Francisco Alvarez is dreamy, Casey Mize is streamy and other fantasy baseball takeaways

In an era in which baseball can feel like a solved problem — every physical property of every thrown or batted ball is precisely measured in real time — it’s pretty awesome when someone comes along and simply melts our brains.Just have a look at this sorcery from Houston Astros starter Tatsuya Imai: Tatsuya Imai’s Wrong Way Slider. 🤪 13 inches arm side run. pic.twitter.com/sFYc1Hm1tQ — Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 4, 2026The pitching community seems not to have settled on a name for that thing just yet. It moves like a Wiffle screwball. Pitch tracking struggles to classify it. Whether you refer to it as a “wrong-way” or “backwards” or “reverse” or “gyro slider,” it’s a freaky demon pitch. Batters are flummoxed. Science is flummoxed. How can you not love this game?Advertisement