While we still have a few hours left in the 2016 baseball season, I thought I’d ask this question that’s been in my mind for some time…
Why was Mariano Rivera the only pitcher in baseball to be able to throw the cut fastball in a way that made it so effective - probably the most effective single pitch in baseball history?
Not that the baseball experts on SDMB need a refresher, but from Wikipedia:
I get that Rivera’s physiology is a factor, but you’d figure that with the potential upside of becoming one of the best pitchers in history, someone would figure out how to throw the thing, at least in a close enough manner to get similar results. And maybe there’s someone out there who can pitch it the same way, but I just haven’t heard about it.
I’m sure a hundred thousand young men are, in fact, trying to duplicate it.
Someone has to be the best at something. Every sprinter wants to run as fast as Usain Bolt, but only one person can. Every hockey player wants to have a slap shot like Wayne Gretzky, but only Gretzky could shoot like Gretzky. Every receiver wants to be like Jerry Rice, but no one ever was, except, of course, Jerry Rice. And no one has ever thrown a cutter as good as Rivera.
Many MLB pitchers can throw cutters that are astoundingly difficult to hit, of course. The difference between the best cutter ever and the second best cutter ever is imperceptible to a normal human, and probably not really consciously perceptible even to a professional baseball player. It’s a difference of an inch, or less, of location.
While part of it is Rivera’s physiology, obviously part would also be his mental approach and dedication to practice. Some people can thrown that hard and some cannot, but Rivera also worked very hard on it. Much of success in baseball is the ability to repeat physical action perfectly. Any mistake in delivery - a slight error in the rotation of the hips, a mistake in how the hands are held prior to the pitch, a millimeter off in grip, the landing foot coming down an inch from where it should, and the pitch will miss, badly, and either be a ball or get hit into the second deck. Rivera made very, very few physical mistakes when pitching. His capability to repeat everything about the delivery of his pitches was truly astounding.
Something to bear in mind is that many pitchers have had near-unhittable pitches. Hell, MOST MLB pitchers have a near-unhittable pitch. A.J. Burnett threw a sinker as nasty as any I’ve ever seen, and when he was on he could not be touched. But he was not consistently on; he would err in his delivery and oops, he grooves a pitch and there it goes, or he’d walk people. If he could have delivered every pitch to perfection, he would have had a career ERA of 0.50. But he couldn’t.
Gretzky had as good a slapshot as anyone who ever lived. Players have shot HARDER, but no one could take a slapshot more accurately or could change up their windup to deceive the goalie the way Gretzky could.
Presumably every hockey player would *like *to be able to do what Gretzky did, but none have been his equal.
To be fair, AJ Burnett was a starter; Rivera was a closer. It’s considerably easier to throw 15-20 perfect or near-perfect pitches than it is to do it 85-100+ times. I’m sure AJ Burnett could have been an incredible closer, but unlike Rivera, he could provide quality starts.
Whey doesn’t anyone duplicate Pedro’s changeup, or Maddux’s two seamer?
Actually, we saw a couple pitchers last night who throw really good cutters in Bryan Shaw for Cleveland and Jon Lester for Chicago. Neither throws it with anywhere near the frequency that Rivera did (Shaw might be somewhat close) but both are very good pitchers who rely on that pitch.
The Great One’s primary strength wasn’t his slap shot. It was his ice awareness. The actual shot is the end result of his higher-level chess game that he and his linemates played.