Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports
We’re back at it again with another batch of baseball lingo. As usual, I encourage you to go check out previous installments of this series to catch up on what you missed or familiarize yourself with the premise of these primers. You can find each of them by clicking on each individual part for its corresponding article:
- PITCHING: Part One and Part Two
- HITTING: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three
At the end of my last piece, I hinted at moving beyond four-seamers, and digging into the types of pitches that typically make up the rest of a pitcher’s arsenal. But as soon as I sat down to start cataloging the ways that secondary pitch shapes are described, the vastness of the array of breaking balls and offspeed offerings throughout professional baseball quickly became overwhelming. That is largely due to how pitching practices and preferences vary from player to player, and how those individual approaches impact how each respective arsenal is most effectively used.
Asking a major league pitcher how to throw a slider would be like asking a world-renowned chef how to make scrambled eggs. They probably wouldn’t actually answer the question of how to make scrambled eggs, but rather, they’d tell you how they make their scrambled eggs. And those preparation processes would vary drastically.
Similarly, pitchers’ grips and releases of their secondary offerings also vary greatly from pitcher to pitcher. Depending on what a pitcher is naturally adept at, what he prefers, or even the length of his fingers or his overall grip strength can dictate how a he throws a given breaking ball or offspeed pitch. As a result, despite being classified as the same type, the shape of a pitch from one hurler to the next can look so different as to hardly seem comparable.
So, before we dig into describing the shapes of specific pitches, and the way those shapes are created by a given pitcher, let’s boil down these classifications to their essential elements – the eggs, heat, and perpetual movement, as it were.
Secondary pitches, while individually unique, can also be broken down into basic elements. Namely, we can boil them down to the type of spin a pitcher applies to the ball, the angle of the spin axis he creates in doing so, and the degree of supination or pronation in his release that accomplishes these distinct spin attributes. Of course, there’s much more to pitch design than these elements, but understanding them is a great place to start. So, let’s jump in!
Spin Axis
The spin axis is the central point that the ball is spinning around. In other words (apparently, I’m on a food metaphor kick right now), if the ball were a candy apple, and you wanted to use it to illustrate the spin of a certain pitch, the spin axis would be where you would hold the stick. It’s very rare for a ball to have perfect forms of any type of spin, with spin axes at perfect parallels or perpendiculars. Instead, variation comes from the pitcher’s arm slot, release point, supination/pronation (which I’ll discuss in a moment), and many other personalized characteristics. Those variations, among other factors, influence the degree to which a pitch’s shape digresses from pure north/south or east/west movement.
Spin Types
Backspin: Michael Kopech’s Four-Seamer
On a ball with pure backspin, the spin axis would be in the exact center of either side of the ball, horizontal to the ground. As mentioned in Pitching, Part 2: Backspin is created by the pitcher letting the ball roll off his fingertips. Kopech keeps his fingers behind the ball upon release, and the seams move upward across the front of the ball as it travels toward the plate.
Gyroscopic Spin: Victor Vodnik’s Slider
Gyroscopic spin is the term used to describe clockwise or counterclockwise spin. On a ball with pure gyroscopic spin, the spin axis would be in the exact center of the front and back of the ball, horizontal to the ground. To create this bullet-like spin, Vodnik moves his fingers along the side of the ball as he releases it.
Topspin: Ryan Cusick’s Curveball
Topspin, also referred to as “forward spin” or sometimes “tumble,” is the inverse of backspin. On a ball with pure topspin, the spin axis would also be in the exact center of either side of the ball, horizontal to the ground, but spinning in the opposite direction. As the ball travels toward the plate, the seams move downward across the front of it. This requires Cusick to move his fingers around the side of the ball even more than what is required for gyroscopic spin, to the point where his fingers are moving downward across the front of the ball as he releases it.
Supination vs. Pronation
Supination and pronation refer to the direction and degree to which a pitcher rotates his wrist and forearm. Applying supination or pronation to a pitch will most often sacrifice some amount of velocity in favor of some amount of movement. The exact type of movement, and the effect on velocity, depends on how the supinated or pronated release is being utilized – i.e. what type of spin it’s creating on the ball, and on what spin axis.
Supination: Hunter Greene’s Slider
Supination is when a pitcher rotates his forearm such that his knuckles move toward the outside of the ball, and his palm moves toward an upward position. This creates glove-side cut on a pitch. Pitches that feature supination include cutters, sliders, and curveballs, to name a few.
Pronation: Cristian Javier’s Circle Change
Pronation is the inverse of supination. When a pitcher pronates his arm, his wrist and forearm rotate in the other direction, finishing with his palm facing away from his body or toward the ground. This creates arm-side run on a pitch. A non-comprehensive list of pronated pitches includes two-seamers, circle changeups, and screwballs.
Again, we’re only talking about the fundamentals here, when it comes to understanding pitch design. The fun part occurs when these elements are mixed and matched to create different types of pitches. Now that we’ve defined and illustrated our terms, we can move on to how these terms combine and commingle to make up a pitcher’s full arsenal, as well as which pitches are most and least open to interpretation. If sliders are scrambled eggs, for example, then knuckleballs are poached eggs; there’s only very slight variation in how pitchers throw them, and the output should be virtually the same from pitcher to pitcher, with mistakes being easy to spot. I look forward to digging into these comparisons and more in installments to come!
