Mets pitcher Miguel Castro's ridiculous slider sent Ketel Marte airborne on a hopeless swing

Oh my ...

I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll mention it again. But Major League Baseball has seen a drastic increase in strikeouts the past few years because pitchers are throwing harder than ever before with more movement than ever before.

When you’re in the batter’s box and being forced to account for both 100 mph fastballs and 90 mph breaking pitches, it’s almost preposterous that a player can even make contact. But it does happen because big leaguers are that ridiculously good at baseball.

Still, there are often reminders of just how difficult it is to hit big-league pitching. And for the Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte, Wednesday’s at-bat against the Mets’ Miguel Castro was one of those moments.

Miguel Castro just collected a soul pic.twitter.com/hrwg6w84lX

— Master flip (@Masterflip_) June 2, 2021

During that seventh-inning at-bat, a first-pitch slider in had Marte in such a wild swing that he actually left his feet and nearly fell right on his face.

That needs to be seen again:

You wanna see a dead body? pic.twitter.com/u5D97E85S6

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 2, 2021

There’s really no coming back from that one — even if Marte tried. He would ground out later in the at-bat in Arizona’s 7-6 loss.