Slider:
Throw the ball like a football pass, with the wrist cocked
at a 90 degree angle. The ball should curve slightly down and to
the left. Note: The slider ball is not recommended for players
under age 18 -- some coaches and trainers state 21 and over. Damage
to forearm connective tissue can be serious if the pitch is thrown
too often.
The hard slider or short curve, as I used to call it, has a certain
amount of lateral break and a certain amount of down break. It's a
faster pitch than a curve but it's slower than a fastball, and it has a
shorter break than a curveball. If you judged the pitch by miles per
hour, and a pitcher's fast ball is, say, 90 mph, and his curveball is 80
mph, he would want the slider to be in the 86- to 87-mph range. The
harder you throw a slider, the shorter and quicker the break you can get
on it. The release technique is between a curve and a fastball.
Some pitchers release the ball off their middle finger. I throw my
slider off my index finger. I try to feel like I'm wiping over the
outside of the ball as I snap it, in order to give it some backspin and
sidespin.
Change-up:
In
my opinion, the changeup is the second most deadly pitch. The proven and
tried 95 mph fastball - the heater - is the BEST pitch. Outside of
pitchers like Greg Maddux, the greatest pitchers are known for their
great fastball (Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens,
John Smoltz, Big Jack Morris etc.) However, look at Greg Maddux, Tom
Glavine, and Pedro Martinez they dominate games with the changeup. Why?
Well, they can locate it wherever they want to and can throw it on any
pitch count. Full count, hitter is expecting a fastball and he gets a
fastball arm speed changeup and swings right through it or dribbles it
back to the infield for an easy out - man a thing of beauty.
The key to an effective changeup is mixing in a "sneaky"
fastball. Nolan Ryan has said that he became a better pitcher when he
learned the changeup - it helped keep hitters off balance. Remember
the key to hitting is timing -- so the key to pitching is upsetting that
timing. So you dont have to be overpowering to be successful at
any level, just have the ability to upset the hitters timing.
There
are some difficult aspects to throwing the changeup. It can be taught
several ways, but the most important thing to realize is that the grip
of the changeup is meant for your wrist to be able to break up (like in
"high-five") and not flip down as you normally do with your
fastball. The reason you release with a high-five action is to put
pressure on top of the ball - important for down and away movement.
The
concept then of the changeup is to let the ball come off your fingers.
Your wrist then should be in the lead (remember high-five with fingers
pointing up and not at the batter) when you begin to release the
baseball. As your hand comes through behind your wrist, the ball is
forced away from your body by your fingers. The key here is to make sure
you have a down and away motion with your arm. This causes the ball to
have a heavy backspin as well as to break away from a right-handed
batter assuming the pitcher is right-handed.
This
backspin on the ball creates negative force and slows it down as it cuts
through the air. Key: Remember to keep your arm speed the same as
your fastball. You DO NOT want to slow your arm speed down to slow
the ball down.
The grip can be tricky and is important for accuracy and effectiveness.
Whether you use a circle change, a three finger change or a palm grip,
the ball must lie or rest on the balls of your fingers (meaning where
your fingers are attached to your palm). You dont want to have the
ball jammed up in your hand because that makes the pitch harder to
control. Keeping your pinky finger on the side of the ball helps
immensely.
Always concentrate on letting and feeling the ball come off the fingers
in a down and away motion. Use a two seam grip for more downward
movement.
Tip:
The arm should be long in the front.
Tip:
The hand should finish with waving motion.
Tip:
Spin the ball with back-spin out of your hand. .
Tip:
Remember to keep your arm speed the same as your fastball.
Tip:
Remember the key to hitting is timing -- so the key to pitching is
upsetting that timing.
Knuckleball:
The most
mysterious pitch in baseball is the knuckleball. It's a hard pitch to
master, and its behavior is unpredictable. Tom Candiotti, celebrated
knuckleball pitcher for the Oakland A's, describes it this way:
"It's a strange pitch. You throw the pitch so there's little or no
spin at all to it. And I guess when you do that . . . when you throw a
ball that has little or no rotation on it . . . the ball . . . I don't
know if it's wind or something . . . but it makes it move certain ways
-- up, down, around. Sometimes you throw it in circles."
The ideal
knuckleball rotates about a quarter of a revolution on its way to the
plate. Without the stabilizing gyroscopic effect of spinning, the ball
becomes aerodynamically unstable, and the raised seams create an uneven
flow of air over the surface of the ball, pushing it one way or another.
"There are
only two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of
them works." But it is a tough pitch to throw, and because the ball
moves so slowly, if it doesn't "knuckle," it's more than
likely to end up in the bleachers.
Knucklecurve:
A
hybrid between the knuckleball and the curve, this pitch is slower than
a normal curve and takes a sudden drop at the plate.
It's hard to control and not used often, but it can have devastating
effect on hitters.
Sinker:
A sinker as it is thrown in the higher levels is usually a two-seam
fastball (index and middle fingers along and over the narrow seams,
thumb underneath on the horseshoe seam). To get good sink, you have to
throw it hard and low in the zone with a good downward angle (if you get
under the ball at release, it won't sink). Some pitchers move one or
both fingers slightly inward from the seams to get more sinking action.
One version, which some people call the "Little League
sinker," actually has the fingers together in the middle of the
smooth cover between the narrow seams. This pitch usually drops sharply
but is slow and difficult to control. If you have good arm action, the
basic two-seam grip should give you all the sink you need. Just a few of
inches of sink on a two-seamer will yield many ground balls. Experiment
with variations on the basic two-seam fastball grip and see what works
for you.
There are also
several versions of the cut fastball. The basic idea is to throw a
fastball but get a slight amount of side spin that makes the ball move
in or out a few inches. You do this by moving your fastball grip
(usually the 4-seam fastball grip) slightly off-center. Some pitchers
bring the thumb slightly up the inside of the ball and the index and
middle fingers slightly toward the outside. This gives you a pitch
somewhere between a fastball and a slider, and, thrown properly, that's
how the pitch will move, like a very tight slider. For young pitchers,
though, there is a tendency to turn the hand too much toward the slider
position, getting a "doorknob" action with the hand that can
stress the elbow. I prefer to have the pitcher leave the thumb directly
under the ball and move only the fingers slightly left or right,
depending on which way you want to cut the ball. As you release it,
think "fastball," and spin the ball hard with your middle and
index fingers, just as you would the fastball. If you're a righthanded
pitcher holding the ball slightly off-center to the outside part of the
ball, the pitch should move a few inches away from a righthanded
hitter--just enough to get it away from the barrell of the bat. Unless
you have a fairly high arm angle (throw "over the top") it
will be harder to learn to make the ball move the other way, but try it.
Just offset the fingers slightly to the inside, and throw with fastball
action.
IMHO, the cut
fastball and the sinker have the same goal: to make the hitter hit the
ball without getting the meat of the bat on it. Both pitches will be
more effective if you first establish the fastball. Then, when you throw
the sinker or cutter, the hitter will see what looks like the same
fastball arm and hand action, and will not be expecting the ball to
move.
Forkball:
The forkball,
also known as a splitter or split-finger fastball, is an interesting
pitch. You jam the ball between your first two fingers as hard as you
can and deliver it with the same action as a fastball, with the wrist
coming straight over from 12 to 6 o'clock. The ball travels with a lot
of velocity, but with a tumbling kind of rotation. The rotation slows
down as the ball approaches the plate, and if delivered correctly, the
bottom kind of falls out of it.
It all revolves
around the ball:
When you pick
up a baseball, it immediately suggests its purpose: to be thrown fast
and with considerable accuracy. The pitcher, with his dance-like windup,
prepares to do exactly that by transferring momentum from his body to
the ball. To appreciate why this is necessary, try throwing a ball
without moving your feet; it's difficult to throw it very far or very
hard, but a forward step makes throwing much easier. So during the
windup, the pitcher moves his entire body weight back behind the
pitching rubber. Then he thrusts it forward to deliver the pitch.
This transfer
of momentum from body to ball involves a biomechanical principle called
sequential summation of movement. According to this principle, the
largest body masses move first, followed by progressively smaller ones,
in much the same way a multi-stage booster rocket jettisons a satellite
into space: the large booster starts the process, is jettisoned, then is
followed by the burning and jettisoning of progressively smaller and
faster stages, until finally the small satellite is released at high
speed. In baseball, the pitcher drives first with his legs, then his
hips, shoulders, arm, wrist and fingers. As each part approaches full
extension, the next part in the sequence begins to move, efficiently
transferring momentum in a whip-like action. Proper timing is necessary
to produce speed and accuracy, and to avoid strain and injury.
A pitcher's
body rotates around the foot he keeps planted firmly on the mound. The
ball, held overhead in his extended arm, is like a rock whirling on the
end of a string. Just as a twirling rock on a long string has more
angular momentum than the same rock on a short string (that is, it's
more likely to travel farther and faster), the ball in the hands of a
tall pitcher can be launched with more speed. (Fastball pitchers are
traditionally lanky fellows.) And since the pitcher actually steps
downhill, moving off the crest of the mound as he throws the ball, the
height of the mound also affects the force of the pitch.
Baseball
centers around the (seemingly) eternal struggle between pitcher and
batter, and each uses physics, albeit intuitively, to gain a slim
advantage over the other in determining the fate of the game's center of
interest -- the ball.
