The Impossible Pitch

June 18th, 2025. Seth Halverson enters the game in the bottom of the 9th and strikes out Dalen Lyle on a nasty slider, then coaxes a non-threatening line out from K-Bear Ruiz. The only batter left between him and a save is Alex Call, and he throws him this pitch. In the 7 months since this pitch was thrown, I have not stopped thinking about it. It has kept me awake at night, because this pitch is thrown at 102 mph. Think of all the things that have to go right to throw a baseball 102 mph, and yet think of all the things that have to go wrong to miss by that much. Do you know how rare a 102 mph arm is in today's MLB? Seth Halverson is one of only 10 pitchers to throw multiple pitches over 102 in 2025, through 14, Aroldis Chapman through 17, Mason Miller, OH MY. You probably haven't even thought about the baseball labs. Well, I've thought about the baseball labs. You know, the places like Driveline and Tread that invest tens of millions of dollars to teaching the perfect mechanics to throw 102 in the first place. How is it so mechanically correct that he throws at 102, but so mechanically incorrect that he misses by over 7 feet inside, arm side, it doesn't make sense. If you look at a chart of this pitch's location, much like my father to my piano recital, it doesn't show up. It's somewhere over here, at the bar. And I'm about to dig through over 12 million pitches in the pitch tracking era, but I've gotta tell ya, I don't think there's been a single pitch anything like this one in all of MLB history. I mean, there have only been 570 track pitches that have missed the plate by 7 or more feet horizontally. Here are the ones that have missed essentially to the right, like Seth Halverson's. And then the other, 171, missed 7 feet or more to the left from the pitcher's perspective. So already, out of 12 million pitches, this is a 1 in 20,000 occurrence. But when you sort these 7 foot or more misses by velocity, you see Seth Halverson at the very top with 102, and then nothing, absolutely nothing until you get into the upper 80s velocity band. Even then, those numbers are somewhat misleading. Here's Denny Bautista in 2008. This is labeled as a pitch out. It is intentional. Here's Eduardo Sanchez in 2012. This is labeled as an intentional ball, part of an intentional walk. And yes, it does go way outside and almost get away from the catcher. But to me, this is not comparable to what Seth Halverson did. I mean, this pitch from Jason Vargas in 2017 that is labeled as over 7 feet inside to Manny Machado is simply a misread. This is one that StatCast just didn't track properly. It's inside, but clearly not 7 feet inside. It can be disregarded. If you like what you see and want to support the show, head on over to patreon.com slash Foolish Baseball. Joined today, you'll unlock access to monthly exclusive content like this Q&A from January 2026, where I answer burning questions about the show Heated Rivalry and give you my nominees for White Boy of the Year. So if that sounds intriguing to you, patreon.com slash Foolish Baseball. Now back to the video. In terms of these big misses in the upper 80s, the only one that's an attempt at a competitive pitch is from Brandon McCarthy in 2016. He just misses big time to Xander Bogarts. Mookie Betts advances to third. Vince Scully is commentating. It's 2016. You're 21. You've got your whole life ahead of you, Bailey. I mean, it's a bad pitch. It's a bad pitch. Don't get me wrong, but there's an issue here, because guys, this is a yank. This is a situation where he held onto the ball for too long and overcooked it. And to me, it makes more sense to be able to reach velocity doing that than whatever Seth Halverson did. It's a lot easier for me to comprehend overcooking and spiking the ball and still getting max velocity rather than letting go of the ball early. If I go outside in the backyard and I throw the ball and it slips, it's not going to go the maximum velocity. Now, I don't throw 102. I, of course, throw 99 on the black. But still, I think if it slipped, I'd be throwing a lot less than that. So to find a pitch like Seth Halverson's, we have to not just find pitches that miss by seven feet. We have to look at arm side misses. We have to filter out these intentional balls and these pitch outs in our search. And so if you do that search for right-handed pitchers, the next highest velocity from Seth Halverson's 102.1 is Carlos Zambrano in 2009 with 79.5. That is a pitch that is labeled as a curveball. And then if you do that same search for lefties, the highest velocity option is Colby Allard, 71.7 miles per hour on a pitch that is labeled as a changeup. And the only other result is this one from Garrett Crochet last year against the Yankees, 21.7 miles per hour, 34.9 feet outside and minus 57 feet from the plate. Hats off to StatCast because that looks correct. I'll start with the Colby Allard one first. It does look like Halverson's miss, albeit 30 miles per hour slower. But the problem is he misses with a 71, 72 mile per hour changeup. Well, in 2021, his changeup average velocity was more like 83, 84. So he's losing velocity due to slippage, something that Seth Halverson doesn't do. He throws at 102 miles per hour. It's bananas. Now let's look at this Carlos Zambrano 80 mile per hour curveball. It does look like it. It does look like Halverson. And not only that, it allows current White Sox GM Chris Getz to score from third. But the question is, is there enough velocity slippage? Because 80 miles per hour is a pretty firm curveball, especially by 2009 standards. Well, here's a serious red flag. Carlos Zambrano only threw 14 pitches labeled as a curveball in 2009, and this one was by far the fastest in terms of velocity. The next one is five miles per hour slower. Now I'm going to put this on slow-mo and I want us to watch the catcher. Watch what the catcher does as Zambrano delivers this pitch. Look what he does. He springs up. Do you see that? One more time. Before the pitch is even released, he springs up and to the outside. This to me indicates, if anything, a fastball type location if he wants it up and away to the batter. So I think this is actually not a curveball. I think this is an intended fastball with slippage and velocity slippage to match. Zambrano averaged 92 on his fastball in 2009, so if he was throwing 80, then that would indicate slippage. Not so much if he was throwing a change-up, though. You can see that at 82.6. If he threw that 80, then it's an acceptable velocity band, but he only threw eight change-ups in 2009. Could be the split as well, which averaged 85.5, but then at 80, that would, to me, indicate at least a little bit of slippage, so I'm really thinking it's a mislabeled fastball. And speaking of fastballs, the only 7-foot armside miss on a competitive fastball other than the Seth Halverson 102 pitch is from Adam Odovino, 2022, 77 point miles per hour on a two-seamer. And even then, this is a 78 mile per hour pitch that usually averages 92, so again, say it with me, slippage is occurring, but not for Seth Halverson, guys. It's 102. How? And you guys want to know how he finished this at bat? You guys want to know how he finished this outing? Very next pitch, splitter down and in, absolutely dotted strike one. Fastball bottom of the zone, 102, strike two, and then fastball on the black, 102, strike three. So he throws this pitch, which is unlike anything we've seen in MLB history, and then he locks it in and delivers a nasty three-pitch sequence to Alex Call to collect the save, to end the game, and also end this video.