Pitch types — quick capture

Quick capture, not a polished post. Mostly for my own recall.

Fastballs: cutter, four-seam, sinker

Four-seam

• Power pitch. Higher slot + higher RPM + better spin direction = more IVB, fights gravity.
• Batters expect drop, swing under it.

Cutter

• Slower four-seam, rotated spin. Wants a slight miss — too much movement is bad.
• Lefty ground-ball pitch.

Sinker

• True sinker (pronation run) vs. seam-shifted wake (for guys without good pronation).
• ~Four-seam velo. Gets ground balls, not whiffs. Righty counterpart to the cutter.

Breaking: curveball, slider family

• Magnus effect. Not hidden out of the hand — deception is break relative to fastball.

Curveball

• Much slower. Supination + grip for topspin.

Gyroslider vs. sweeper = spin efficiency

• Gyro: ~zero efficiency, football spin, tunnels with fastball, more drop.
• Sweeper: supination + sidespin, sharp glove-side, more lateral.

Offspeed: splitter, changeup, forkball

• All similar. Deception over raw movement.

• Splitter: no tell out of hand, sharp down + arm-side. More fingers = friction = kills spin. Beats flat swings; worse vs. Bellinger/Ohtani/Judge-type paths.

• Changeup: slower sinker, much lower spin rate.

• Forkball: wide-split splitter. Slower, less spin, more drop — but recognizable, poor command, hard to tunnel. Trades tunnel for break.

Knuckleball — specialists only

• Seams steer it through the air. When it doesn’t move, it’s a 75 mph BP fastball.