You're A Wizard, Jordan!

Want to see the most unhittable pitch on Planet Earth?

The day is April 1st, 2022 CE. April Fool’s Day. 24 hours when you can trust nothing and no one, not even your own eyes, not even your own mother. Everything is to be taken with a Salt Bae sprinkle and more grains of sand than a Muirfield pot bunker. All that being said, what we are about to show you, as unbelievable as it may appear, is 100% real … we think.

Behold the new most unhittable pitch in baseball, which Cardinals hurler Jordan Hicks unveiled on Thursday night. Clocking in at 102 mph on the gun with 18 inches of run, the cutter (super slider?) makes Jazz Chisolm look like he just saw a ghost ... of his own career. We’ve seen plenty of nasty sliders in the dirt over the years—plenty or triple-digit cheese and curveballs that send batters ducking for cover. But this pitch somehow takes the most dominant aspects of all three and rolls them into a one strikeout calzone. It’s beautiful and terrifying (and delicious) all at once.

It’s also a reminder of just how dominant Jordan Hicks could be if he could stay healthy. But that’s age-old Catch-22 with hard-throwing aces: No matter how superhuman the stuff may seem, there’s always a human throwing it, and eventually the mechanics and repetition take their toll. God forbid, we could finally be seeing Jacob deGrom’s body starting to catch up with his abilities, and Hicks, eight years deGrom’s junior, has already been feeling that strain for years.

If he can stay off the DL for a full season and still throw like this, however, look the heck out. We’re talking Pedro ‘99 stuff down in St. Louis. Batters, consider yourselves warned.