Every pitcher knows having multiple pitches in his repertoire is a key to success on the mound. Here is a look at five different pitches — four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, slider, curve ball and change-up – and the LSU pitcher who specializes in throwing each of them.
Four-seam fastball
For a pitcher, establishing himself to a hitter and letting him know he is in control is very important.
One of the best pitches to do that with is a four-seam fastball, which is a fastball that is gripped perpendicular to the seams on the ball with the seams at four different spots along the stitches.
The four-seamer, as it is called, does not have a lot of movement to it, but it is faster than any other pitch.
This is the specialty pitch of LSU left-hander Greg Smith, a 6-foot-2 sophomore from Alexandria.
According to LSU coaches and teammates, Smith has the best four-seam fastball on the LSU baseball team.
“Greg Smith probably has the best four-seam fastball on the staff at this point,” said LSU pitching coach Brady Wiederhold. “He’s worked real hard. He’s consistent.”
Smith leads the team with 18 appearances on the season, all in relief. In 25 2/3 innings, he is 2-0 with a 1.40 ERA and 30 strikeouts. Opponents are hitting .200 against him.
Smith’s four-seamer can reach speeds as high as 93 mph, but normally hits 89, 90 or 91 mph on the radar gun.
Smith grips the ball along the horseshoe of seams and he holds the horseshoe out away from his body.
He keeps about a pinkie width between his two fingers that grip the ball, his middle finger and index finger, although some pitchers like to hold their fingers together when they throw it.
Smith said if he holds his two fingers together, he gets more velocity on his ball, but he also loses control of the ball because he does not cover as much space on it.
However, Smith has another way of getting a little extra kick on his four-seamer.
Smith has crooked middle fingers, and when he grips the ball, his middle finger curves along the seams of the horseshoe.
When he releases the ball, that extra friction from his middle finger and his wrist action gives the ball an extra burst or “hop” at the end.
“It’s called an exploding fastball,” he said. “It kind of jumps.”
Smith usually comes into games to face left-handers in the late innings or close out tight ball games.
If he comes in to face a left-hander, Smith likes to start off with a four-seam fastball on the outside corner of the plate to get a quick strike one.
“You look to get ahead, establish the fastball,” Smith said. “Let him know that I’m in control and I’m coming right at him. I can throw it 0-1 to get another strike and make it 0-2. At 0-2, I can challenge him and say come beat me.”
Smith does not throw the four-seamer inside to a left-handed batter or outside to a right-handed batter.
“If I establish the four-seamer inside to a lefty, he knows it’s inside and it’s going to stay there so he’s going to get the barrel there,” Smith said.
Instead he uses a two-seam fastball, which runs armside or toward the left-hand batter’s box. Two-seamers will be discussed later.
Against right-handers, Smith throws the fastball in the same spot as he does left-handers. It runs inside to a right-handed batter.
“Greg’s gotten good at a four-seam fastball into the right-handers, that way it doesn’t run back over the plate,” Wiederhold said. “I don’t care how hard you throw it, it’s got a chance to be hit because that’s where the meat of the bat is.”
Two-seam fastball
Every successful four-seam fastball needs a sidekick pitch to give hitters something different to look at, and the two-seam fastball is a worthy candidate.
Many LSU pitchers throw a strong two-seam fastball, including Greg Smith, Justin Meier and Jason Determann. But the guy whose two-seamer might be the best is junior left-hander Lane Mestepey.
For his first two seasons at LSU, Mestepey was the Tigers’ most successful pitcher, garnering a 22-8 record in his first two seasons and earning the 2001 National Freshman of the Year and 2002 First-Team All-Southeastern Conference honors as a sophomore.
Mestepey sat out the 2003 season after having Tommy John surgery in the summer of 2002, but before his injury he had established himself as one of the top pitchers in the country.
This season as a starting pitcher and spot reliever, Mestepey is 5-1 with a 4.17 ERA in 54 innings of work.
Mestepey’s success never came with the velocity on his pitches. Instead, it came with the movement he gets on them and the location they are thrown.
Mestepey’s two-seamer has been a key weapon in his success as a pitcher.
The two-seamer is different from a four-seamer in the grip used to hold the ball and the movement on the pitch.
While the four-seamer is perpendicular across the seams on the ball, the two-seamer is gripped parallel along the seams.
And while a four-seamer is a straight fastball with no movement and more velocity, the two-seamer makes up for its lack of velocity by running away armside. This means that if a left-hander throws a two-seamer, the ball is going to break away to the left side of the plate. A right-hander’s two-seamer breaks away to the right side of the plate.
Mestepey said the two-seamer does not pick up as much speed as the four-seamer because only two seams catch air in one revolution as opposed to four seams in the four-seamer.
“When you throw a two-seamer, you are probably going to have four mph taken off your four-seam fastball,” Mestepey said. “It’s just like hitting a golf ball. Since you only have two seams cutting the wind, it’s going to create more movement. With a golf ball, you don’t have any (seams) so if you don’t hit the ball directly in line with it, the ball is going to take off and hook or you’re going to slice the heck out of it.”
Mestepey, a 6-foot, 195-pound junior from Zachary, grips the ball along the horseshoe with his index and middle fingers touching unlike Smith, who keeps a pinkie width in between. He said this grip is more comfortable for him, and he gets a better feel for his pitch with his fingers touching. Mestepey holds his thumb under the ball and slightly off-centered.
“I hold my thumb off to the side, because you get more sinking action on it and that’s really the key to a two-seamer,” Mestepey said. “You really want the ball to sink and dive toward armside at the last minute. That will get you ground ball outs so you can turn double plays.”
Mestepey likes to throw the two-seam fastball when he is ahead in the count, so he can make the ball run away from the plate and try to get the batter to roll over on the pitch and hit a ground ball.
Mestepey likes to keep his two-seamer low and inside to left-handed batters while running it away from right-handed batters.
“You don’t want to throw your two-seamer inside to a right hander unless you’re Greg Maddux, because it runs back over the plate and that’s right in the guy’s wheel house,” Mestepey said. “What makes Greg Maddux so good is he starts it at the guy’s hip, and he can do this, and it dives back over and the guy gives up on it. The next thing you know, it’s on the inside part of the plate.”
Groundball outs are a good indication that Mestepey has his two-seamer working and is keeping it low.
Wiederhold said Mestepey is getting closer to finding his 2001 and 2002 form, and if he is going to continue his progress, the two-seamer will be a big part of it.
“[Mestepey is] getting back there,” Wiederhold said. “He’s starting to feel more comfortable. He’s got good movement on it. It runs away from the right-handed batters and that’s what makes the two-seamer effective.”
Slider
Sophomore right-hander Justin Meier does not want to think about what his career would be without his slider.
A cross between a curve ball and a fastball, the slider has been Meier’s best pitch in his two years at LSU – going 8-3 with a 2.83 ERA as a freshman in 2003 and 5-2 with a 3.23 ERA this season.
“I’ve got it pretty down pat right now,” Meier said. “It’s definitely my favorite pitch. If I didn’t have it, I don’t know what I would do.”
Meier carried his success in 2003 into the summer in the Cape Cod Baseball League, where he really got his slider working.
Working as a closer, Meier recorded a 1.19 ERA in 22 2/3 innings with 13 hits allowed and 42 strikeouts. He said a lot of his success was because of his slider.
“It’s been my most successful pitch,” Meier said. “I got it going real good this summer in the Cape. That’s the reason I did so well.”
Meier grips the ball with his fingers together and off-center a bit on the seams of the ball. As he is throwing it, he breaks it off at the last second with his wrist, causing the ball to dive into the left-handed batter’s box. He throws it at speeds between 78 and 80 mph, a good speed for a breaking pitch, he said.
From the batter’s perspective, it looks like a fastball is coming in straight, only for the ball to dive away at the last second.
“He can only confuse it with a fastball,” Meier said. “That’s the thing I love about it. The curve ball, you can almost always pick it up because it’s high. With my pitch, I am throwing it right down the middle and it breaks off at the last second.”
Meier mainly uses his slider against right-handed batters because the movement of the pitch moves away from the right-handed hitter.
“For me, since I’m right-handed, I would throw it to a right-handed batter because obviously it breaks away from them,” Meier said. “Primarily to a righty, you want to use it as an out pitch.”
Meier, a 2003 Freshman All-American, rarely tries to throw the slider inside to a right-hander because he said the batter can pick it up easier if it is coming right at him.
Meier said the only time he would throw the slider against the left-handed hitter would be to get a backdoor strike. He would start the pitch way off the plate in the right-hander’s batter’s box and have it break back over the outside corner.
Meier said the only other reason to throw a slider to a left-hander would be to get the batter’s mind guessing and not just looking for either a fastball or a change-up.
Meier likes to use his slider as his out pitch after working the other pitches with fastballs and change-ups.
When he gets two strikes on a hitter, Meier has him set up just where he wants him to throw the slider.
“If you have two strikes, you want to throw that killer pitch and break it away so that it looks like it’s going down the middle and breaks off the plate so he has to reach for it and can’t get it,” Meier said. “And even if they do get it, they just punch it to second base or first base and get the out.”
Meier first started throwing his slider at West Orange High School in Windermere, Fla.
He used to throw a curveball instead of a slider, but because his arm slot switched to what is now his most successful pitch.
“[The curveball wasn’t going down it was going across,” Meier said. “So I said forget it, and I gave in and started throwing a slider so it would break away.”
Meier said he had a little trouble with his slider early in the season, which led to some early season struggles. Now, he says he has his slider working the way he wants it.
In his last start, Meier allowed one run in 7 2/3 innings against Alabama on Saturday.
“When he’s right, Meier can throw a slider as well as anybody in the country,” said LSU coach Smoke Laval.
Curveball
No one on the LSU baseball team drops the hammer like Clay Dirks.
A freshman left-hander from Hernando, Miss., Dirks has one of those curveballs that “drops off the table.”
“Nobody hits it,” LSU coach Smoke Laval said. “I would say he has more bite than any of the others. It starts up there and bores down in a hurry. If there was a trick to it they would all do it.”
If the view of the batter is turned into a face of a clock, Dirks’ curveball looks like it “starts at one o’clock and ends up at seven o’clock,” Laval said.
The curveballs Dirks’ best pitch, and it has helped him reach an 8-1 record with a 2.67 ERA in 12 starts in 70 2/3 innings.
The secret in Dirks’ curveball may be in the grip and the arm action he throws it with.
He grips it right along the horseshoe with his middle finger and his thumb and overlaps his index finger over his middle finger. Dirks learned this grip from his high school coach at Hernando High School.
And for Dirks, that grips works.
“It was tough at first but you get used to it,” Dirks said.
Dirks said he can start his curveball at a left-handed batter’s shoulder and have it break down and inside on the right side of the plate.
Wiederhold said the hardest thing for a hitter is to lay off the pitch.
“With the way [Dirks] throws it and the tight spin on it, it’s hard for the hitters to lay off it,” Wiederhold said. “What’s good about him is most of the time he is able to throw it in the zone for a strike. He can get ahead of a batter first pitch, second pitch curveball and get him in the hole. And when the hitter gets behind in the count, he can’t guess or anything like that. They’ve got to put the ball in play and that makes it even more difficult to lay off.”
Sometimes Dirks’ curveball also makes knees buckle or make batters dive out of the way before it drops back in the strike zone
“It bites real hard,” Wiederhold said. “It’s got a tight spin on it. He throws it hard, which is difficult for the batter to pick up.”
Dirks will throw his curveball in any situation, no matter the pitch count.
“I throw it anytime,” Dirks said. “I’ll start it off. I’ll throw it 2-0, 3-1. I’ll throw it in a hitter’s count. I’ve got that much confidence in it.”
The 6-foot-4 redshirt freshman said he can tell by the swings hitters are taking on whether or not his curveballs at its best.
“You can just feel it,” Dirks said. “It’s kind of like you just go out and feel loose. You can see the swings hitters are getting on it. You’ll know how it’s going by the type of swings, whether they’re late, or if they’re right on it.”
Dirks said teammates have told him that he could throw his curveball every pitch and succeed.
“The guys say my curveballs real tight,” Dirks said. “They say it looks like a four-seam fastball and it just drops into the strike zone. To a left-hander sometimes, you will get some guys that buckle their knees like they weren’t expecting it.
“In the fall, [outfielder Jon] Zeringue and a couple of other guys told me that I don’t have to worry about throwing another pitch besides the curveball”
As far as the popular theory of a curve ball not curving and being an optical illusion, Dirks just laughed and smiled.
“You tell me,” he said. “You get behind home plate and watch a couple of guys throw curveballs and tell me it doesn’t curve. You can see it. There’s no way around it.”
Change-up
Senior right-hander Nate Bumstead’s change-up is a pitch like no other. It is an invention of his own.
A regular change-up is held deep in the palm of the hand and thrown with the same arm action as a fastball. The result is a straight pitch that looks like a fastball but is 10 to 12 mph slower.
While at Durango High School in Las Vegas, Bumstead tried to throw regular change-ups but kept throwing the ball 30 feet in front of the plate.
So then he made a slight alteration. Instead of holding the ball deep in his palm, Bumstead holds his change-up out in his fingertips and connects his thumb and index finger in a circle shape.
“I couldn’t really throw strikes with [the other grip,]” Bumstead said. “I started moving it around more and more and starting getting more movement by holding it in my fingertips.”
The resulting pitch is a change-up that dances and dives either to the left or to the right.
“That’s just a trick pitch there,” Laval said. “He has one like nobody else I’ve never seen. It just reacts different. You can’t teach it. Most change ups come in straight and you just change speed. His dips down and away. Don’t ask me how because even he doesn’t know. It does funky things.”
The funny thing about it is Bumstead does not know which way it is going to go.
“It just all comes out,” Bumstead said. “Sometimes it goes left. Sometimes it goes right. I don’t really know where it’s going to go.”
Bumstead throws the change-up at about 77 to 78 mph, which is the velocity he is looking for. What makes the pitch effective is the way the ball dives down at the last minute, similar to a slider.
“A good change-ups 10 to 12 mph off your fastball and you have to be able to throw it for strikes,” Bumstead said. “That’s pretty much the definition of a good change-up I’ve got that plus a little movement to it and a little ‘trickery.'”
Bumstead said he only runs into trouble with his change-up when he leaves it up in the strike zone.
“Change-ups that are up tend to get hit … far,” he said.
Bumstead’s change-up was especially effective last year and it helped him to an 11-4 record with a 4.42 ERA. This season, Bumstead is 7-2 with a 3.94 ERA.
“It was really good last year,” Bumstead said. “This year it hasn’t been as effective. I don’t know if people have caught on or if I’m not throwing it as well as I have been.”
Bumstead mentioned a start against Ole Miss in 2003 when he struck out 10 Rebels, all because of his change-up. He said he was throwing pitches that were hitting the plate but yet Ole Miss kept swinging at them.
That is how he knows whether he has command of his change-up on a certain day.
“It will be down or you can tell by the swings guys are taking,” Bumstead said. “If guys are taking brutal hacks at balls that aren’t even close to the zone, it’s working.”
Maybe the newness has worn off, but it still is Bumstead’s best pitch and easily the best change-up on the team.
“Bumstead’s got the change-up, there’s no doubt about that,” Wiederhold said. “He can throw the change-up anytime he wants to, to right-handed batters, left-handed batters, either side of the plate, That’s the pitch he’s had success with really his whole career.
“Someday it dances more than others. Why that happens, I wish I knew because I would bottle that up and we’d throw it every single pitch. Nate’s worked real hard on location of his fastballs and that makes his change-up more effective.”
Bumstead has great confidence in his change-up and will throw it in all counts.
“I don’t have that killer fastball or killer curve ball so having one of the three pitches is pretty big in getting yourself out of a jam or just trying to go out and dominate a game,” Bumstead said. “With guys on first and second and no or one out, it’s very important to have that killer pitch to throw and get that double-play ball or maybe a big strike out.”