I found this article about curveballs interesting. I’ve been a fan of Houston since the 1980s, and it seems like we’ve always had a curveball pitcher. Do y’all like the 12-6 curve or do you prefer the hard stuff?

37 comments

  2. Curveballs are just a weird spot. There are other pitches with better movement which is the strength of curveballs. The amount of different pitches decreases the percentage of curve balls. There is a generation of kids that blew their arms out or watched their friends do the same throwing curveballs too early where curveballs got a bad name. 

  4. Nothing better than a beautiful looping curveball slap the dirt as a batter whiffs or does the jiggle dance and watches it pop the bottom corner or drop In the top of the zone.

    The mlb (baseball in general) is obsessed with maximum effort velocity in reduced innings in the mound. Pitchers would rather throw hard variation pitches 4 seam, splitter, cutter instead of 4 seam, curve 12-6/sweeping/slurve, slider/2 seam, change/circle change because it’s easier.

  5. I wonder how much of this is also the difficulty if tunneling a curveball with other pitches

  6. A 12-6 curve that buckles a hitters knees is the most beautiful thing in baseball

  7. I miss watching Greg Maddux paint with pinpoint accuracy. Making people look like a fool with an 86 mph sinker. I get more excited over that than someone throwing 100 mph heat.

  11. Secondary pitches fall in and out of favor. The curveball has been more entrenched due to its history, but time will tell if it will go the way of the screwball or will see shifting degrees of usage like the splitter. Probably more likely like the latter.

  13. It’ll be back. Some guys use it a bunch today. We have a lefty in our pen who throws it around 1/4 of the time, Murphy.

  16. Do you think less curve balls comes from if a curve hangs and doesn’t break at 80 mph (ie a mistake) it has more likelihood of being sent somewhere hard? If a slider hangs at least it has 6 mph more speed to get away with the mistake.

  17. One of the greatest post-season pitches was an “uncle Charlie” from Adam wainwright (nicknamed uncle Charlie) freezing Beltran.

  20. Aaron Ashby keeping it alive and well. With upper 90’s movement on his fastball as well

  21. It was great to witness Pedro Martinez turn into the great pitcher he became in his later years; he had little velocity left but he could make it look so easy with change of pace and command. Skenes may have the makeup to do this. He keeps learning and perfecting new pitches, and doesn’t throw as hard as he did when he came up. He’s going to be fun to watch, especially when he gets to a good team.

  24. I love myself a good old fashioned curveball but to me, Reid Detmers’s sweeping curve is a thing of beauty.

  25. I need to know if we have more tommy john operations today than ever before as we have prioritized velocity over everything else.

  26. Is there any sport we’re creativity is welcome or have all the awkward unskilled stat nerds sucked the life out of sports

  27. ![gif](giphy|Xjj4ESy1QPlkPWycWs|downsized)

    I’ll never forget this curveball

  28. This is a really stupid article and even dumber headline. The graphic in the article itself shows the current curveball usage is about on par with where it was in the 00’s and early 2010’s, we just had a sizable uptick in the late 2010s and it’s gone back down.

  29. Isn’t the curve ball related to more, tommy John, or am I wrong? Hence, the shift.

  30. Ben Sheets had a DEVASTATING 12-6 back in the day. Surprises to not see him mentioned in the comments. Now guys are throwers, back then they were pitchers.

  36. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also because of the elbow problems that come with putting a huge amount of spin on the ball.

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