Add The California Post on Google Most pitchers need one pitch at 103.6 mph to create a career highlight. Edgardo Henriquez is starting to treat it like an appointment.
The 24-year-old Dodgers reliever opened the bottom of the eighth inning Saturday by firing a front-door sinker past a frozen Dillon Dingler. The pitch caught the edge for strike three, prompting an immediate challenge from the Tigers catcher.
“Got him looking! A 104-mile-per-hour sinker,” the announcer said.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Edgardo Henriquez throws against the Detroit Tigers during a baseball game on Saturday, August 29, 2026, in Detroit. AP Photo/Paul Sancya The automated ball-strike review confirmed the call. Statcast supplied the precise measurements: 103.6 mph with 2,439 rpm.
MLB classified it as the fastest Dodgers strikeout pitch on record, with pitch tracking dating to 2008. It briefly jolted an otherwise frustrating 2-1 loss to Detroit.
He entered Saturday responsible for 22 of the fastest tracked pitches thrown by a Dodger and 14 of the franchise’s 16 fastest strikeout pitches. The sinker tied his career high, first reached June 2 against the Diamondbacks.
His normal velocity explains why the singular bursts barely seem singular. Baseball Savant lists Henriquez’s average 2026 sinker at 100.8 mph and his four-seamer at 100.5. Most relievers chase triple digits. Henriquez lives there.
Edgardo Henriquez of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitches in the seventh inning against the Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, August 16, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images In August 2025, his 103.3 mph four-seamer to Ryan O’Hearn matched Jonathan Broxton’s Dodgers tracking-era record. One year later, that benchmark resembles an early chapter.
Velocity alone did not make Saturday’s pitch effective. Henriquez located the sinker on the edge, leaving Dingler enough doubt to challenge but not enough to change the result.
The Dodgers could not turn the milestone into a win as their late-season problems continued to stack up. Henriquez nevertheless supplied a scoreless eighth and another reminder that the extraordinary has become his baseline.
The next 103 mph pitch may arrive without a record attached. That is how wild velocity becomes ho-hum history: Henriquez reaches these numbers so often that the surprise is no longer the speed, only the new label it receives.
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