The Fastest Pitch in MLB History

The fastest pitch in MLB history was thrown by Aroldis Chapman, who hit 105.8 mph against the San Diego Padres on September 24, 2010. No pitcher has been clocked faster, and Chapman owns nearly every reading at the very top of the all-time list.

Velocity is one of the few baseball records that keeps creeping upward as training and tracking improve, yet the ceiling has proven stubborn: for more than a decade, no one has topped Chapman. Here is the full leaderboard of the fastest pitches ever recorded, the flamethrowers chasing the mark, and why the numbers are sometimes debated. All figures are as of the 2025 season.

The record: Aroldis Chapman at 105.8 mph

Chapman, a left-hander from Cuba, was a rookie for the Reds when he uncorked a 105.8 mph fastball late in the 2010 season. The pitch was so fast it seemed almost unhittable, and it announced Chapman as a different kind of arm. Over the following years he repeatedly reached 105 mph, something no other pitcher has done even once with certainty.

His dominance of the leaderboard is total: most of the fastest pitches ever recorded belong to him. That is why, even as a new generation of throwers emerges, 105.8 mph remains the number to beat.

The full leaderboard of the fastest pitches

The table below ranks the fastest recorded pitches in MLB history.

Speed (mph)	Pitcher	Team	Date
105.8	Aroldis Chapman	Cincinnati Reds	Sep 24, 2010
105.7	Aroldis Chapman	Chicago Cubs	Jul 18, 2016
105.5	Ben Joyce	Los Angeles Angels	Sep 3, 2024
105.4	Aroldis Chapman	Chicago Cubs	Jul 18, 2016
105.2	Aroldis Chapman	Chicago Cubs	Jul 22, 2016
105.0	Jordan Hicks	St. Louis Cardinals	May 20, 2018

Chapman appears five times in the top six, an extraordinary display of sustained velocity. The lone interloper is Ben Joyce, whose 105.5 mph in 2024 is the fastest pitch of the pure Statcast era and a sign that the next challenger to Chapman may already be here.

The new generation of flamethrowers

For years Chapman stood alone, but hard throwing is now more common than ever. Ben Joyce, Jhoan Duran, Jordan Hicks and Mason Miller all sit in the 104-to-105 mph range, and average fastball velocity across the league keeps rising. None has yet matched Chapman’s peak, but the gap is closing, and a 106 mph pitch feels like a matter of time rather than possibility.

Elite velocity is a big reason pitchers rack up whiffs, the same arms that climb our leaderboard for the most strikeouts by a pitcher, and it fuels the dominance behind the most no-hitters.

Why the record is debated

Not everyone agrees the numbers are perfectly comparable. Chapman’s 105.8 mph came from the older PITCHf/x system in 2010, while today’s Statcast measures velocity at the moment of release, which can produce slightly different readings. Purists debate whether the eras can be matched directly, but the record books still list 105.8 mph as the fastest pitch ever thrown.

For the flip side of pitching, the raw power hitters generate against these arms, see our leaderboard on the longest home run ever hit, and for the endurance test of extreme baseball, the longest games in MLB history.

Why the record matters

Velocity is baseball at its most primal: one pitcher, one ball, and the outer limit of what a human arm can do. Chapman pushed that limit to 105.8 mph and has held it for over a decade. As a new wave of throwers closes in, his record stands as the benchmark for pure speed.

The short version: Aroldis Chapman threw the fastest pitch in MLB history at 105.8 mph in 2010, and he owns most of the top of the list. As of the 2025 season, Ben Joyce’s 105.5 mph in 2024 leads the current generation chasing the mark.