Part 3: Changeups

In part three of my series on the main genres of pitch types and their individual "species" therein, we will discuss the changeup. 

This pitch is the simplest one to explain after fastballs and follows logically when one thinks about how baseball is played at its most simple levels

I imagine that when baseball was first played, most of the pitchers simply tried to throw the ball by the batter. Naturally, this works great if you can throw hard and actually get it by a hitter. If you can't generate that kind of velocity, you needed to be able to trick your opponent. That's where the changeup comes in.

The changeup is a pitch thrown with the same kind of delivery as a fastball with at a reduced rate of speed and downward break (occasionally with a bit of lateral movement). The hitter, reading the pitch out of the pitcher's hand, will see fastball and swing accordingly. Unfortunately for him, the pitch is often late to the swing and messes up the timing, which is crucial. When done well, it can create moments like these:

Lance McCullers, Houston Astros

Zack Greinke, Los Angeles Dodgers

Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals

The Strasburg example is especially good- you can clearly see the three-fingered grip on top of the ball. This is the most common grip for a changeup in baseball, but there is a second kind that breaks down and away, called the circle change. It's gripped similarly to the standard changeups above, but the pitcher uses his index finger and thumb to create a small circle (like the kind when you are making an "a-ok" sign). This imparts a different kind of movement.

Here is a dual-layered gif of the Seattle Mariners' all-world pitching stud, Felix Hernandez throwing his fastball (the yellow dot) and circle change (the green dot) at the same time. Though it might seem incredible, these pitches are thrown with the exact same amount of arm speed. Also note how the ball is released from the exact same point. His fastball was clocked at 94 MPH. The changeup was clocked in the high-80's. It might not seem like much, but in the fractions of a second a hitter has to make up his mind on the "swing or not?" debate, it's huge. And in Hernandez's case, usually lethal to opposing batters.

Carlos Martinez, St. Louis Cardinals

The last, most curious pitch of all is the knuckleball. This pitch is unique in that it is thrown with no spin at all. Every other pitch I've talked about at length is thrown with spin- this is what creates break. In the knuckleball's case, this lack of spin gives the pitch an erratic, unpredictable movement.

To throw a pitch with no spin, the pitcher grips the ball with his knuckles (if his hands are small) or with the fingernails digging into it, using the thumb for support. The results are usually odd and oftentimes amusing. This pitch is very uncommon in the majors because it is hard to control, hard for catchers to receive, and hard for umpires to call balls and strikes on. The most popular practitioner of the knuckleball today is R.A. Dickey of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Note how the ball just seems to "float" to the plate and tumbles, rather than spins. I think it looks like a slow-motion video of heavenly bodies floating in zero gravity

Another one for good measure.

That's it. I could have perhaps brought up a couple of other pitches like the screwball or forkball but those pitches are so rarely seen nowadays that finding a gif would be nigh impossible.

Thanks for reading!

The Uninitiated's Guide to Pitches, Part 2: Breaking Balls

If you missed part 1, head over there first
Link to Part One

As promised, here's part two of my series on pitch types in baseball, with examples!

We just covered the 5 major types of fastballs- the four-seamer, two-seamer, sinker, cutter, and splitter. These pitches are usually thrown on the Major League level from 85 mph (at the absolute slowest) to 100 MPH, depending on the pitcher's style, ability, and raw talent.

Now, being able to throw 100 is great and all, but like I said in Part 1, these guys are facing pro hitters. Aroldis Chapman- owner of the league's fastest fastball, gave up a hit to the Nationals' young superstar, Bryce Harper, on a 102 MPH fastball this year. The bottom line is simple: pitchers cannot live on gas alone. They must have complimentary pitches.

So, what's the best ways to counter a hard, straight fastball? Naturally, you add break and take speed off to screw up a hitter's timing. That's where breaking balls come in.

A lot of announcers have a lot of different terms for the different kinds of breaking balls you'll see in a game, but in the interest of keeping it simple, I'm going to categorize them as a curveball or a slider.

With the exception of the fastball, the curveball is probably the most all-encompassing term in pitching for a type of pitch rather than a specific pitch. Just as an announcer might use the term fastball to refer to a cutter or a sinker or a four-seamer, he might use "curveball" to refer to a 12-6 curveball, a sweeping curveball, or any other type of pitch with breaking movement.

Curveballs have a variety of trajectories and breaks among pitchers. This is mostly influenced by the arm slot (the angle the pitcher's arm releases the ball from, relative to the ground) and release point of a given pitcher, which is in turn governed by how comfortable the pitcher is throwing the curveball. Additionally, any of these pitches with horizontal break will only move away from the pitcher's throwing arm. So, if a righthander throws it, it will break to his left. If a lefty throws it, it will break to his right. This goes for all breaking balls, except for one.

The most famous kind is the 12-6 curveball. This pitch is so named for its break. Imagine looking at a clock- the 12 is directly above the 6 and this pitch breaks by starting in a "12" position and drops all the way to the 6. It's a straight drop down, in short. 

Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers

You can see the break quite clearly in this clip. It should follow as no surprise that the man throwing it is considered the best in the sport currently. 

Garrett Richards, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

That's the classic 12-6 curveball. Straight drop, right through the strike zone, almost no horizontal break. Easy enough, right?

Other curveballs can feature plenty of horizontal break.

Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners

See how Hernandez's pitch drops and moves in to the hitter? Using the clock analogy from before, this looks like a 2-7 curveball. The term sweeping curveball is used to describe this one most commonly and is probably the best term if you want to clearly distinguish that a curve has a lot of lateral movement. 

Steven Matz, New York Mets

Curveballs fall across the spectrum as it relates to velocity, drop and side-to-side movement. Each one is unique to the pitcher that throws it. Here a few more for your interest.

There is a curious kind of curveball, called a knuckle curve, thrown when a pitcher grips the pitch with one of his fingers bent.

Dellin Betances, New York Yankees

Anthony Ranaudo, Texas Rangers

The next major kind of breaking pitch is the slider. Most professionals can throw both a slider and a curveball but almost all of them have a specific preference. Loosely defined a slider is a breaking pitch that tails laterally away from the pitcher (to the left if you throw righthanded, vice versa for lefties) but with more speed than a curveball.

Chris Sale, Chicago White Sox

Adam Ottavino, Colorado Rockies

Last, but most assuredly not least is a kind of hybrid pitch, called a slurve. As you could guess from its name, the slurve is the name of a pitch that a pitcher throws like a curveball, but with a slider's grip. The result is, predictably, a pitch that is one part curveball, one part slider. And it's almost impossible to identify unless you are facing it and/or have been expressly told by the pitcher that he throws a sluve and not simply a kind of sweeping curveball (see above).

Dellin Betances, New York Yankees

Corey Kluber, Cleveland Indians

That's it for breaking pitches!

Up next: changeups and other miscellaneous pitches!

The Uninitiated's Guide to Pitches, Part 1: Fastballs

So you're new to baseball- the world's simplest, hardest sport to master. While this may bother some who play another sport, I still contend hitting a round ball with a round bat is the hardest task in sports. The science and biomechanics of it- the amount of time and hand-eye coordination required to identify a pitch, decide where it will be, and ultimately choose to swing or not swing at it is one of the most difficult tasks in sport, right up there with men's tennis at the highest levels or playing goalie in the NHL.

In light of the difficulty faced by those who play the sport, it should come as no shock to the reader that the game itself is so full of nuances, intricacies, "unwritten rules," and other assorted quirks that it would appear to be almost too daunting to learn for a novice. This could not be farther from the truth. In spite of its difficulty and trickiness, baseball is at its core a children's game, played at its highest level by some of the world's finest athletes.

Most people know the rules of baseball in some form or another- maybe they gleaned it from many visits to a local ballpark with their dad (or mom). Maybe they played little league, high school, or fastpitch softball as they grew up. Maybe they figured it out from playing kickball or slowpitch softball in gym class. Maybe they learned it from watching on TV or playing a video game simulation of it. Either way and for all intents and purposes that this post will serve, the author assumes you know the rules and have a grasp of the basics of the sport. (Nine innings, three strikes you're out, four balls you walk, three outs per inning- the fundamentals.)

As intimated above, baseball can be a tricky, complex sport. And the trickiest, cleverest guys on the field, besides the catchers, are the guys on the mound- the pitcher. And they need to be. It is their job to make grown men fail at any even higher rate than they do typically. Consider: the all-time leader in on-base percentage (a stat measuring how often a hitter reaches base safely), Ted Williams, got on base an average of 48 times out of 100 throughout his illustrious, Hall of Fame-worthy career. And he's considered almost universally "the greatest hitter who ever lived." All that despite failing 52% of the time. And there are many more examples similar to Williams who were considered menaces to opposing pitchers, yet still failed more often compared to him!

The bottom line: all of these hitters are pros and they are facing the very best the world has to offer. What's a pitcher to do? He better have some good weapons to work with if he's going to attack these guys. Failure to do so will result in you having to find a new job. Luckily, baseball's 150-year history has seen plenty of pioneers who, as pitchers, developed, learned, and created a plethora of different pitchers as a way to bamboozle and befuddle these hitting machines.

To start off, let's agree on some vocabulary when it comes to pitching and pitch types ("pitches").

1. The term "break" refers to how much a pitch moves. This could be any pitch that has movement.

2. This movement is most important in the strike zone. Plenty of pitches that end up as home runs or hits moved either very fast or from one side to the other (as through across an x- or y-axis). Having late break or lots of it through the zone is what generates outs, which is what the pitcher wants.

I group pitches into 3 categories: fastballs, offspeed pitches (sometimes called breaking pitches or breaking balls, but this is inaccurate), and miscellaneous pitches- the ones you can't classify either way.

There are 4 distinct pitch types under the genre, if you will, of "fastball." The most common is easily the standard four-seam fastball, so named for its grip. This pitch is all about speed and relies very little on lateral movement. It can be thrown to overpower a hitter with pure speed or when a pitcher needs a strike, since it moves straight and is the easiest pitch to aim. The hardest one thrown to date in a MLB game was thrown in San Diego by current Reds relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman. It was clocked in at 105 MPH. In select cases when it's thrown well, this pitch can rise as it approaches the hitter.

Here are some examples of the 4-seam fastball doing its evil work.

Craig Kimbrel, San Diego Padres
Note the rising action as it reaches the hitter.

Michael Wacha, St. Louis Cardinals

The next variant of fastball is the two-seam fastball. It's gripped differently than a 4-seamer (hence the name), and this pitch breaks towards to the throwing arm of the pitcher who throws it. In short, if a righthander throws it, it will break to the pitcher's right. Same thing for lefties- it will break to the left.
Some pitchers throw a variant of this pitch called a sinker, which breaks away and down at the same time with good amount of speed to it, giving the impression that it is sinking through the strike zone. Many baseball announcers, fans, and analysts will use the term interchangeably. For purposes of learning, it is best to remember that a two-seam fastball has more horizontal break (sometimes called "cutting" or "break") with downward movement (sink), but a sinker has more downward motion. If that doesn't make sense, I am sure these gifs will help. The sinker's primary function to is get the hitter to hit the ball on to the ground in an attempt to avoid fly balls. That is why having downward motion is so important- it creates momentum that a round bat can't change without hitting the pitch from below the baseball to create lift. Pitchers who throw sinkers that don't sink enough or start them too high in the zone usually don't last in the majors and give up tons of home runs and extra base hits.

Marcus Stroman, Toronto Blue Jays

And here's a sinker:

Zach Britton, Baltimore Orioles

Don't worry if they look similar. A lot of pitchers have perfected the 2-seam fastball to make it move laterally with a lot of sink on it. In the latter, note that the pitch a lot of drop when it gets to the plate, more so than Stroman's pitch.



Another very common, very popular fastball in today's game is the cut fastball or the "cutter."
This pitch is gripped like a 4-seam fastball but is altered by slightly rotating the thumb inwards and the two top fingers to the outside to create more spin. This makes the pitch move away from the pitchers' handedness. If he's a righty, this pitch breaks to the left. If he's a lefty, it breaks to the right. It is sometimes confused for a slider (more on those later) seeing as both pitches are thrown from similar arm angles and move in similar directions. A slider is usually slower and has more break, which is how I differentiate them.

Jon Lester, Chicago Cubs (seen here with the Boston Red Sox)

Mark Melancon, Pittsburgh Pirates

The last variant of the fastball the average baseball fan should know is the split-finger fastball, or the splitter. This pitch is thrown when the pitcher grips the ball between their index and middle fingers. In truth, this pitch is more offspeed than it is "fastball" but the name includes the term 'fastball' so I am including it here to avoid confusion. This pitch is closely related to the changeup and operates very similarly. When thrown properly, it will look like a fastball to the hitter, but "tumble" or drop when it reaches the plate, causing a lot of moments like this for hitters:

Masahiro Tanaka, New York Yankees

Hishashi Iwakuma, Seattle Mariners

Due to resolution issues, I am going to break this into several parts.

Up next, breaking balls!