How to Throw A Cut Fastball Pitch

Video Transcript

"The next pitch we're going to show is the cut fast ball. So a fast cut ball is probably you see a guy like Rivera with the Yankees, who shows most of his balls are cut fast balls and sliders, so probably the one of the most dominate relievers in the game today. Basically a cut fast ball and to me it's a great pitch for young pitchers instead of getting into getting the wrist turned and cocked and putting pressure onto the elbow, all this is you are trying to put or putting more pressure on one side of the ball over the other. As we showed in the previous clips that we have the center line to show basically the center of the ball, what we're going to do is actually going to put ourselves to the right side of the baseball. For me it's a right hander so I'm going to be slightly angled a little different from where I was before, I was on my fast ball, it was a little more direct and dead center with both my thumb and my fingers. Now I'm just going to move my fingers a little bit to the side of the center and move my thumb slightly, so as I throw this ball I'm actually going to throw it exactly like my fast ball. Basically with arm speed my release point the whole bit so the whole point to this pitch right now is to come out really hard like my fast ball and what it's going to do is actually going to cut and spin a little bit sideways as it goes. It's not going to be a true backspin, it's going to come out a little bit on an angle so the break on the pitches is not as severe as the slider, curve ball or a slur ball but what it will do is just change directions slightly. It's a good pitch if you're throwing a lot of outside pitches fast balls that you throw this on the outer half of the plate and it will come off the plate and make itself break away from the plate. So the whole point to this again is just to get ourselves cocked on the right side of the baseball instead of dead center and just to get a bit of hard tight spin just enough so it's not easily picked up by the hitter. It's break them all as the ball breaks one way or the other or it's definitely off a normal plane of a fast ball where this will stay on the same plane as the fast ball almost continuously until about 10-15 feet before the plate and then break out to the opposite side that you throw. So obviously if you're a right hander you're going to cock on the other side of the ball and you'll get a run to the other side or to the right as a right hander we're going to cock to the right side of the ball and make it left break to the left."