The fastest pitch in MLB history is Aroldis Chapman’s 105.8 mph fastball thrown on September 24, 2010, while pitching for the Cincinnati Reds against the San Diego Padres. That pitch holds the Guinness World Record and remains the official fastest pitch in baseball history. But Chapman’s record only tells half the story. Statcast (the modern pitch-tracking system installed in all 30 MLB ballparks) has only existed since 2008, leaving a 130-year gap during which legendary fireballers like Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, and Nolan Ryan threw pitches that may have been just as fast, or faster, without the technology to prove it.
The biggest name in today’s velocity conversation is Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski, who has rewritten the record book for starting pitchers. On June 26, 2026, against the Cubs, the 24-year-old right-hander unleashed a 105.5 mph fastball to Pete Crow-Armstrong, the fastest pitch ever recorded by a starter and now tied for the third-fastest pitch by anyone since tracking began. It is a staggering feat: every other pitch at 105 mph or above was thrown by a one-inning relief specialist. Misiorowski reaches triple-digit velocity as a starter, sitting around 101 mph deep into games, making him the hardest-throwing starter the sport has ever measured.
The most famous pre-Statcast measurement is Nolan Ryan’s 100.9 mph fastball on August 20, 1974, at Anaheim Stadium against the Detroit Tigers, but that reading was taken 10 feet in front of home plate. Adjusted to the modern release-point measurement, Ryan’s pitch was approximately 108 mph at the mound. Here is the complete breakdown of the fastest pitches in MLB history, the radar gun technology evolution that makes comparisons across eras nearly impossible, and the old-timers whose true fastball speeds we’ll never definitively know.
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Jacob Misiorowski and the hardest-throwing starter ever
The most remarkable velocity story in baseball right now belongs to Jacob Misiorowski. On June 26, 2026, the 24-year-old Brewers right-hander threw a 105.5 mph fastball to Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, the third pitch of the game, breaking his own record for the fastest pitch ever thrown by a starting pitcher in the tracking era. It tied him with Ben Joyce for the third-fastest pitch by anyone since 2008, behind only two Aroldis Chapman fastballs. Crow-Armstrong managed to foul it off before striking out moments later.
What makes this so staggering is the role. Every other pitch on the 105 mph list was thrown by a relief specialist, a pitcher built to air it out for a single inning at a time. Chapman, Joyce, and Jordan Hicks are all relievers. Misiorowski does it as a starter, sitting around 101 mph deep into games and throwing dozens of triple-digit pitches in a single outing. In that very game against the Cubs, he threw 12 four-seam fastballs in the first inning alone, none slower than 102 mph, and 55 pitches of 100 mph or higher across his six innings. No starter the sport has ever measured comes close to sustaining this kind of velocity.
His ascent has been meteoric and ongoing. Misiorowski has now broken the starter record three separate times in 2026, climbing from 103.7 mph to 104.5 mph on June 12 (a fastball to the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber) to 105.5 mph just two weeks later. He was topping out at 103.6 mph only a month before that, and the trend line is still pointing up. He is now just 0.3 mph from Chapman’s all-time record of 105.8, a barrier that, for a starting pitcher, would have seemed pure fantasy a year ago. And the velocity is not empty: he entered that start with a 1.45 ERA through 16 starts, among the lowest in the past half-century.
The Aroldis Chapman dynasty (and why his 105+ mph club is so exclusive)
Since Statcast tracking began in 2008, only four pitchers in MLB history have officially thrown a pitch at 105 mph or faster: Aroldis Chapman, Jacob Misiorowski, Ben Joyce, and Jordan Hicks. Chapman accounts for the overwhelming majority of all 105+ mph pitches in the pitch-tracking era. He has also thrown more than double the number of 99, 100, 101, and 102 mph pitches than any other MLB pitcher since 2008, meaning his velocity dominance is not just about peak speed, it is about sustained elite velocity over a 15-plus-year career. Even into his late 30s, Chapman has regularly hit 101 to 102 mph in late-inning relief, a combination of peak velocity and longevity no other pitcher has matched.
The recent seasons have marked a clear changing of the guard. Angels reliever Ben Joyce, the “Volunteer Fireman” of his Tennessee college days, threw a 105.5 mph fastball to strike out Tommy Edman on September 3, 2024. In October 2025, Padres rookie Mason Miller set a new playoff record at 104.5 mph in the NL Wild Card Series. And now Misiorowski has gone further than any of them, becoming the first starter ever to join the 105 club. The velocity arms race is accelerating: in 2008, only one pitcher (Joel Zumaya) hit 104 mph all season; today multiple pitchers touch 104-plus in any given week.
How radar gun technology changed everything
The first attempt to measure a baseball pitch happened in 1912, when Walter Johnson visited the Remington Arms ballistics laboratory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The device, designed to measure bullet velocity, captured Johnson’s pitch at 83.2 mph, measured 7.5 feet behind home plate where the ball had already lost roughly 10 mph to drag. Modern physicists who have adjusted that reading to current release-point methodology estimate Johnson’s actual fastball was around 93 to 94 mph, hard for the era, but not “Big Train” legendary. The catch: Remington measured only a single ballistic test pitch, not in-game velocity, and Johnson likely threw harder with adrenaline in real games.
Bob Feller’s 1946 measurement is even more complicated. The Cleveland ace was tested by an Army Signal Corps device that timed his pitch crossing a paper screen at home plate, producing a reading of 98.6 mph. A separate, disputed test reportedly clocked him at 107.6 mph, but that figure has been challenged for decades and most historians consider it apocryphal. The radar gun era began in the mid-1970s, when JUGS Sports adapted the police radar gun for baseball. Nolan Ryan’s famous 100.9 mph reading on August 20, 1974, was the first widely publicized in-game radar measurement, but it was taken 10 feet in front of home plate. Adjusted to modern Statcast methodology, which measures at the release point about 50 feet from home, Ryan’s pitch would register approximately 108 mph today. That is why old-school fans claim Ryan was the hardest thrower ever, and they have legitimate physics behind them.
The legend of Steve Dalkowski (and the old-timers we’ll never know)
Steve Dalkowski never threw a pitch in an MLB regular-season game. The Baltimore Orioles farmhand pitched professionally from 1957 to 1965 with a fastball that hitters, scouts, and coaches universally agreed was the fastest they had ever seen. Estimates put his fastball at 105 to 110 mph at its peak, but his wildness (he walked nearly 1,400 batters in under 1,000 minor-league innings) kept him out of the majors. He was the inspiration for the “Nuke” LaLoosh character in Bull Durham. The Orioles tried to measure his pitch in 1958 with a primitive Air Force device, but he had to throw 600 pitches for it to register a reading, clocking 93.5 mph after pitching all day, which suggests well over 100 mph when fresh. We will never know his true speed.
The same applies to other pre-radar legends. Sandy Koufax was never officially clocked, but contemporaries swore his fastball was unhittable in his early-1960s prime. Sudden Sam McDowell, J.R. Richard, and Goose Gossage all earned reputations as elite fireballers with no reliable measurement data. Even Joel Zumaya (officially 104.8 mph for Detroit in 2006) threw in the early radar era when methodology was inconsistent. Comparing their best pitches to Chapman’s 105.8 mph in 2010, or Misiorowski’s 105.5 today, is not quite apples to apples because of how the technology evolved.
Final Word
Aroldis Chapman still holds the official record at 105.8 mph and owns most of the fastest pitches of the Statcast era, but the story is changing fast. Jacob Misiorowski’s 105.5 mph fastball on June 26, 2026, did something no one had done before: it put a starting pitcher into the 105 mph club, a place previously reserved for one-inning relief specialists. Sitting at 101 mph deep into starts and climbing nearly 2 mph in a single season, the 24-year-old is now within a fraction of the all-time record, and trending upward.
The “fastest pitcher ever” debate still depends on methodology, by modern Statcast it is Chapman, by adjusted historical readings it might be Nolan Ryan, by scouting legend it could be Steve Dalkowski. But for the first time, the most compelling name in the conversation is a starter. We are in the golden era of velocity, and Misiorowski may be its defining figure. For more on baseball’s rarest pitching feats, see our breakdown of the most strikeouts in one game.