter, at almost 59 percent. 

This overlay of Bautista’s splitter and fastball illustrates just how unhittable his stuff is:

Jhoan Duran, Minnesota Twins: Video Game Stuff

The best word to sum up Duran’s stuff is “unfair.”  Duran is the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball, averaging almost 102 mph on his four-seam fastball. He’s hit a blazing 105 mph multiple times this season, including these back-to-back 105 mph heaters.

Duran also threw the fastest swinging strike with an off-speed pitch in the entire pitch-tracking era…an absurd 101.1 mph splinker (a splitter/sinker hybrid). Yes, a modified splitter at 101.1 MPH! 

And Duran’s best pitch isn’t his fastball or his splinker, it’s his vicious curveball. He has an expected slugging percentage of only .183 against his curveball, and that pitch has a 43.4 percent whiff rate. 

This 3-pitch overlay of Duran’s fastball, splinker and curveball shows what Duran’s arsenal can do to you as a hitter. It’s pure video game stuff:

Devin Williams, Milwaukee Brewers: Bender of Air

Williams might not be an elite flamethrower like Bautista or Duran, but what separates him is one of the best changeups in the history of baseball, which I nicknamed the “Airbender.” 

The Airbender has the highest spin rate of any changeup in baseball, averaging 2667 RPMs. This high spin rate leads to some incredible movement, the pitch moves almost like a left-handed pitcher’s slider. He throws his changeup 55 percent of the time and has a batting average against that pitch of only .124 with a .216 slugging percentage and a nearly 44 percent whiff rate. It’s a cartoon-like pitch that can make even the best hitters look terrible.

The Airbender combines jaw-dropping depth and horizontal movement to dismantle hitters, one of these changeups had an eye-popping 27 inches of arm side run!

Importantly, even though Williams doesn’t have incredible fastball velocity, his fastball has also been extremely effective, mostly because hitters must defend against his Airbender. Williams has over a 43 percent whiff rate on his fastball and hitters are only hitting .152 against that pitch, even though it only averages about 94 mph. This overlay shows you why Willliams has a 1.49 ERA this year, relying predominantly on just those two pitches.

Josh Hader, San Diego Padres: Serving hitters a glass of Haderade

Hader’s dominance is nothing new at this point, and he’s once again one of the elite closers in baseball with a 0.89 ERA and 62 strikeouts in only 40.2 innings. Hader has been virtually untouchable this season: Opponents are only hitting .138 against his sinker and a minuscule .083 against his slider, with an incredible nearly 56 percent whiff rate.

As always, Hader combines wicked pitches with a ton of deception, mostly due to his low arm slot and counter-rotation, hiding the ball from hitters incredibly well. This combination of deception and stuff gets a ton of bad swings from hitters. Look at the swing that Hader got on this slider! I’ve seen blindfolded kids take better swings at a piñata.

Matt Brash, Seattle Mariners: Embarrassing Hitters with Breaking Balls

Brash might not be putting up the minuscule ERA of some of the top relievers in the game (3.21 ERA this year) but his breaking balls are undoubtedly off-the-charts as far as filth. He has at least two of the filthiest pitches I’ve seen this season.

First, here’s Brash totally knocking out Jose Ramirez:

That was nearly as vicious as a Jose Ramirez right hook!

And, next, here’s an amazing nutmeg by Brash, getting a rare swinging strike on a ball that goes between a hitter’s legs. Simply incredible!

Brash’s slider has jaw-dropping horizontal movement (162 percent more than the average slider) and has over a 50 percent whiff rate this year, but he’s more than just a wizard at spinning a baseball. Brash also can throw some diesel, hitting 101 mph with this painted fastball.

Abner Uribe, Brewers: Demon Turbo Sinker 

While not yet in the class of the other pitchers on my list in terms of track record, I thought I’d give a quick shoutout to Brewers’ rookie reliever Abner Uribe, who, this week, threw perhaps the most disgusting pitch of the year…this Black Magic, Demonic 99 mph Turbo Sinker. This pitch looked like a strike the entire way to the plate and then…poof…it disappeared. That movement at 99 mph is simply unhittable. Check this baseball for holes!

Rob Friedman is an MLB pitching analyst for FOX Sports whose work has been featured on many Major League Baseball broadcasts. Follow him on Twitter @PitchingNinja.

Get more from Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more