Matt Brash annihilating Aaron Judge with sliders is therapy for Mariners fans

Seattle Mariners fans are going to want to save this page for later use as a pick-me-up. It could be for this, that, or the other thing, but the point is that this is where you'll always be able to find Matt Brash sentencing Aaron Judge to death by sliders.

It was a pressure situation when Judge stepped to the plate to face Brash at T-Mobile Park on Tuesday night. The Mariners were clinging to a 1-0 lead over the New York Yankees with one out in the eighth inning, and Judge had a runner on first. If he took Brash deep, it would have flipped the script.

Whether or not you saw it in real time, what happened next is worth revisiting in all its three-pitch glory:

Slider for strike one. Slider for strike two. Slider for strike three. Thus went Judge back to the dugout, resulting in a scoreless inning for Brash and, albeit after a few twists and turns, a 2-1 win the Mariners.

Matt Brash proved he can still make even the most dangerous hitters look silly with his slider

In the annals of Brash turning brand-name hitters into mush with his slider, his ownership of Judge on Tuesday is probably not his greatest feat.

There was, after all, that time on Opening Day of the 2023 season when he faced Cleveland Guardians third baseman José Ramírez and literally took his legs out from underneath him with a slider (and yes, it was actually a slider and not a curveball) for a swinging third strike:

That was typical of the slider Brash featured that year as he broke out as a star in Seattle's bullpen. He fanned 107 batters in 70.2 innings, with his slider accounting for 71 of those punchouts. It truly earned its reputation as the "filthiest" pitch in Major League Baseball.

“It moves so much,” Cal Raleigh said in 2023, per Adam Jude of The Seattle Times. “It starts away and ends up on your back foot. It’s not a pitch you want to hit it. Even if you do, it’s probably not going to end well.”

We all know what happened next. Brash missed all of 2024 and the early portion of 2025 recovering from Tommy John surgery. And as nice as it was to welcome him back on May 3, his early appearances didn't inspire much in the way of confidence.

Things have begun to change in Brash's last two outings. He's fanned four of the eight batters he's faced, with both of his strikeouts on Tuesday coming on the slider.

The ones he threw to Judge were pure filth, and they simply had to be to get him out. As we wrote about on Monday, the two-time AL MVP came into the series wielding an impossibly hot bat, having slammed 65 home runs with a 249 wRC+ over his last 162 games.

The Mariners have a chance to win the series on Wednesday (first pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. PT) precisely because they have contained Judge. He does have three hits in the series, but he has yet to clear the fence. (He also doesn't have four hits because he found out the hard way about Julio Rodríguez's "No Fly Zone.")

As for Brash, two good games isn't quite enough for anyone to be proclaiming that he's back to being his old self. But he sure looks close, and that's enough for other elite hitters around MLB to be on notice.