Stro leaves batters with sinking feeling
Young Blue Jays ace possesses sinker that’s the envy of major leagues
Nobody taught Marcus Stroman his sinker grip, he just “kind of stumbled upon it” while fiddling with a baseball during the all-star break in his rookie season of 2014.
But it wasn’t an accident either. The Blue Jays’ 25-year-old right-hander had always wanted to throw the pitch but could never quite make it work.
“My whole life I tried,” he says. “Then I found a grip, something that felt comfortable in my hand.”
Once more open to discussing his pitch grips, Stroman has grown cagier and is now reluctant to discuss the mechanical intricacies of what has become his most important pitch. However he throws it, the pitch has been transformative for Stroman, turning him from an inefficient strikeout artist into an economical ground-ball machine. It’s the reason why he has the highest ground-ball rate of any starter in the majors this season.
Sometimes it can work against him, as it did in Wednesday’s start against the San Francisco Giants, when he induced 10 groundouts, but also allowed a handful of seeing-eye singles, three of which came around to score.
“Definitely can be frustrating at some points, but it’s a pitch that I live and die by and it’s a pitch that gets weak contact, so it’s something I’m going to continue to throw and not shy away from at all,” Stroman said.
But how does the pitch work, and what makes it different from others?
First, a quick explanation. A sinker is another name for a two-seam fastball, which differs from a four-seam fastball, which is baseball’s most common pitch. A four-seam fastball is thrown with the fingers across the seams, which creates backspin that acts against the forces of gravity to keep the ball in the air longer. It is a pitcher’s straightest pitch and usually the easiest to command.
With a sinker or two-seam fastball, fingers are positioned along rather than across the seams. The pitch is typically thrown at about the same velocity as a four-seam fastball, but with finger pressure, reorienting the ball’s spin axis. In some cases, by altering one’s delivery, a pitcher can apply sidespin rather than backspin.
“The more sidespin gives you armside movement, a tailing action,” says Alan Nathan, a physics professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in the physics of baseball.
“The fact there’s a lot less backspin means it drops more.”
Stroman’s sinker drops more than any other in the big leagues, and nearly four inches more than the league-average sinker, according to MLB’s Pitch F/X tracking system.
“His spin action is oriented in such a way that it’s almost pure sidespin,” says Nathan, who explains that while we can’t say exactly how Stroman manipulates the ball in his hand, we do know he throws his pitch in such a way the spin axis is 250 degrees, which is just 20 degrees shy of pure sidespin. “One hundred eighty degrees would be pure backspin, so he’s very far from pure backspin, very close to pure sidespin,” Nathan said. “Somehow he has learned how to do that through some combination of finger pressure and maybe arm slot. I suspect he’s probably doing it more with finger pressure.”
Stroman’s lower release point — due in part to him being shorter than most pitchers — also helps keep the ball low in the zone, Nathan said.
Stroman’s sinker also differs from others in how late it moves, says Jays catcher Russell Martin.
“It’s a late-action pitch,” he said. “It’s kind of exploding out of his hand and it’s not like a predictable sinker where a guy’s arm action is kind of letting you know — like, he’s coming on the side of the ball, it’s probably going to have this type of movement. He’s on top of the ball and it’s just very late as the ball’s getting to the plate. You don’t realize it’s going to move down on you probably until you start your swing, and once you’ve started your swing it’s hard to change directions.”
It doesn’t mean it’s unhittable, Martin said. But if Stroman locates it well, only “premium” low-ball hitters can square it up, mentioning Baltimore’s all-star third baseman Manny Machado as one of the few.
“There’s really not that many in the league and if you’re not one of them you’re going to have a headache that day.”
PITCH BREAKDOWN
Sinker: Midway through the 2014 season, Stroman found a sinker grip he liked and overnight it became his go-to pitch, all but eliminating his four-seam fastball. He throws his sinker more than 55 per cent of the time. It comes in at the same speed as his four-seam fastball (92-93 m.p.h.), but sinks just as it reaches the plate. Stroman’s pitch drops more than two feet by the time it reaches the batter and sinks four inches lower than the league’s average sinker. Cutter: Stroman throws his cutfastball, which is a couple ticks slower than his sinker, about 11per cent of the time, primarily against lefthanded hitters. Batters have yet to register a hit against the pitch this year. Curve: Stroman is going to his curveball less often this year — less than eight per cent of the time — and primarily using it against lefties. He throws it about 10 m.p.h. slower than his fastball and it is one of his best swing-and-miss offerings. Slider: Stroman throws his slider about 85 m.p.h. and, like his curveball, generates a lot of swing-andmiss with the pitch. Righties have actually hit Stroman’s slider well this year, while lefties have yet to register a single hit. Changeup: Stroman used to throw his changeup only to lefties, but this year he has been using it almost equally against right-handed hitters. He throws it around 85 m.p.h. and this year it has been the hardest-hit of all his pitches.