Quote:
Originally Posted by RchW
I always thought it was a fast slider. When you think of it now the number of pitchers who throw cutters today seem about the same as those who threw sliders prior to 1990 or so.
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I think Syd made a good point when he said that the characteristics of pitches fall somewhere on different continuums. That is, some pitches are as fast as humanly possible, some (knuckles) are about as slow as you'd dare in the majors, and many fall somewhere in-between. The same goes for how much a ball breaks down or cuts in or tails away or moves erratically. In my list I chose to include sliders and splitters among fastballs and I've definitely seen some so-called experts do the same, but I've also seen the opposite. I suppose I could have made another category called "not quite fastballs" in which in addition to the slider and splitter I would have added the sinker (I prefer to make the small distinction between a 2-seamer and a sinker that the sinker sinks more and is therefore a little slower, just like I like to think that the slider sinks more and is a little slower than the cutter). You could remember them as the 3 Ss for
slightly
slower yet
still fastballs.
I went back to the previous post and clarified the rotation info to the 4-seamer and curveball, which to me was very interesting, and added some mph info I had.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Curtis
I know terminology and slang change over time; do definitions also change?
I thought I remembered that back in the '70s a slider was considered a breaking ball that broke in the opposite direction of a curve, and a slurve was a fast curveball with not as much break. Maybe I'm misremembering.
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I thought the opposite was true when I was young (that a curve was a ball that moved left or right), but I now understand that while a curve may naturally cut toward the pitcher's opposite hand some, it's more just a pitch that breaks straight down.
I think it's safe to say meanwhile that while a slider also breaks downward, it doesn't break down as much as a curveball yet it does definitely cut in towards the pitcher and probably moreso than the natural cut of a curveball. It's also faster than a curve, but slower than a straight fastball. So I guess you can think of it as something between a cutter and a curve.
A breaking ball that tails away from a pitcher is definitely a screwball.
Your definition of a slurve doesn't sound too far off though as it's somewhere between a slider and curveball. Hence the portmanteau. From what I've read it sounds like the key point is that a slurve looks like a slider to the batter, but ends up more like a curveball thereby throwing him off timing and location-wise.