Softball Pitching Movement

[radness]

That is a great reason..

Like laughing! Make sure I get a good fill of it everyday!

Thought maybe you were wanting to make a point guess not. ?‍
Have a great day!

 

[Rolling Hard]

A curve is significantly slower than a fastball and as an 'off speed' pitch will have more downward movement.

The slider is a devastating pitch in baseball and it is a pitch with primarily horizontal movement.

I have seen a few pitchers who's CB is faster than their fastball. By 2nd year 14u you don't throw very many fastballs.
Also a CB that stays horizontal is a meatball. It needs to go up or down too. Mostly down but I have seen riseballs that have a little curve tail to them.

 

[LEsoftballdad]

I have seen a few pitchers who's CB is faster than their fastball. By 2nd year 14u you don't throw very many fastballs.
Also a CB that stays horizontal is a meatball. It needs to go up or down too. Mostly down but I have seen riseballs that have a little curve tail to them.

My daughter throws a rise curve. She discovered it by accident when she didn't get under her rise fully, but it was like combining peanut butter and chocolate. The thing breaks up and away from a righty with great effectiveness.

 

[Northball]

...Calling a fastball 'fast'-ball could be an inaccurate descriptive word because it is not always faster...
... a straight pitch with no purposeful movement...
...What I have noticed repeatedly fastball is not always the fastest pitch....

They have to call it a fastball. Good luck finding a coach that will tell their student: "Ok, now let's work on your slower-straighter-ball pitch."
Like Rolling said, "Meatball"

 

[ArmWhip]

It has to do with the the attack angle of the bat.

Are you saying that the attack angle of the bat is horizontal and since a curve breaks horizontally that's why it's not effective?

If a curve breaks enough to get outside the sweet spot on the bat then it can be effective.

If a slider can work in baseball then a curve can work in softball.

 

[jfitch12]

It has to do with the the attack angle of the bat.

I’ve never really understood this as an explanation for why vertical or horizontal movement pitches are better, since the swing plane is diagonal and not flat (meaning parallel to the ground). Otherwise, horizontal pitches presumably would have all but disappeared from professional baseball, which instead has seen a fairly regular oscillation between preferences for the two. Pitching up through the 1960s emphasized north-south movement (probably due to the advent of larger parks that are more forgiving of flyballs); but after the mound was lowered in 1968, the focus shifted to east-west movement as a parade of sinker-slider pitchers dominated through the early aughts (guys like Barry Zito, and early Kershaw, being the exception and not the rule); over the next ten years the pendulum swung back with a renewed emphasis on riding fastballs and 12-6 curves (as people were convinced by Pitchf/x and other movement data that vertical movement was more effective); and then in the last two or three years, the trend has started to reverse again (as clubs have rediscovered horizontal movement pitches like the “sweeper” and power sinker).

Because the swing plane is diagonal (and not flat), vertical and horizontal movement can be equally effective depending on where they are thrown. Consider a slider, for example, which can have more vertical movement than horizontal (a slider with “depth”), or more horizontal movement (“sweep”) than vertical, or even upward movement (think Tyler Rogers). A slider with a lot of depth is very effective down in the zone (where it moves under a diagonal swing plane), but ineffective up in the zone (where it moves into a diagonal swing plane), whereas a slider with almost all sweep is effective up in the zone (where it moves away from a diagonal swing plane of a same-handed hitter), but ineffective down in the zone (where it moves into the swing plane). Other factors that influence effectiveness are the sheer unusualness of the pitch (relative both to a pitcher’s other offerings and to what folks across the league are throwing).

So I don’t think that swing plane explains why north-south is better than east-west in fastpitch. I think the explanation instead is that east-west pitches in fastpitch just do not move as much as in baseball—and that is because fastpitch pitchers all throw from the same, essentially vertical, arm slot. Lots of people who throw overhand regularly can produce pure side spin in both directions 9-3 and 3-9, but I am not sure I have ever seen a softball pitcher who can do the same. As others have said, “screwballs” in fastpich are really just angled fastballs, and “curves” are gyro spin pitches with some movement, but not a lot. I have never seen a true side-spinning curve in fastpitch, and it is virtually unheard of for a fastpitch pitcher to produce any true arm-side movement at all (whatever the spin). In baseball, on the other hand, it is almost impossible not to be able to throw both directions, easily, especially if you throw from a 3/4 arm slot or lower.

I know that over the last few years, people have been collecting Rapsodo and other data on actual college fastpitch pitchers, and hopefully that will become public sooner than later. (The Rapsodo tables posted earlier are a step in the right direction, but they only tell a really small part of the story.) I would love to see actual movement data in the aggregate and for individual high-level pitchers because I think it would inform and open up whole new discussions about what actually works and does not work and why.


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[jfitch12]

Are you saying that the attack angle of the bat is horizontal and since a curve breaks horizontally that's why it's not effective?

If a curve breaks enough to get outside the sweet spot on the bat then it can be effective.

If a slider can work in baseball then a curve can work in softball.

I saw this after my (way too long) post. I agree with the point on attack angle, but I am not sure about the conclusion that slider effectiveness in baseball means curves should be effective (or as effective) in softball.


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[radness]

They have to call it a fastball. Good luck finding a coach that will tell their student: "Ok, now let's work on your slower-straighter-ball pitch."
Like Rolling said, "Meatball"

Oh absolutely, have to call it something.

Just pointing out that the other pitches are described by their spin rotation.

Simply good to point out for those people that might not recognize the fastball isn't always the fastest pitch (often is not) that when they're calling pitches from The Dugout it's not like the fastball is always the pitch thats going to dazzlingly zoom by the batters.
imo, Better to throw change ups to make the moving pitches seem even faster!

 

[sluggers]

Are you saying that the attack angle of the bat is horizontal and since a curve breaks horizontally that's why it's not effective?

If a curve breaks enough to get outside the sweet spot on the bat then it can be effective.

If a slider can work in baseball then a curve can work in softball.

(@ArmWhip -- Nothing but love, bro. We're just having a friendly discussion over a beer.)

I'm not saying the curve doesn't work. I'm saying that the vertical movement pitchers should be learned first, then a change, and then the curve.

Comparing an MLB slider to a college level curveball doesn't make any sense. MLB sliders are thrown by MLB pitchers. MLB pitchers are men in their mid-20s who have all the time and money in the world to perfect the pitch. Little Sally pitching for SIU-Edwardsville doesn't have anything close to that kind of time or money.

 

[sluggers]

imo, Better to throw change ups to make the moving pitches seem even faster!

That is the absolute truth.