Styles of Baseball Pitching

Styles of Baseball Pitching
By guest author: Chris Moheno

There are even more styles of pitching than there are for baseball hitting and that's due in part to the specialization of pitchers at the Major League level. You cannot simply be a "pitcher" anymore. You can be a starting pitcher, a closer, a middle reliever, a left handed specialist, or any number of other pitchers... but not just "pitcher". You can try to get people out in many different and assorted ways as well. From a young age, athletes participating in baseball training are learning to tailor their programs and techniques to specific styles, hoping to hone in on a specific area of pitching they can excel at.

What's your goal in the game?

One of the main separators in terms of different styles of pitching is what your goal in the game actually is. A starting pitcher won't have the same goal, and therefore won't have the same techniques, as a closer or middle reliever. Additionally, even different pitchers within the same role, i.e. starter, will have different goals in a specific game. One day your team may be low on available relievers, so as a starting pitcher your goal above all else is to eat up as many innings as possible, as opposed to flat out dominating several.

The different assignments a pitcher will have strongly helps to determine his style of pitching.

How will you get a batter out?

Of course not every pitcher achieves his goal - getting the batter out - in the same way as everybody else. Many pitchers, especially pitchers in Little League and in high school, rely purely on power. They are going to wind up and chuck the ball as hard as they can and hope they can leave the batter swinging and missing. Other pitchers rely more on finesse. That includes using a wide array of successful pitches, including more than one "out" pitch, focusing on pinpoint placement of a pitch and working the count the get the advantage on a batter.

Other styles of pitching include focusing on either producing ground balls or producing fly balls. A ground ball pitcher typically uses many sinkers and other low pitches that induce the batter to hit a ground ball. This provides a great chance at getting the batter out if you can master those pitches. A fly ball pitcher on the other hand tries to pop the batter out and might throw a lot of pitches high and inside. Typically, a ground ball pitcher will be known more as a finesse pitcher whereas a fly ball pitcher is more commonly a power pitcher. Both styles are effective and ultimately what you end up relying on depends on which pitches you can control the best and how fast you can throw the ball.

Windups and Techniques

There are also many different windups and throwing motions that a pitcher can deploy. As a pitcher, you really have to focus your baseball training on methods that will lead to the best results, and learning a new windup or throwing motion can take a great deal of time and effort. Even within one game you will need to use different deliveries or styles of pitching. You can't take a long windup with a base running threat on the bags.

Careers have been saved and lost based around learning new delivery motions and adapting one's self to what you can do the best. Sometimes a pitcher will have no success out of a classic overhand delivery, but will go on to learn an underhand or sidearm delivery and see great results. Deliveries like this are less common and therefore give the pitcher the edge because a batter will have less experience dealing with it.

Baseball hitting is always trying to play catch up to the pitching component of a game. As soon as a new pitch or style of pitching is developed, batters will study it and learn how to try to deal with it.

So as a pitcher you have to stay ahead of the game by really finding out the style of pitching that works best for you and your role in the game. You don't have to - and shouldn't try - to be the best at every pitch, windup or style, but rather focus in on the key areas you can develop to your fullest potential.

Chris Moheno has a long time passion for sports in general and for baseball coaching more specifically.

His goal is to spread the word about effective non-fluff baseball training techniques for both more experienced and young baseball players, to help them perform better during the game. Discover more about baseball training secrets on baseballtrainingsecrets.

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