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Types of fastballs as thrown by a right handed pitcher and viewed from the catcher's perspective: four-seam, sinker, and cutter Many varieties or 'shapes' of fastballs have been described throughout baseball history, including four-seam fastballs, rising fastballs, two-seam fastballs, sinkers, running fastballs, cut fastballs, and split finger fastballs.
A pull hitter is a batter who generally hits the ball to the same side as which he bats. That is, for a right-handed batter, who bats from the left side of the plate, will hit the ball to left field. Hitters are often referred to as dead pull if they rarely do anything other than pull the ball.
Batters getting a hit in three out of ten at bats, giving him a batting average of .300 (pronounced "three hundred") are considered a successful hitter. In Major League Baseball, no batter has had over a .400 average at the end of the season since Ted Williams' .406 in 1941, and no batter has ever hit over .367 in a lifetime—Ty Cobb hit .3664 ...
They’re harder to hit.” Last season, MLB hitters managed a .212/.265/.355 batting line against sliders and sweepers, whiffing on 34.2% of their swings. ... I mean, like, at least a 60-plus ...
From 2020 to 2022, Smith did much of his damage against four-seam fastballs, batting .292 against the pitch with a .588 slugging percentage, 21 home runs and only an 18.6% whiff rate.
In Burley's study, he used stats from the 2003 MLB season. He found that when a pitcher throws a strike on the first pitch of the at bat, hitters collected a .261 batting average. But if the first pitch was a ball, their batting average jumped to .280, a substantial difference.
Hitters eventually dubbed that pitch, which was probably a cutter, the “slide ball.” A few years later, another pitcher, George Uhle, rechristened his “sailing fastball” a slider.
Finger grip on a four-seam fastball Finger grip on a four-seam fastball. The four-seam fastball is designed purely for velocity; it travels to the batter's box with little or no "break" from straight-line flight—the intent being to challenge the batter's reaction time instead of fooling him with a pitch that breaks downward or to one side or the other.