Slider Grip: How To Grip A Slider

The hard slider grip or short curve grip has a certain amount of lateral break and a certain amount of down break. It's a faster pitch than a curve but it's slower than a fastball, and it has a shorter break than a curveball. If you judged the pitch by miles per hour, and a pitcher's fast ball is, say, 90 mph, and his curveball is 80 mph, he would want the slider to be in the 86 to 87 mph range. The harder you throw a slider, the shorter and quicker the break you can get on it. The release technique is between a curve and a fastball.

For the slider grip, some pitchers release the ball off their middle finger. I threw my slider grip off my index finger. I try to feel like I'm wiping over the outside of the ball as I snap it, in order to give it some backspin and sidespin.