Pitchers who can throw a fastball 90 mph or better are a dime a dozen in professional baseball. In addition, it is not unusual to find strong high school baseball programs with several pitchers whose fastballs register 85-90 mph on the radar gun. Accomplished hitters, from high school through the major leagues, can hit the fastball, and it is rare for a pitcher in professional baseball to overpower good hitters repeatedly with mere velocity. A great fastball is not enough for a pitcher to win consistently at the professional level. So, what sets the consistent winners apart from the other pitchers who have the talent to play major league baseball but lack that extra something that vaults them into the ranks of the elite? What is that “extra something?” With very few exceptions, the extra something is an additional pitch or pitches that complement the fastball and that, more often than not, certain pitchers throw better or more effectively than most other pitchers throw the same pitch. The purpose of this article is to examine the extra something that specific pitches can add which will help set a pitcher apart from his peers.
The Screwball
No, this is not a comment on any pitcher’s emotional stability. The screwball in major league baseball has gone the way of the dinosaur (apologies to Carl Everett), and one rarely sees it. Few pitchers use the pitch even occasionally, much less as a regular feature of their pitching weapons. Only a few pitchers in recent memory have relied heavily on the screwball – Luis Arroyo and former Astro Mike Marshall come to mind – because it is such a destructive pitch. To throw the screwball, a pitcher must rotate his wrist inward very hard as he releases the pitch. This is an unnatural throwing motion that results in the palm being rotated outward, and the pitch causes great stress on the elbow and forearm. Simply stated, merely to throw the screwball causes moderate to intense pain for most pitchers. Because the pitch may well shorten the career of a professional pitcher, it is not surprising that few pitchers use it. Many pitching coaches refuse to teach the screwball, especially to young pitchers. Arroyo is a good example of what can happen. During the prime of his career with the 1960s era Yankees, he could not straighten his left arm, and his left palm was turned outward permanently. Marshall’s arm apparently was indestructible. He suffered no ill effects whatsoever from using the pitch as his main out pitch. Some say about Marshall that the word “screwball” described him as well as his signature pitch.
Pitchers who rely on the screwball are anomalies. An advantage of the screwball, if a pitcher can stand the elbow and forearm discomfort, is that it breaks in the opposite direction from his curve and slider, and it usually moves downward also. In addition, the screwball breaks bigger than a tailing fastball and has much more movement than a straight changeup. A crafty pitcher, like Luis Arroyo was, can make the screwball into two pitches by throwing it hard and by making it an off-speed pitch as well. Marshall used it to complement a good fastball.
Any pitcher who becomes a top pitcher through use of the screwball, does so not because of any specific way he throws it but merely because he throws it. The pitch is very unusual in that it breaks the opposite way from what a hitter expects a breaking ball to do, and there are so few pitchers who throw a screwball at all, much less throw it well. A screwball pitcher enjoys the element of surprise when he uses this seldom-seen pitch, and if it can be thrown with good control, it will be a powerful weapon. A screwball pitcher like Arroyo can ride changing speeds, excellent control and an outstanding screwball to the top of his profession. Unfortunately, pain and perhaps permanent damage to the elbow often accompany success.
The Slider
No single pitch has made more of a difference to pitching than the slider. Called the “nickel curve” in its early days, the slider acts and looks like a fastball until very late but then breaks slightly and sharply in the same direction as the pitcher’s curve. Most pitchers throw the slider as hard as they can to help the hitter believe that he is seeing a fastball. The late, sharp break is difficult, if not impossible, for a hitter to adjust to after he has started his swing for the fastball. If the pitcher gets on top of the ball when throwing the slider, the late, sharp break also will change planes downward, which increases the deceptive nature of the pitch.
The slider, more than any other pitch, has given the pitcher an advantage over the hitter. Even a pitcher with only an ordinary fastball can become more effective by adding a slider. Former Astro Larry Andersen is a good example. His below average fastball was no hindrance to his career because he rarely threw it. Andersen threw slider after slider after slider and was a highly successful reliever for many years. This pitch has some potential for elbow damage if not thrown correctly, however, and some organizations, including the Braves, will not allow their young pitchers to throw it.
J. R. Richard’s slider was unfair to hitters, and it is amazing that the hitters’ union did not strike in an effort to get it banned. J. R.’s fastball approached 100 mph, and his slider was not too much slower. A hitter had to start his swing so quickly to attempt to catch up to Richard’s heater that he had no chance whatsoever when the “fastball” turned out to be a 90 mph slider breaking late and down. By throwing it as hard as most major league pitchers can throw a fastball, J. R. Richard made his slider the premier slider of his time and perhaps of all time. Joe Sambito also had an outstanding slider, but his was nothing by comparison to Richard’s. Sambito was effective in large part against left-handed hitters because he would sling the ball sidearm and start the ball behind them at release. J.R. Richard set the standard for sliders, and his slider did not discriminate between right-handed hitters and left-handed hitters – he blew them all away with the pitch.
The Change of Pace
As old as the fastball, the change of pace, or changeup, likely was the pitcher’s first weapon in his never-ending quest to upset the hitter’s timing. No less a pitching sage than Warren Spahn expressed it best: “Hitting is about timing. Pitching is about upsetting timing.” Thrown well, a changeup, by any of the names it is called, can wreak havoc on even the best hitter’s timing. Any successful fastball pitcher needs some off-speed pitch that he can throw for strikes to keep the hitter off-balance.
There are many changeups thrown today, but variations of the palm ball and the circle change are the two most common. How the pitcher grips his changeup determines what the pitch is called, but the method of delivery is what determines whether a changeup will be a deceptive, effective second pitch or just a nondescript slower fastball. Arm speed is what makes a change of pace pitch effective by the effect arm speed has on a hitter’s timing. If a pitcher can deliver a changeup with the same arm speed with which he delivers his fastball, the hitter sees and thinks fastball. The pitch has the potential of causing the hitter to screw himself into the ground as he swings too soon because he anticipated a much faster pitch. If the pitcher “turns the ball over” as he releases his changeup, the hitter will swing both early and over the pitch as it floats to the plate and drops slowly away from the plane of his swing. Only the truly great hitters can keep their hands back and avoid being fooled by the best change of pace deliveries.
The Astros have had a number of pitchers whose bag of pitches was made far better by an outstanding off-speed pitch. Mike Cuellar and Dave Guisti became stars by developing a palm ball, although, sadly, their best work was done wearing the uniform of teams other than Houston. Doug Jones was amazing. He threw virtually nothing but the changeup, and the hitter knew it was coming every time. Still, Jones retired the hitters most of the time, and he became an outstanding closer solely because of his superlative, deceptive arm speed. Finally, Jose Lima rode the changeup from obscurity to stardom and almost back to obscurity between 1998 and 2000, and it is no mystery that his fall from grace coincided with his loss of his changeup during the 2000 season. No hitter, at any level, has an easy time adjusting to a well-thrown off-speed pitch because of the reflexes required to get a swing going to compete against a 90 mph fastball. Once the swing gets started, it is hard to stop, and proponents of the changeup rely on this principle to defeat the hitter.
The Curve
Uncle Charley. The Yellow Hammer. A Yacker. 12 to 6. Nose to toes. All of these colorful terms describe a powerful weapon that is a fastball pitcher’s best friend: the curve. Actually, a crafty pitcher can make the curve into several pitches by altering his arm angle and the speed of the pitch. Generally, the more on top of the pitch he can get, with his elbow up and his hand on top of the ball, the more downward the curve ball will go in addition to breaking across the strike zone. This is the most effective of curves.
What kids once called a “drop” is really a curve thrown straight overhand. A “roundhouse” is a straight sidearm curve that breaks mostly across the strike zone but changes planes very little, if at all. By adjusting the arm angle between sidearm and straight overhand, the pitcher can control the combination of sideways and downward breaks that he can get with his curve. By both throwing the curve hard and by taking speed off his curve, the pitcher can increase its effectiveness by making it a change of speeds pitch, too.
The key to a good curve is the rotation. A tight, hard spin makes the break sharper; a loose, lazy spin makes the ball roll rather than break. The rolling curve appears to “hang” in the air, and if a hanging curve is up and over the plate, look out fans in the bleacher seats! Perhaps the best curve any Astro pitcher has ever thrown belongs to Darryl Kile. His curve ball breaks a tremendous amount – both across and down – and when he is able to harness it and throw it for strikes, it is a knee-buckling complement to his 90 mph fastball. The secret to his curve, which really is no secret, is the tremendously tight and hard spin he puts on the ball. Large hands and long fingers play an important part in generating rotation, and Kile has both. Although Kile’s curve stands alone, Jim Ray threw a great overhand curve out of the Astros bullpen, and Nolan Ryan’s outstanding curve was unfair because no hitter in his right mind would be looking for it. Once again, the deception of a somewhat slower pitch which breaks destroys the timing of a hitter who has his swing dialed up and ready for the fastball.
The Knuckleball
Truly a gimmick pitch, the knuckleball has been around for a long, long time. Some pitchers, such as former Astro Joe Niekro and his brother Phil, learned the pitch as children and used it during their entire careers. Others, like former Astro Jim Bouton, turned to the knuckleball late in their careers out of desperation to rescue them from a fading fastball and other ravages of advancing age. No one, including the hitter and the pitcher, can predict the flight of a knuckleball. That is its main attractiveness to the would-be knuckleballer. If he does not know what the pitch will do each time he throws it, how could the hitter possibly anticipate its flight well enough to hit it? Or so the conventional wisdom goes.
Most pitchers grip the knuckleball, despite its name, with the fingertips. If the pitcher throws the pitch properly, the knuckleball has no spin and, much like the flight of a butterfly, dips and darts unpredictably on its way to the plate. Spin is the biggest enemy of the knuckleball pitcher. A knuckleball that spins will lose its unpredictability and will turn into a batting practice fastball that, more often than not, will wind up in the upper deck. No pitch screws up a hitter’s timing like the knuckleball because of its unpredictability, and the pitch has made, or resuscitated, the careers of many a pitcher who had no fastball. Most knuckleball pitchers never could have gotten to the major leagues, or stayed there, without the pitch.
Knuckleball pitchers usually do not throw the pitch hard. Phil Niekro is an example of a knuckleball pitcher who floated the ball toward the plate with seemingly little effort. Thrown in this manner, the pitch puts little or no strain on the pitcher’s arm. Bouton threw his knuckler a little harder but learned from painful experience that he must rely on it exclusively and forget the days when he could throw a ball by hitters. Phil Niekro never had a day like that so he threw the knuckler on virtually every pitch. Brother Joe Niekro, however, had a good fastball and slider and used his knuckleball to complement his other pitches.
The Split-Finger Pitch
This pitch, which is thrown with the ball jammed between and gripped by the index and middle fingers of the throwing hand, has had a couple of incarnations in the modern era. Called a forkball in its early years, the pitch was popularized by Elroy Face, a diminutive relief pitcher for the Pirates, in the late 50s and early 60s. Face used his forkball to post an unreal 18-1 record out of the bullpen in 1959, and he was a mainstay of the Pirates’ pitching staff during the team’s World Series championship season in 1960. The forkball behaves like a “dry spitball.” It has very little spin and tumbles coming out of the pitcher’s hand; as it approaches the plate, the forkball dives straight down. Face and the other early pitchers who featured the forkball used it primarily as an off-speed pitch.
The pitch had a second incarnation in the 1980s, and it came back as the split-finger fastball used by pitchers who were under the tutelage of Roger Craig. His prize pupil, of course, was Mike Scott of the Houston Astros. As taught by Craig, the split-finger fastball, as the name suggests, was used as a second fastball. The pitcher threw this pitch as hard as he could, and the ball reacted just as the forkball did. An unsuspecting hitter would see and think fastball, and start his swing for that pitch, but the ball would dive under the bat at the last moment. Scott threw the pitch very hard (in the mid 90s), and he was near unhittable when he was on. The pitch transformed Scott from a mediocre pitcher to a Cy Young Award winner. Shane Reynolds uses the splitter currently, but his version is an off-speed pitch, similar to Face’s, rather than a second fastball. Thrown hard, there is more margin for error because the velocity and late diving action will make up some for poor location. As Reynolds will attest, the off-speed splitter must be kept low in the strike zone for maximum positive results.
A scout said in Florida this spring: “Shake any tree, and many pitchers who throw over 90 mph will fall out.” The fastball is, of course, baseball’s glamour pitch, but usually this is not enough. Many, many very hard throwers never even get to the major league level, much less succeed there, and it should be apparent to even the novice fan that a pitcher needs more than his fastball to be a consistent winner, no matter how hard he throws.
Whatever “extra something” any specific pitcher develops, he will need it against the accomplished professional hitter. As has been said about Moises Alou, “he can pull a bullet,” and most professional hitters eventually will time and hit even the fastest fastball. Nolan Ryan’s example is the best one to demonstrate what aspiring pitchers should emulate, even though they likely will never have his talent. From his earliest days in Alvin, Ryan had the great fastball. But it was not until he developed a great curve, and then later in his career, a devastating circle change, that he became a consistent winner and Hall of Fame pitcher. His secondary pitches, which were as good as his fastball, made Ryan a complete pitcher.
Check out the pitcher’s repertoire at the next game. What pitch is his “extra something” that complements his fastball? Can he throw it for strikes? Can he get it over the plate on any count? Is he keeping the hitters off stride or upsetting their timing with his second pitch? Is he getting outs with it? If the answers to these questions are yes, likely this pitcher will be successful at whatever level he is, and he is a good bet to progress. There is so much more to pitching than throwing hard, and the most successful pitchers discover this at an early stage of their development. The ones who do not learn this lesson wish they had after they have gone back home to resume real life.