At the high school and college levels (and beyond, in pro ball), the ability of a pitcher to throw a quality off-speed pitch in a fastball count is critical.
Remember, if getting outs is the ultimate goal, a pitcher's ability to fool hitters, induce weak contact, or to miss bats entirely can not be underestimated!
I'm talking about the change up.
Don't throw change ups to bad hitters who've got slow bats or long swings. That's the only pitch that they can hit. The change up is a pitch that you only want to throw to good aggressive hitters.
It's better for right handed pitchers to throw the change up to left handed hitters. And vice versa.
If you're going to throw the change up to right handed hitters, you've got to start it outside of the strike zone because it's going to back up into the hitter. That's a tough pitch to do!
Also, a lot of pitchers today throw a slurve. They pitch the slider as if they are throwing a curve, and the ball comes out in a big, sweeping flat curve. I consider this pitch to be just a rather sloppy slider. It has a much wider break than the slider was intended to have, and I think this is one of the reasons why there are so many more home runs today than 10 years ago.
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.
The forkball grip, also known as a splitter grip or split-finger fastball grip, is an
interesting pitch. You grip a forkball by jamming the ball between your first two fingers as
hard as you can and deliver it with the same action as a fastball, with
the wrist coming straight over from 12 to 6 o'clock. The ball travels
with a lot of velocity, but with a tumbling kind of rotation. The
rotation slows down as the ball approaches the plate, and if delivered
correctly, the bottom kind of falls out of it.
The screwball grip is actually the opposite of the curveball grip in terms of snapping the wrist. Whereas I gripped and released the ball with my palm turned inward for a curveball, I turned my palm out when throwing a screwball -- almost like I'm turning a screwdriver.
The screwball's trajectory is similar to a curveball, but it can't be thrown
quite as hard. So the velocity is less than that of the curveball grip.
Also, the screwball breaks outward, instead of inward like a curveball.
Lefthand pitchers like to throw screwballs to righthand hitters because
the ball starts toward the middle of the plate and then breaks away to
the outside corner.
I threw a curveball with a 12 to 6 o'clock rotation. This release imparts sidespin and backspin because I maintained pressure on the ball with my middle finger while rolling it out over the top of my index finger. I liked to throw the ball into the wind, because this increased the ball's rotation and helped the break.
The key to the curveball grip is to keep your hand behind the ball as long as possible, impart the spin with the wrist and not with the elbow, and make sure the thumb is relaxed. I shortened my stride by 1 in. or so, compared to pitching a fastball. The object here is not to be throwing the ball toward the batter. You want a feeling like you're pulling down on the ball, almost like you're throwing it into the ground. This type of motion coupled with the curveball grip gives the ball the desired trajectory.
When throwing a change up, you are thinking fastball all the way. You want your arm action to look exactly like you are throwing a high-powered fastball, because that's what fools the hitter. He sees your arm whipping through, there, and the ball has that same backward spin of a fastball.
If done right, the batter's first reflex reaction will be: "Fastball! Swing hard and fast!"
There are many kinds of change-ups. The type I used in college and pro ball is called the "circle change."
The circle change up involves laying your middle finger, ring finger and pinkie on the top part of the ball. And you bring your index finger over on the side of the ball, and bend it like a fish-hook shape, touching your thumb -- making a little circle, which is where the pitch gets its name. Those three fingers on top, basically, stabilize the baseball. And you "throw the circle."
The spin is backwards, just like a fastball, with a counterclockwise slant. That can make it break in on a righthanded hitters, away from lefthanded hitters (and the opposite if you are a lefthanded pitcher).
Obviously, with that many fingers, not to mention half your palm, touching the ball, it comes out at maybe 10-14 miles per hour off your fastball speed. So, you end up with the ball speed not matching the arm speed. Hopefully, that mixed effect will mean the hitter will swing too soon, ending up way out "in front of" the pitch, for a strike or weak groundball.
Like I mentioned above, there are other variations of change-ups, like the palm ball. But I don't feature any of them. They involve releasing the ball from a different grip. The change up grips have the same effect, though, which is to slow the ball down, despite "full fastball" arm motion.
There are just way too many pictures to include in one post, so here are links to baseball pitching grips and instruction on how to throw different pitches in baseball:
How To Throw A Circle Change Up
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8-13 years old
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any hitter or team
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