A question about curve balls

The Game Room
1

I was watching Moneyball the other day and got to the part of the movie where the A’s acquired a submarine-style pitcher and a question occurred to me: how does a submarine pitcher throw a curve ball?

I mean, throwing a curve involves putting top spin on the ball. But a submarine pitcher is throwing the ball at close to an upwards angle. So how does he put top spin on the ball?

Or maybe submariners don’t throw curve balls? But they have to be able to throw some kind of breaking ball; I doubt any major league pitcher would survive in the big leagues for long throwing nothing but fastballs and change-ups. Maybe they could use sliders as their breaking pitch?

2

The submarine is a pitch itself, not just a throwing motion, and it has a break to it (a pretty big one). If a pitcher who normally pitches submarine wants to pitch a regular curve ball or any other overhand pitch, he can.

3

A curve ball comes from putting various spins off of the vertical on the ball. That’s done with a combination of fingers, laces, and angle of the throw. It should be easier to get a curve ball from the submarine pitch. To get a top spin they throw with similar finger and lace positioning as an overhand pitcher throwing a curve ball.

4

[Tangent]
When I threw curve balls (highschool) I put as much pure side spin on it as I physically could, and the results were awesome. A ball going straight for the batters head/shoulder/back would curve over the plate. I would throw right at the batter and they would hit the dirt or step out.
[/Tangent]

5

I’d guess that a submariner’s motion would make a curveball break somewhat up and away rather than down and away as an overhand pitcher’s would. If he wanted to give the ball top spin and break down, he’d have to throw it like a screwball.

6

(NM. Silly me, I was confusing “topspin” with “backspin”.)

7

That’s a slider.

8

That’s funny, I had to go googling around to confirm you are right and I learned some other stuff too. You’ve just cleared up years of confusion.

Growing up, these were the names of pitches that we threw (through high school):
Curveball - broke horizontally and vertically
Dropball - broke vertically down
Plus Fastball, Changeup and Knuckleball

For the last 25 years when TV announcers would say “that was a curveball”, I would scratch my head and think “looked like a dropball to me.” And when they would say “that was a slider” I would ask around what exactly is a slider and I never got a good response, one guy mumbled something about left-handers.
I’m not sure if terms weren’t as standardized in the 70’s/early 80’s or if we had non-standard names in our area. Because my high school catcher, who I had never played baseball with before, was never confused when my curveball broke so far horizontally, and he never expected another type of pitch that broke. Odd.

9

Traditionally, 1 is the fastball, and 2 is the curveball. More recently, 3 has become the slider. The curveball just has a lot of horizontal motion. Sliders are faster and intended to go down and in, or down and away. But there’s lots of additional variation to add to each one, so I hear all sorts of funny names for pitches but all I see is are sliders.

Back to the OP, the sidewinders are the only ones who can really make a ball rise. That’s got to be really weird for the batter to see. And the pitching motion is fast and odd also. Picking up a changeup has to be really tough.

10

There’s more than one type of curveball. The 12-to-6 curveball is one that breaks straight down. Other curveballs have more of a sideways motion to them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a submarine pitcher throw a 12-to-6 curveball. It would be hard to get enough topspin on the ball to make it break that way.

The pitch that RaftPeople describes is not a slider. The break on a slider is only a few inches - one that started out aimed at the batter’s head wouldn’t break over the plate. His pitch is a regular curveball. I remember seeing Erik Hanson pitch against the A’s in a game in the late 80s when he had superstars like Rickey Henderson jumping backwards out of the batter’s box on pitches that fell in for strikes.

As for “submarine” being a pitch and not a throwing motion - that’s a new one to me. I’ve seen several submarine pitchers, and they’ve all thrown different pitches from that motion. I have never seen one throw overhand for one type of pitch and submarine for another type. There are pitchers who use different arm slots (many Latin pitchers do this). but if you used different motions for different pitches you’d be tipping your pitches - the batter would know what was coming.

11

Related question: What’s a Cut Fastball?
Suddenly every other pitch is being described as a “cutter” which I’d never even heard of until a couple of years ago.

12

The cut fastball been an increasingly popular pitch in the past decade or so. Most pitchers that use the cutter have worked it into their repertoire as a secondary pitch, but there are some exceptions - the most notable, of course, being Mariano Rivera, who throws a cutter the vast majority of the time.

The simplest (and admittedly somewhat inaccurate) way to explain the cutter is to say that it’s sort of halfway between a slider and a fastball. It’s got more movement than either a 4-seamer or a 2-seamer, but doesn’t break down the way a slider or curveball does. Instead, it mostly breaks in towards the pitcher’s glove-side (as opposed to a changeup, which breaks back towards the pitcher’s arm-side). Velocity-wise, it also tends to fall between a fastball and a slider. As a Sox fan, I’ve seen lots of cutters from Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, and they tend to hover in the 87-89 mph range. Compare that to their low-to-mid 90s fastballs and 75-85 mph breaking balls.

Ultimately, in terms of speed and movement, most baseball pitches fall along a simple continuum of speed and movement. 4-seam fastballs fall on one far side (maximum speed, minimum movement), and the 12-6 curve falls on the other (minimum speed, maximum vertical drop). So the continuum roughly goes as follows, from high speed/ low movement to low speed/ high movement:

4-seam fastball
2-seam fastball
Cut fastball
Slider
“Slurve”
Curveball

(A few pitchers, like Jonathan Papelbon, even throw what they rather unfortunately refer to as the “slutter,” which - you guessed it - is between a slider and cutter in terms of speed and movement.)

In practice, actually throwing the pitches isn’t as simple as the continuum implies, since it takes distinct grips and wrist motions to execute each pitch effectively. But in terms of what the ball is doing on its way to the plate, the continuum sums things up pretty well. Of course, there are other pitches like the changeup or knuckleball have their own distinctive traits that don’t fit perfectly into the continuum, and my description above doesn’t differentiate between left-to-right vs right-to-left movement, but that’s why pitching is so complex. :slight_smile:

13

Everything in the above post is true. A submariner will not throw an overhand 12-6 curve ball. He can, however, still throw breaking balls.

The dropball that Raft People mentioned may be thrown overhand where the back of the pitcher’s hand is literally facig home plate before releasing the ball. That maximizes a straight-ahead topspin and limits horizontal movement. I’ve never seen it as a big part of any pitcher’s arsenal. It’s pretty difficult to master and typically just a gimmick pitch. I doubt any MLB pitchers even throw a true dropball. The overhand curveball, on the other hand, is relatively easy to throw.

14

Here’s a good primer on pitching and pitch types.

15

That’s a good link, and restores some of my sanity in that the curveball description tends to match my experiences.

16

Where do the the forkball and screwball fit in the continuim? I assume knuckleballs come after curves?

17

As indicated in my above link, a forkball is a type of changeup.

18

A forkball is more commonly known as a splitter or split finger fastball and is a type of fastball similar to the 2 seamer. It’s slower than a 2 seam and usually drops more sharply at the end.

A screwball is sort of a reverse curveball in that it breaks the opposite way from normal curveballs. Fernando Valensuela used a screwball, but they aren’t used a lot anymore because they are harder on the arm than most breaking balls.

Edit:

Huh, learn something new everyday. I have always heard it as a synonym for splitter. Ignore that part of my post.

19

Tanks NAF and Lute. Didn’t see your link Lute. (or if I did didn’t notice it was yours)

20

Speaking of curveballs, Felix Hernandez’s curve today is freaking unfair. 12-6 hammer drop at 83 mph. No wonder he’s through six innings without allowing a baserunner.

Oh yeah, if you haven’t been watching the Mariners-Rays game today, you should probably start. Just sayin’…