Right now, Aroldis Chapman is by far the fastest pitcher in baseball. In fact, he might be the fastest pitcher in the history of baseball. How do I know? Well, of the top 50 fastest pitches throw in in 2016, 49 have come from the arm of Chapman.
But even Chapman has his limits.
According to Statcast, his fastest pitch of the season just barely exceeded 105 MPH, depending on which radar gun you use … and it’s not as though many humans on earth can come anywhere close to touching that. So with that in mind, you’ll understand why we can all have a good laugh when this Japanese baseball player tries to get a hold of a 186 MPH fastball (yeah, you read that right), but fails miserably:
Maybe a helmet next time, eh?
Of course, he doesn’t come anywhere close to the pitch and apparently even suggests that “he couldn’t even see the ball.” Given that this machine is throwing roughly 80 MPHÂ faster than Chapman though, I think we can cut him some slack.
But I’d still love to see Javy Baez give it a go.