Five Odd Nicknames For Pitches

The way a pitcher grips the ball changes the dynamic of baseball. Since the early inception of the sport, pitchers have always looked for new ways to fool the batter to swing outside the strike zone. By gripping the different locations on the ball, a pitcher can alter the number of revolutions the ball takes before reaching the plate. For example, these different grips can cause the ball to move from left to right, like a cutter, or make it suddenly drop below the strike zone, like a changeup. Some of these pitches can be further altered by how a pitcher delivers the ball, creating a unique pitch to the specific hurler. In no particular order, here are five odd nicknames for unique pitches.

Mr. Snappy

LHP Randy Johnson is arguably the best hard-throwing pitcher of all time. While his command was an issue for him early in his career, the speeds he threw continued to keep him in the big leagues. I mean, he killed a bird with his fastball in the middle of the game. Johnson, at his prime, used his velocity to his advantage by incorporating fast-moving off-speed pitches into his repertoire. This included a slider that he nicknamed Mr. Snappy, claimed by Fansided as one of the nastiest pitches of all time. Johnson tormented hitters by whaling the pitch past them. He scared the life out of 1B/OF John Kruk during the 1993 All-Star Game, and there are countless video compilations of him degrading batters with it. Johnson first referred to his pitch as Mr. Snappy in a commercial, which is no longer available. A Reddit thread quotes Johnson saying, “This is what I call Mr. Snappy. It tends to tail off to left-handers. Visiting players don’t like Mr. Snappy.” Beyond this commercial, he’s never talked much about the pitch. However, Kruk and former teammate Curt Schilling have both made references to it in the media.

Lord Charles 

Dwight “Doc” Gooden’s nickname was Doctor K, so naturally, the pitch he used most to strike hitters out also had a nickname. Lord Charles was the name for his curveball. It is recognized as one of the best 12-6 curveballs ever. It was initially derived from the nickname of the curveball, Uncle Charlie, but because it’s such a perfect pitch, it gained its royal lineage. The pitch looked like it was heading for a batter’s head, then when the batter moved to avoid getting hit, it would curve back into the zone for a strike. Gooden is the only pitcher to have a nickname for his curveball. Lord Charles helped Gooden to Rookie of the Year honors in 1984, a Cy Young Award in 1985 and four All-Star appearances in his first five seasons.

Fadeaway 

One of the first inducted MLB Hall-of-Famers, RHP Christy Mathewson, invented the screwball. While umpiring in college, Matthewson saw the curveball break the opposite way and experimented with it. As a result, the screwball became baseball’s most famous pitch in the early 1900s. Despite this, Mathewson told his friend Red Murray that the pitch was taxing on his wrist and took years to master. 

“He said he got the idea when he was a player at Bucknell University and used to umpire the freshman games,” Murray told the Brooklyn Eagle. “One day while umpiring, he watched a left-handed pitcher throw an outcurve to a left-handed batter, and the idea of the fadeaway took root then and there … He began practicing on it in college, and he told me that it took years to master it.” 

Mathewson called it the fadeaway because the ball moved like a fast curveball but arched down and away from a lefty and went in on a righty.

Kluball 

SP Corey Kluber has what is often referred to as a slurve ball, a combination of a slider and a curveball. However, Kluber calls his the Kluball. He denies that the pitch is a slurve altogether, stating that his delivery would be different if he were trying to throw that pitch. 

“Corey Kluber doesn’t classify his breaking ball as either a curve or a slider. It’s really neither and both. He said he feels that labeling it would affect his execution of it,” reporter Lindsey Adler tweeted. 

Kluber won two AL Cy Young Awards with the Cleveland Indians, and it seems that he doesn’t want to get into the semantics about his pitches.

Darpitch

SP Yu Darvish is a sorcerer when it comes to pitch-craft. According to MLB.com, he once threw 10 different pitch types in one season. Darvish was considered the top pitcher in Japan before coming to the MLB in 2012. The Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan is known for pitchers incorporating weird and unidentifiable pitches. Darvish was known for throwing a gyroball, similar to a screwball but not off-speed. He seemingly brought that concept over to the United States. Jason Bastian, an MLB blogger, noticed that Darvish was throwing two completely different cutters in 2019. One soft, hitting an average of 86.3 mph, and a hard one, hitting just above 90 mph. Bastian coined the hard cutter the Darpitch, a mix of Darvish’s name with the word “pitch.”

“You can call it what you want,” former Chicago Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “It’s him adjusting the cutter grip, or it’s him adjusting the fastball grip.”

The difference between the soft and hard pitch is that Darvish has better control over the Darpitch than his regular cutter. Bastian even argues that he has more control with the Darpitch than with his 4-seam fastball. Darvish, now a San Diego Padre, earned All-Star honors this season.

Comparing the entries on this list has made me question baseball classifications for pitches. Johnson wasn’t affected by his slider not being named “Mr. Snappy,” but when it comes to Kluber, he defended his point that his pitch didn’t fit the classification MLB gave. On the other hand, when we look at Darvish, he completely throws the concept of pitch classifications out the window by incorporating 10 pitches in his arsenal. On a larger scale, I wonder if this is how pitchers in the MLB evolve into better players. Like, what if a pitcher mixed three pitch types to create the ultimate unhittable pitch? I’m here for it.
Cover photo courtesy of Noah K. Murray/AP Photo