Ranking Paul Skenes and the 10 Best Fastballs in MLB
You may have heard that the fastball is losing influence. And it's true. Fastball usage in MLB has never been lower than it is in 2024.
But since hitters' .257 average against fastballs is likewise a new low, there are clearly still some great fastballs out there. So, let's rank the 10 best of the best.
With Paul Skenes eviscerating hitters with frequent triple-digit fastballs since his debut on May 11, this list looks different than it would have even three weeks ago. It's almost certainly going to look different than you're expecting.
For example, not included here are Tyler Glasnow, Carlos Rodón, Cole Ragans, Garrett Crochet or Michael Kopech. An outrage, perhaps, but let's just say this list is as much subjective as objective.
I considered both aesthetics and statistics in putting this top 10 together. If a fastball looks the part, then great. If hitters also have no answer for it, even better. Either way, it took a minimum of 100 fastballs (sorry, Jhoan Duran) to qualify for consideration.
Four-seamers make up the bulk of this list, but I also included sinkers and cutters for "variety is the spice of life" purposes.
Notes: All pitch stats are current through play on Saturday, May 25. Special thanks to Rob "Pitching Ninja" Friedman for the GIFs.
10. Javier Assad's Sinker
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Key Stats: 91.7 mph, 10.6 Whiff%, .197 xBA, Plus-9 Run Value
How It Looks
There are actual sinkers, and then there are pitches that are more like classic two-seam fastballs that get labeled as sinkers for simplicity's sake.
Javier Assad's is one of these, which makes it worth including in this discussion even if its better described as "effective" rather than as "overpowering."
Assad hasn't added drop to his sinker relative to 2023, but it does have more arm-side movement. Hust as important is where he's throwing it. He's working more aggressively in the strike zone and living on the inner half against both lefties and righties.
It's little wonder that hitters on neither side have done much against the pitch. Both the .215 slugging percentage off it and its overall plus-9 run value are about as good as it gets for sinkers.
9. Ranger Suárez's Sinker
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Key Stats: 90.9 mph, 11.6 Whiff%, .200 xBA, Plus-6 Run Value
How It Looks
By way of a 9-1 record and a 1.75 ERA, Ranger Suárez is proving that even a pitcher with 13th-percentile velocity on his fastball can dominate major league hitters.
He's doing so with all four of his primary pitches, each of which boasts an average below .200. But everything revolves around the sinker, which is different from Assad's in that it actually sinks.
At 28.2 inches, the drop on the Suárez's sinker tops even Framber Valdez for the best among lefties who've thrown at least 200 sinkers in 2024. And so far, that movement has allowed him to get away even with working increasingly in the heart of the strike zone.
Over two-thirds of the batted balls against Suarez's sinker have been on the ground, and the average exit velocity for the whole lot is just 85.4 mph. That's 4.5 mph below the average against all sinkers.
8. Robert Suarez's 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 98.6 mph, 25.4 Whiff%, .157 xBA, Plus-10 Run Value
How It Looks
Robert Suarez was only so trusting of his four-seamer in 2023. He threw it only 38.1 percent of the time, or only slightly more often than he threw his changeup (33.6 percent).
So far in 2024, though, the righty is chucking his fastball at hitters 80.7 percent of the time. And who can blame him?
"Higher" describes basically everything that's different about Suarez's fastball this year. It describes not just its average velocity, but also its release point, spin, vertical movement and typical location above home plate.
Not exactly reinventing the wheel, perhaps, but it's working. The actual .100 batting average against Suarez's four-seamer is second among all four-seamers that have been thrown at least 200 times.
7. Paul Skenes' 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 99.4 mph, 32.3 Whiff%, .228 xBA, Plus-2 Run Value
How It Looks
Before we get into the good stuff, understand that Paul Skenes' fastball hasn't exactly been unhittable. Opposing batters are 7-for-25 against it for a .280 average.
Those seven hits are all singles, however, and only two crossed the "hard-hit" threshold of 95 mph. So Skenes has that going for him, which is nice.
Even better, of course, is all that sweet, sweet velocity. The rookie owns each the seven fastest pitches thrown by starting pitchers in 2024, with a max of 101.9 mph. And when he does top 100 mph with the fastball, hitters are 1-for-10 with a 40.0 whiff percentage.
Personally, I'm just as much of a fan of the movement that Skenes gets on his four-seamer. It has an average of 14.0 inches of arm-side run. That's fifth among righties, and none of the four above him throw harder than 95.3 mph on average.
6. Hunter Greene's 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 97.9 mph, 27.1 Whiff%, .167 xBA, Plus-10 Run Value
How It Looks
Though there are plenty of great four-seamers out there, only Hunter Greene's has accounted for 96 swings and misses and 52 strikeouts in 2024.
It was perhaps inevitable that he'd end up at the top of a list like that. This is a guy who came into the league averaging 98.9 mph on his fastball in 2022. He doesn't throw that hard anymore, but his fastball has gotten better in other ways.
Much of what was said about Suarez's heater also applies to Greene's. His release point, spin, vertical movement and typical location are all up, and these things have made it that much harder for hitters to square up his fastball.
It's not even just the whiffs. Whereas it was over .500 in 2022 and 2023, the slugging percentage against Greene's fastball is now down to .290.
5. Emmanuel Clase's Cutter
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Key Stats: 98.9 mph, 30.2 Whiff%, .222 xBA, Plus-8 Run Value
How It Looks
Emmanuel Clase's cutter has been a reliable pick for any "best pitch" list over the last four years, but he's putting an interesting twist on his usual formula in 2024.
As impressive as its average velocity still is, that's actually another step down from his averages from 2021, 2022 and 2023. And yet, its whiff rate has never been higher.
Active spin, which measures how much of a pitcher's spin is contributing to a pitch's movement, helps explain what's going on. The active spin on Clase's cutter is up to a career-best 62 percent, resulting in more movement to his glove side.
Hitters know it's coming, but still can't hit it. Least of all in two-strike counts, in which Clase's cutter has yielded only two hits in 38 at-bats with 20 strikeouts.
4. José Alvarado's Cutter
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Key Stats: 92.7 mph, 44.0 Whiff%, .071 xBA, Plus-3 Run Value
How It Looks
Anyone who would argue that José Alvarado's cutter is actually a slider—or even a slutter—would have a point. It does tend to look more like a breaking ball than a fastball.
It is officially designated as a cutter, however, and it has a case as the most unhittable fastball in baseball today.
Its whiff rate is the second-highest of any fastball that's been thrown at least 100 times. And that .071 expected batting average? That's the best, and by a significant margin.
As much as velocity and movement, it's deception and location that make Alvarado's cutter work. He's very good at tunneling it off his high-90s sinker and putting it just enough outside the zone to entice hitters to swing. Its 44.1 chase rate is easily the highest of any fastball.
3. Shōta Imanaga's 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 92.0 mph, 23.3 Whiff%, .232 xBA, Plus-14 Run Value
How It Looks
Shōta Imanaga's four-seam fastball isn't merely elite. Per its plus-14 run value, it's the single most valuable pitch in MLB right now.
This feels a bit like a pitch punching above its weight. Imanaga is only in the 18th percentile with his velocity, after all, and that whiff rate hues closer to good than to great.
But at 99 percent, the active spin on the lefty's fastball is next-level. The same can be said of its total movement, and he completes a sort of "just try and hit this" trifecta by putting it up in the zone where it's that much harder to square up.
2. Ryan Pepiot's 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 94.7 mph, 39.7 Whiff%, .122 xBA, Plus-6 Run Value
How It Looks
If there's an idealized version of Imanaga's fastball, it may be the one belonging to Ryan Pepiot.
The righty is also a standout for active spin and total movement, and he likewise prefers to maximize his fastball's profile by working up in the zone with it. The difference is that he does so with a couple extra miles per hour on average, with a peak of 97.0 mph.
In addition to that whiff rate—which, by the way, is the highest of any fastball thrown by any starter—Pepiot also boasts an average exit velocity of just 89.2 mph on his heater. The average for all four-seamers is 91.1 mph.
The actual batting average against Pepiot's four-seamer is a minuscule .088. For reference, the next-lowest for all pitches thrown at least 300 times is Chris Sale's slider at .141.
1. Mason Miller's 4-Seamer
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Key Stats: 100.9 mph, 48.3 Whiff%, .153 xBA, Plus-5 Run Value
How It Looks
It was honestly hard to resist putting Pepiot's fastball in the No. 1 slot, both because of the strength of its case and the sheer allure of the shock value of doing so.
But when it comes down to it, I'm as much of a sucker for Mason Miller's fastball as basically everyone else is right now.
It fares reasonably well in nerdy attributes like active spin and vertical and horizontal movement, but we're obviously here for the velocity. With a max of 104 mph, Miller owns eight of the 10 fastest pitches thrown thus far in 2024.
Ultimately, the whiff rate says it all. It's not just that it's high. It's that it's 3.3 percent higher than the previous best for any four-seamer (min. 200 total) recorded between 2008 and 2023.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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