Baseball pitch types explained: four-seamer, sinker, slider, curveball and more
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When a broadcast shows a pitch type on screen after every delivery, it can feel like a foreign language. Most pitches fall into three families: fastballs, breaking balls and off-speed pitches. Knowing what each one is meant to do makes the duel between pitcher and batter far more interesting to watch.
Fastballs
Fastballs are the fastest pitches and usually the most thrown. In today's game many pitchers throw them in the mid-90s mph, and some go higher.
- Four-seam fastball. The straightest and usually the fastest pitch. Thrown with strong backspin, it resists dropping as much as a batter expects, which is why it can look as if it rises. It is effective at the top of the strike zone, where batters tend to swing underneath it.
- Sinker, also called a two-seam fastball. Slightly slower, with movement down and towards the pitcher's arm side. It aims to get batters to hit the top of the ball and produce ground balls.
- Cutter. Between a fastball and a slider. It moves a short distance away from the pitcher's arm side late in its flight, enough to make a batter hit the ball off the thin part of the bat.
Breaking balls
Breaking balls rely on spin to change direction more sharply.
- Slider. Thrown hard with sideways spin, it moves across the plate and down. Against a batter of the same handedness it breaks away from him, which is why it is such a common strikeout pitch.
- Sweeper. A slider variety with a large horizontal break, sweeping across the plate. It became widely used and tracked in recent seasons.
- Curveball. Slower, with topspin, so it drops sharply. A good curveball starts at the batter's eye level and finishes at his knees. Its big change in speed from the fastball upsets timing.
- Knuckle curve. A curveball thrown with a bent finger on the ball for extra spin and sharper drop.
Off-speed pitches
These look like fastballs out of the hand but arrive slower, which ruins a batter's timing.
- Changeup. Thrown with the same arm action as the fastball but with a grip that takes off speed. It usually fades towards the arm side and drops. It is especially useful against batters of the opposite handedness.
- Splitter. The ball is held between spread index and middle fingers, so it has little spin and tumbles sharply as it nears the plate. Batters swing at what looks like a fastball and find the ball has dropped beneath the bat.
- Knuckleball. Thrown with almost no spin so it flutters unpredictably. Rare in today's game and very hard to catch.
Why pitchers mix them
- Tunnelling. Good pitchers release different pitches from the same point and on the same early path, so the batter cannot tell them apart until it is too late.
- Changing speeds. A fastball looks faster after a slow curveball.
- Changing eye level. A high four-seamer followed by a low curveball forces the batter to cover a huge area.
- Counts matter. Pitchers often use fastballs to get ahead, then a breaking or off-speed pitch when they need a swing and miss.
How to spot them on television
- Read the on-screen speed. A sudden drop of ten mph or more from the previous pitch usually means a breaking or off-speed pitch.
- Watch the catcher's glove. If it moves sideways or down to the dirt, the pitch broke.
- Use the pitch-tracking graphics, which label each pitch and draw its path through the zone.
Which pitch do you find hardest to tell apart on television? Share your questions in the comments.