On April 29, 2011, during the top of the fifth inning of a Toronto at New York game, Yankee pitcher Freddy Garcia threw a split-fingered fastball to the Jay’s Juan Rivera. A video of the pitch was captured by YES-MO, the high-speed video camera from the Yankees television broadcast, with sufficient resolution to allow both […]

David Price’s pitching repertoire has gone through quite a transformation over his big league career, as Mike Fast explained after the 2010 season. In 2011, Price made a further change to his repertoire by adding a cut fastball to the mix. In 2008, when Price first reached the majors, he threw a hard slider. Since […]

Cliff Lee can be described as a surgeon. Hitters may feel more like he’s performing a vivisection, but that’s just a matter of perspective. Lee’s impressive collection of scalpels includes a cutter, curve, sinker, change-up and slider. But it’s his fifth pitch, a four-seam fastball, which is our focal point for the moment. Specifically, where […]

It’s been a crazy offseason in St. Louis. Along with some new faces—or old ones in new roles—the Cardinals fans will be reacquainted with the second dome on their two-headed ace. New elbow not withstanding, it stands to reason that the youthful Adam Wainwright will return as 1a, not 1b, over the slowly, but gracefully, […]

For the second time this offseason, Kevin Slowey has been traded. This time, he’s going from the Rockies to the Indians. The return for Colorado is 24-year-old reliever Zach Putnam, who had a cup of coffee with the Indians in September. You know what that means? It means that we have 114 pitches worth of […]