Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Martin Wood [Click to enlarge]

In an effort to keep hitters off-balance at the plate, pitchers throw a variety of pitches that have different velocities and movements to them.

Sacramento State baseball pitching coach Jim Barr said scouting reports are used as a guide to which pitches are thrown to a certain hitter. Senior catcher Brett Tanigawa said it is hard to predict when a certain pitch will be thrown during a hitter's at-bat.

"It always depends on who's batting and what the game situation is. There is no set time when you are going to call for a certain pitch," Tanigawa said.

The most common pitch in baseball is the fastball, which is normally thrown two different ways.

"The difference between a four-seam (fastball) and a two-seam (fastball) is that usually you hold a two-seam (fastball) with the seams and the ball has a tendency to tail toward the arm side that it's being thrown," Barr said. "It has a little more movement to it than a four-seam (fastball)."

He said a four-seam fastball is thrown across the seams in order to control the ball's rotation, making for a straighter pitch.

Senior right-handed pitcher Alvaro Orozco said the situation dictates which fastball he will throw and what location he will aim for. He said the object is to get the batter guessing during a sequence of pitches.

"For me, I'm a right-hander. I would throw a two-seam (fastball) to a right-hander going inside or a lefty going away," Orozco said. "The four-seam (fastball) is either when I want to hit the outside corner to a right-hander or inside corner to a left-hander."

Senior catcher Travis Kirkman said pitchers will tend to throw fastballs early in the count in the beginning of a game.

"The thing with the fastball is that early in the game a pitcher is taught to establish his fastball," Kirkman said. "If he can't throw his fastball early in the game and get it established then his off-speed (pitches) won't be working very well because everything else is thrown off the fastball."

Kirkman said in the latter part of the game a pitcher will tend to "work backwards," which means he will throw off-speed pitches early in the count to hitters. This technique keeps hitters "honest" so they do not look for a certain pitch, but have to react to a variety of pitches.

Kirkman said junior right-handed pitcher Nick Buchta is a hard-thrower with a "heavy" fastball.

"That's kind of a weird term. Sometimes guys will say that they have a heavy ball. It could still be going the same speed as, say, another guy that has the same velocity," Kirkman said. "But some guys, just the way the ball is moving it will seem like when you hit it or catch it, it seems a lot heavier and harder to hit."

Along with his "heavy" fastball, Buchta throws a slider, a change-up and is working on developing a cutter.

"A cutter is kind of like a slider mixed with a fastball. It's got a little less movement to it (than a slider)," Kirkman said.

Barr said there are a variety of different shaped curveballs because each pitcher throws them a little differently.

"(Curveballs) might break down, might break across, some break later than others and some are thrown harder than others," Barr said.

Barr said junior left-handed pitcher Jose Ramirez has a great curveball. Imagine the face of a clock; Ramirez said that his curveball breaks from 10 o'clock to 4 o'clock.

"I use the curveball late in the count when I'm ahead with two strikes," Ramirez said. "To a righty I'll try to throw it at their back foot. They'll swing and either foul it away or miss it. When a lefty is up I'll aim at him and it will curl to the outside corner or down the middle."

A similar pitch to the curveball is the slider which is usually thrown harder and breaks more horizontally. Barr said the slider is thrown faster than a curveball but slower than a fastball.

"It doesn't break down as much (as a curveball). It breaks more at a 45-degree angle and only breaks a little bit," Barr said. "It looks like a fastball and slides at the last second."

Kirkman said a pitchers best pitch is called a "strike-out pitch."

"I would say that (senior pitcher Mike Weiss) has two different strike-out pitches in a sense that he has a good slider and he has a good fastball. He could throw a high, inside fastball to strike a guy out with because he has high velocity," Kirkman said.

Barr said junior pitcher right-handed Eric Fergosi throws a split-finger pitch that can sometimes break like a slider or a two-seam fastball. He said that the split-finger gives the hitter the illusion of a fastball and at the last minute breaks downward.

Fergosi said he has the most success with his split-finger when it breaks straight down. He developed the pitch on his own when he attended Cañada College.

"We were playing around in practice and I tried it and had success with it," Fergosi said. "I've had coaches try to teach me how to throw it, but I have basically learned it by working with it."

Kirkman said senior right-handed pitcher Cory Weglin throws a knuckle-ball harder than usual as his strike-out pitch. A knuckle-ball is held with the fingernails digging into the cowhide of the ball and by doing so has very little rotation when thrown correctly.

"Honestly, I don't know where it is going to move. When I throw it, it goes its own direction," Weglin said. "Even if hitters know its coming they still can't hit it."

"He's probably the guy with the best specialty pitch on our team," Kirkman said

Orozco said it is important that both the pitcher and catcher be thinking alike during certain situations throughout the game. He said that a good relationship between the pitcher and catcher is crucial in order to be successful.

"It's huge because of the fact that he knows what you throw and what you like to go to in certain counts," Orozco said. "It's key that you and him are on the same page … (As a pitcher) you have so much going on in your head - what to throw, what's the count, what's the runner doing - so if you have your catcher dictate what pitch is coming you have confidence and trust in what pitch he's calling."

Kirkman said the chemistry between pitcher and catcher is created during practice sessions in the bullpen. He said that it is important to know on an individual basis what a certain pitcher's movement and velocity are.

"We have bullpen schedules where they use a strategy where they make (catchers) catch different pitchers throughout the week. We have half an hour pen times. We go through a systematic set of pitches so we can learn how their curveballs break, their change-ups break and we can see how much their fastball moves a certain way and then going into the game we're ready for that," Kirkman said.

"A lot of little league coaches I think will try to make guys all throw the same way, but once you get to this level you realize that every guy has a different way of doing things," Kirkman said. .

Andrew Eggers can be reached at aeggers@statehornet.com

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