Tampa Bay Rays: Oliver Drake broke the laws of Physics

Tampa Bay Rays reliever Oliver Drake broke several laws of physics when he struck out Leury Garcia with an incredibly nasty split changeup.

We have grown accustomed to hitters flailing helplessly after being fooled.  Though every now and then, you see something that makes you go WTF.  Tampa Bay Rays reliever Oliver Drake provided us one of those WTF moments over the weekend.

Let’s take a look at Drake’s pitch that went viral.

Drake’s body fell off to the left and the pitch, a wicked 84 MPH changeup, circumnavigated the strike zone and ended up in the right-handed batter’s box. Leury Garcia, clearly as confused as the rest of us, didn’t even come close on what could hardly be classified as a swing.

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I’m not sure about you, but I have watched this video 100 times and I’m simply baffled.  There are two parts about this that are downright ridiculous.

First off, Drake’s delivery looks like a medieval trebuchet suited for knocking down walls as opposed to striking out batters.  At the point where Drake releases the ball, his arm slot is vertical and he is falling towards the first base side.

The other incredible part is the pitch itself.  At release, Drake’s arm is even with the chalk on the left-handed batter’s box.  Over 60′ 6″, that changeup went from the chalk to chalk.  Disgusting, Mesmerizing, Should Be Illegal, are several adjectives one could use to describe that pitch.

Poor Leury Garcia was just trying to help his team out and meanwhile is on the receiving end of one of the nastiest pitches that you’ll ever see.

Side note, it is good to see Oliver Drake featured in an article about how nasty he is instead of another MLBTR post about him being DFA’d by the Tampa Bay Rays or acquired by another team.

It just goes to show you how great MLB pitchers are.  They are way better than we could ever dream of being.

It’s easy to sit there as an armchair hitter and say “I could hit that” or “Why did he swing at that”, well remember most of us struggled against High school and College level pitching and that we stand no chance against these guys.

While Oliver Drake broke the laws of physics, a bunch of other pitchers were showing off some specialties this weekend.

Marcus Stroman dropping down and messing with timing, LOL good luck with that.

Clayton Kershaw, making people dance with a slider.

And of lastly enjoy the Cutter from the Legend, Hall of Famer, and GOAT, Mariano Rivera