Guide to the Different Types of Pitches in Baseball

Have you ever heard someone talking about baseball and types of pitches and wondered what the different pitches meant? A fastball and a curve ball are easy enough to understand but what is a splitter? What is a screw ball? What is this gyroball everybody is talking about? Here is your guide to the different types of pitches.

Most pitches are categorized into the three types: fastballs, breaking balls and changeups. Fastballs are pretty simple, they are thrown very fast, some of them have movement on them and some of them don't. Every pitcher has some form of a fastball in their arsenal. Breaking balls are pitches that have a lot of movement. Either they will move sideways as they come to the plate, or they will move downward. The object of a breaking ball is to confuse the batter. Changeups are pitches that are thrown to look like a fastball but they get to home plate a lot slower. They are also meant to confuse a batter. Each of these three categories have a few different variations of pitches.

Fastballs

1. Four Seam Fastball - The four-seam fastball is normally the fastest pitch a player has and can get as high as 100+ mph. The four-seam fastball doesn't have much movement on it, pitchers just try and throw it past you.

2. Two Seam Fastball - The two-seam fastball is also referred to as a sinker. The difference between the four-seam fastball and the two-seam fastball is that the two-seam fastball has more downward movement during the pitch (hence the name sinker).

3. Cutter - The cutter is sort of like the mixture of a slider (a pitch that breaks to one side) and a fastball. The cutter is thrown faster than sliders usually are but has more movement than a fastball usually does.

4. Forkball - Typically a pitch will have backspin on it but the Forkball actually has forward spin. The forward spin on a forkball causes the ball to tumble through the strike zone.

5. Splitter - The splitter is much like a Forkball. Both are thrown to look the same as a fastball only to drop at the last second and fool the hitter. The difference between the Splitter and the Forkball is that the splitter has a sudden drop to it and the forkball has more of a gradual drop.