Fastest MLB Pitchers Since 2008: Can Anyone Beat Chapman's 105.8?

The obvious objection is that Chapman threw the eight fastest pitches, so the list should be eight Chapmans. Count that way and he owns 8 of the 10 fastest regular-season pitches since 2008, with only one each from Joyce and Misiorowski making the cut at 105.1 mph and above.

Widen it to the 15 fastest pitches, which with ties at 104.8 means 21, and Chapman has 14. Only five pitchers appear: Chapman, Joyce with 3, Jordan Hicks with 2, and Misiorowski and Jhoan Duran with one each. Across all 143 pitches of 104.0 mph or faster, Chapman has 70 and Misiorowski 22. A chart of pitches would be mostly one man; a chart of pitchers shows who else is in the room.

Chapman's record pitch carries two numbers because baseball has measured pitches from two places. From 2008 to 2016, speeds came from PITCHf/x cameras that read the ball early in flight. From 2017, Statcast has reported speed as the ball leaves the hand. MLB's Gameday feed still holds the 24 September 2010 pitch at 105.1 mph. Baseball Savant publishes 105.8.

The gap is a correction, not a dispute. Savant's documentation says the 2008 to 2016 values are "adjusted to roughly out-of-hand release point" so every year sits on one scale, and SABR reports the change added 0.7 mph to Chapman's pitch. Every row here uses Savant's release-point figure. For pitches from 2018 on, Savant and Gameday matched to the decimal in every comparison made.

Mixing conventions is the error a page would never reveal. Put Chapman's 105.1 beside everyone else's release-point numbers and he falls from first to third. Five rows (Chapman, Feliz, Rodriguez, Rondón and Cabrera) carry the flat 0.7 adjustment, and Savant's own word for it is "roughly," so they carry slightly more uncertainty than the ten native Statcast ones.

Ben Joyce and Jacob Misiorowski are tied at 105.5 mph, 0.3 short of Chapman. Joyce threw his for the Los Angeles Angels on 3 September 2024, a swinging strike against the Dodgers. Misiorowski's came for the Milwaukee Brewers on 26 June 2026, fouled off by a Cubs hitter. Joyce ranks higher because his second-fastest pitch, 104.8, beats Misiorowski's 104.7.

Jordan Hicks is the bridge between eras. His 105.0 mph sinker for the St. Louis Cardinals on 20 May 2018 was a foul ball against the Phillies. Between Chapman in 2010 and Hicks in 2018 nobody reached 105 at all, and after Hicks nobody did again until Joyce in 2024.

Jhoan Duran's 104.8 mph for the Minnesota Twins on 19 July 2023 tops the group, and it was one of only two record pitches put in play; Ryan Helsley's was the other. Edgardo Henriquez of the Dodgers reached 104.5 on 4 September 2026, a sinker fouled off by the Nationals.

Mason Miller (San Diego Padres, 5 August 2025), Helsley (St. Louis Cardinals, 27 September 2022) and Mauricio Cabrera (Atlanta Braves, 2 September 2016) all peaked at 104.2, ordered by their second-fastest pitches of 104.1, 104.0 and 103.9. Neftalí Feliz closes the group at 104.1 for the Texas Rangers on 1 September 2010.

Camilo Doval and Tyron Guerrero both topped out at 104.0 mph, Doval for the San Francisco Giants on 23 September 2022 and Guerrero for the Miami Marlins on 13 August 2018. Doval's was a cutter, the only one among the 15 record pitches; ten are four-seam fastballs and four are sinkers.

Henry Alberto Rodriguez of the Oakland Athletics is 13th at 103.9, from 15 September 2010. Justin Martinez of the Arizona Diamondbacks is 14th at 103.8, a called strike from 15 September 2026, exactly 16 years later to the day.

Fifteenth is the closest call. Bruce Rondón of the Detroit Tigers threw 103.5 twice on 7 August 2013; Kelvin Herrera threw 103.5 once in 2012, with a second-best of 102.9. Rondón gets the spot on that countback, a judgement call.

The nine PITCHf/x seasons from 2008 to 2016 produced five of the 15 peaks. The ten seasons since produced ten, though none came in 2017, 2019, 2020 or 2021. Three arrived in 2026: Misiorowski on 26 June, Henriquez on 4 September and Martinez on 15 September.

Almost all of them are still throwing. Eleven of the 15 pitched in the majors in 2026, Chapman included; the four who did not are Cabrera, Feliz, Rodriguez and Rondón. ESPN reported that on 8 May 2026 Misiorowski threw three pitches at 103.6 mph, the fastest any starter had thrown since pitch tracking began in 2008. Seven weeks later he threw 105.5.

What the list cannot show is why. It records one ceiling per pitcher, not how hard the average fastball is thrown, so it shows the hardest throws clustering in recent seasons, not that the league as a whole throws harder.

Bob Feller's story is mostly arithmetic. On 20 August 1946, an Army ordnance chronograph at Griffith Stadium in Washington clocked a Feller pitch at 98.6 mph as it crossed the plate. The 107.6 mph that circulates comes from adding roughly 1 mph per 5.5 feet of flight, a rule of thumb one secondary account credits to the 2016 documentary Fastball. It is an estimate, not a reading.

Nolan Ryan's 100.9 mph in 1974, from a Rockwell International radar device at Anaheim Stadium, is a real measurement, but it was taken about 10 feet in front of the plate, after the pitch had slowed. Modern readings are taken at release, so the two cannot share a bar. A 108.1 mph "release equivalent" circulates for Ryan; it could not be verified, so it stays out.

The one pre-2008 reading on the same footing is Joel Zumaya's 104.8 mph in Game 1 of the 2006 American League Championship Series, reported at release and confirmed by SABR. It was a postseason pitch, and Savant holds no 2006 data. In the regular season Zumaya reached 103.4 in 2009, just below this list's cutoff.

Only regular-season games count, and any pitch thrown counts, whether ball, strike, foul or in play. Add the postseason and the 15 names stay the same, but Mason Miller's peak moves from 104.2 to 104.5, thrown on 1 October 2025 in the National League Wild Card Series, lifting him from seventh to sixth. Add spring training, the All-Star Game and exhibitions as well and Andrew Cashner enters at 104.0, from a spring game on 4 March 2012, pushing Rondón out.

Chapman's 105.8 is still the fastest regular-season pitch of the tracked era, and his second-fastest, 105.7, shows it was no fluke. But his lead over Joyce and Misiorowski is 0.3 mph, smaller than the 0.7 mph correction that moved his pitch onto the modern scale. Gaps of a tenth or two between neighbours are inside any radar's noise, so the order below the top few is a ranking by published number, not proof of a real gap.

What survives is the shape: 15 pitchers, 2.3 mph from first to last, two thirds of them peaking in 2018 or later. Treat the newest rows as provisional: the data runs through the regular-season finale on 27 September 2026, Savant can revise values, and three of the 15 rows come from the last four months.