Thanks for the heads up. Middle of the eighth now .
Perfecto!
And that’s why he’s the King.
I actually was talking to the guy from Moneyball this summer. It’s Chad Bradford. He was giving some tips and he said that he could throw two breaking balls. One broke like your regular slurve and the other rose in on lefties.
Huh. I never heard of a “dropball” before this thread. Is this a really old term? I grew up in the 80s, and the term is completely foreign to me. Of course, growing up, we didn’t have slurves and cutters, either. The first I remember hearing those terms was some time in the 90s, perhaps even the early 00s.
I’ve seen “drop” used in some older accounts(pre 50s) but not “dropball”.
ETA: I’ve also seen claims that the “nickel curve” was a slider.
No. “Submarine” refers to the arm slot and means the pitcher throws underhand, so it is a throwing motion. There are four general pitch positions – overhand (most common), 3/4, sidearm, and submarine. Submarine pitchers are extremely rare today
You certainly can curve a submarine pitch – softball pitchers do it all the time.
Did Chad say if his arm angle was the same on both pitches? I assume it would be, or else it would be an obvious tip to the batter what was coming. I imagine the difference is in the grip. He probably grips his slurve like a regular slider. His other pitch is probably gripped the same was as an overhand curve, just thrown from the submarine angle.
My dad taught me what he called a “dropball” and he played in the 70s.
It seems to me that three-quarters is the most common slot, but I suppose that depends on where the overhand ends and where three-quarters begins.
I find it hard to distinquish. You have to factor in body position, arm angle and the bend of the elbow. I’ve seen these things reduced to a lot of detail, but watching baseball is mostly escapist activity to me, so I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing (well, pitchers anyway, sometimes I’m looking at the hitting closely).
Scroll to the bottom of this article.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=16370
I’d say Halladay is at 3/4 while Weaver is clearly overhand. Kershaw is overhand, too, and displays the most technically sound form of the pitchers on that page.
Yeah, I also found this on baseball-reference.com:
It does seem to be a matter of definition. It sounds like by that, Weaver would be counted as a 3/4 pitcher, as his slot is 11 o’clock, but I’d probably call it overhand, like you, or possibly high three-quarters.
And here’s a discussion on a pitching message board with folks having a difficult time coming up with overhand pitchers. So it very much is a definitional thing. I think we can all agree, though, that Hideki Okajima is about as overhand as you can get.
Couldn’t a submarine pitcher throw a curveball by rolling it off his fingers, like an overhand pitcher would throw a rising fastball?
That would probably be more of a screwball, where it would have a tail to the throwing arm side. It wouldn’t have as sharp of a break like a curve.
I consider 11:00 overhand for a righty. You’re right, almost nobody throws straight over the top 12:00. It’s impractical.