baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

, a sinker or sinking fastball is a type of

fastball The fastball is the most common type of pitch thrown by pitchers in baseball and softball. " Power pitchers," such as former American major leaguers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, rely on speed to prevent the ball from being hit, and have t ...

which has significant downward and horizontal movement and is known for inducing

ground ball In the sports of baseball and softball, a batted ball is a pitch that has been contacted by the batter's bat. Batted balls are either fair or foul, and can be characterized as a fly ball, pop-up, line drive, or ground ball. In baseball, a fo ...

Pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the Baseball (ball), baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of out (baseball), retiring a batter (baseball), batter, who attempts to e ...

s capable of utilizing the sinker are able to throw the pitch almost exclusively, as it forces weak contact and ground balls, allowing them to rely less on secondary pitches in order to change speeds. While coaches agree that this pitch is very similar to the two-seam fastball, a two-seamer tends to have more lateral movement than a sinker.

History

Before the 1950s, pitchers did not know what caused their pitches to sink or "hop". They regarded either ability as a "gift from heaven".

Bill James George William James (born October 5, 1949) is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics ...

cites

Curt Simmons Curtis Thomas Simmons (May 19, 1929 – December 13, 2022) was an American professional baseball left-handed pitcher, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from to and to . Along with right-hander Robin Roberts (a member of the Baseball Ha ...

as the first pitcher to be able to throw both sinkers and rising fastballs, apparently indicating that it was not known how to make a pitch sink and how to make one hop.

Throwing mechanics

One method of throwing the sinker is to simply grip the

along the two seams and throw it similar to a fastball. Some pitchers use a downward motion on their wrist when throwing it. The pitcher's palm turns to the right at release for a right handed pitcher. This causes a sharper sink, but also has a greater risk of a wild pitch. This wrist movement is also called

pronation Motion, the process of movement, is described using specific anatomical terms. Motion includes movement of organs, joints, limbs, and specific sections of the body. The terminology used describes this motion according to its direction relativ ...

. To effectively throw the sinker, one must apply pressure with their fingers on the inside edge of the baseball when throwing. This will tilt the spin axis away from a traditional backspin and also reduce overall spin rate, both of which will help the ball sink and add lateral movement to it.

Effects on the batter

The sinker drops 6 to 9 inches more than a typical four seam fastball, which causes batters to hit

s more often than other fastballs, mostly due to the tilted sidespin on the ball. Horizontal movement also occurs when sinkers are thrown. Sinkerball pitchers can often get called strikes and swinging strikes on the pitch.

Notable sinkerballers

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References

{{Baseball Baseball pitches

History

Throwing mechanics

Effects on the batter

Notable sinkerballers

See also

References