Her slider and curveball combination — her slurve — is a killer.
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Slocumb had a pretty good slurve to go with his fastball, and he'd pitched as well as he could pitch against Seattle.
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Critics of the slurve call the pitch a sloppy slider because of its wide break. They claim that the slurve produces more home runs than a late breaking slider. The usefulness of the slurve is debated. The slurve is also claimed to cause problems to a pitcher.
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On May 6, 1998, Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs utilized the slurve in a major- league record-tying 20 strikeout game. Japanese former Los Angeles Dodgers, Yakult Swallows, and Seibu Lions pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii, despite his well- documented control problems, used a slurve almost exclusively against left- handers. Alfredo Aceves from the Boston Red Sox was also known to throw a slurve. Stephen Strasburg claims to throw a slurve, although experts still call his pitch a curveball.
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The first pitcher to use the slurve pitch is unknown. Johnny Sain of the Boston Braves was known to throw a slurve in the 1940s.Liptak, M."Johnny Sain Remembered", White Sox Interactive. Accessed July 6, 2007.
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Locke throws a two-seam fastball (88–95), a circle changeup (79–82), and a knuckle curveball (77–84). In 2016, Locke's knuckle curve has become more of a slurve.
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He throws a hard, sinking fastball that clocks anywhere between 92 and 95 MPH, and a slurve. He is most famous though for throwing his 2-seam/No-seam fastball with tremendous movement.
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In 2013, Betances was tracked by the PITCHf/x system as having thrown a four-seam fastball averaging , a slurve averaging , and a changeup averaging . He is known for his high strikeout rate.
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A slider's spin axis is almost parallel to the ball's flight path similar to a football or bullet, but tilted slightly upwards pointing to 12 o'clock. When a slider's spin axis points to 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock, then the pitch becomes a slurve. This slurve tends to happen when a pitcher uses too much force on the curveball and less finesse. This happens because the pitcher may lazily pronate slightly at the release point instead of following through with complete supination at the end of the throw for the curve.
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Nakamura throws sidearm and relies mostly on two types of curves and a fastball around 90 mph. One of his curves has a movement resembling a slider (some commentators have called it a slurve), while the other has a wide break.
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In baseball, the curveball, a type of pitch which usually has downward movement, is thrown in such a way as to put topspin on the ball. Its close relatives are the slider and the slurve. The "curve" of the ball varies from pitcher to pitcher.
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Hall of Fame relief pitcher Goose Gossage stated that learning how to throw a slurve changed his career in his Yankeeography. Both Cy Young and Walter Johnson had slurves in their arsenals and Cy Young is the earliest known user of the pitch, having started his career in 1890.
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The slurve is a baseball pitch in which the pitcher throws a curve ball as if it were a slider."The Mechanics Of A Breaking Pitch", Popular Mechanics, April 1997. Accessed July 6, 2007. The pitch is gripped like a curve ball, but thrown with a slider velocity.
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Urías's primary pitch is a fastball with a typical velocity between 90 and 95 miles per hour, peaking at 97. He also throws a low-80s changeup, curveball, and slider. His curveball initially had primarily horizontal movement, resembling a slurve. During the 2016 season, he altered his grip to add vertical movement.
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At other times the slurve will happen due to the pitcher supinating a little too much at the release point when throwing a slider, which may be called a slurvy slider. A slurvy slider with the same velocity of a power slider (5-8mph slower than a fastball) may impart a greater break.
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Cabrera throws three pitches: a fastball, a curveball, and a changeup. His fastball is his strongest pitch—he is able to throw it consistently in the upper 90s, with significant sinking and tailing action. He throws two different curveballs. One is a sharp- breaking, hard curve that behaves like a slurve and tops out in the mid-upper 80s.
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Jones throws a 92–96 miles per hour fastball and an 89–93 miles per hour two-seam fastball. He used to throw a circle changeup and a curveball but in 2007 he stopped throwing the changeup and the curveball developed into a slider which almost acts like a slurve. He has had good success versus righties.
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Jackson is one of a minority of MLB starting pitchers who relies almost exclusively on two pitches, a mid-90s fastball and an effective power slider. His four-seam fastball has good velocity, averaging about 95 mph. He also has a two-seamer with similar velocity. His primary weapon against right-handed hitters is a hard slurve in the upper 80s.
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Aumont was a "power" pitcher, with a hard fastball and sharp breaking ball. Standing and weighing , Aumont threw a fastball in the mid 90s, reaching the upper 90s on occasion, with late movement. His breaking pitch was a "power slurve" which moves more like a curveball and had been clocked in the high 70s to low 80s. He also threw a changeup on occasion.
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Pitchers throwing their curveballs with the arm slot at an angle will throw a curveball that breaks down and toward the pitcher's off-hand. In the most extreme cases, the curve will break very wide laterally. Because the slider and the curveball share nearly the same grip and have the same unique throwing motions, this curveball breaks much like a slider, and is colloquially termed a "slurve".
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His best pitches were a 90-94 MPH four-seam fastball, and a slider which was often mistakenly called a slurve. He also threw a changeup. Although he was not classified as a strikeout pitcher, Betancourt got more than his share by throwing a significant number of strikes. He was a converted shortstop with a metal plate and six screws in his pitching elbow.
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Matsuzaka is a right-handed pitcher who throws from a three-quarter arm slot in a drop-and- drive motion. He throws numerous pitches in his repertoire: a four-seam fastball that sits in 90–94 mph (topped out at 97 mph in his first few years in Boston), a two-seam fastball in low 90s, a cutter in high 80s, a solid slurve in low 80s, and a changeup.
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Utsumi is a "junkball" pitcher, meaning that he does not have overpowering pitches. His fastball is usually in the 140 km/h (87 MPH) range, and he complements it with a slurve, a changeup, and a forkball. Utsumi relies on his control to get batters out, and it is usually pretty good, but when Utsumi misses his spots, that is when trouble finds him, usually in the form of home runs.
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The axis of rotation on a slurve will still be more or less perpendicular to the flight path of the ball; the latter however will not be parallel to the ground. With some pitchers, the difference between curveball and other pitches such as slider and slurve may be difficult to detect or even describe. A less common term for this type of curveball is a 1–7 (outdrop,outcurve, dropping roundhouse) or 2–8 (sweeping roundhouse curveball). A curveball spinning on a vertical axis completely perpendicular to its flight path and thus with complete side spin that is either 3–9 for a right handed pitcher or 9–3 for a left handed pitcher is called a sweeping curveball, flat curveball, or frisbee curveball. The flat curveball will still drop because of gravity, but due to the lack of top spin the drop is only a small amount compared to the 12–6, 1–7/11–5, or 2–8/10–4 curveballs.
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Strasburg's repertoire features five pitches: a four-seam fastball, his primary pitch at , which was recorded as high as 100 mph early in his career, and for which in the 2010 season was one of only three starting pitchers to have pitches of over 100 mph, and all did so at least 21 times (Justin Verlander and Ubaldo Jimenez); a two-seam fastball at ; a curveball that Strasburg himself refers to as a slurve at ; a changeup at . and a hybrid pitch he began using regularly in the 2016 season that his catcher Wilson Ramos described as a "slider-cutter," which moves laterally at . Strasburg throws a mix of all his pitches to left- handed hitters, but he mostly eliminates the changeup when facing right-handed hitters. He is liable to throw his four-seamer or slurve to right-handers with two strikes, and adds the changeup in those counts against lefties.
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An animated diagram of a 12–6 curveball In baseball and softball, the curveball is a type of pitch thrown with a characteristic grip and hand movement that imparts forward spin to the ball, causing it to dive as it approaches the plate. Varieties of curveball include the 12–6 curveball and the knuckle curve. Its close relatives are the slider and the slurve. The "curve" of the ball varies from pitcher to pitcher.
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Sánchez throws a fastball that travels about ninety-one mph for his main pitch, though it sometimes can go up to ninety- five mph. His other pitches (slurve and change-up) travel in the low eighties. Wildness has been a problem for Sánchez; he has walked 10% – 15% of major- league batters faced each season. However, he also strikes out a lot of batters; he struck out two hundred for the first time in his career in 2010.
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Overall, in his five seasons with Oakland, Braden appeared in 94 MLB games (79 starts), compiling a 26–36 record with 4.16 ERA while pitching innings with 305 strikeouts and 141 walks. He did not have any postseason appearances, as the Athletics did not have a winning season in any of Braden's years with the team. Braden threw four pitches: a cutter at 82 MPH, a fastball at 86–88 MPH, a slurve at 72–79 MPH and a changeup at 72 MPH.
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Gossage was one of the few pitchers who employed basically just one pitch, a fastball. However, his fastball was one of the best of all time, routinely throwing in the 98-to-102-mph range in his prime, with pinpoint accuracy. Occasionally he would throw a slurve or a changeup. Despite his reputation as a pitcher who intentionally threw at hitters, Gossage stated that he threw at only three hitters in his career: Ron Gant, Andrés Galarraga, and Al Bumbry.
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Keuchel throws five pitches: a four-seam fastball averaging , a sinker averaging , a cut fastball averaging , a slider averaging , and a changeup averaging . He had learned a slurve while in high school, which he did not use in college, as he relied on his sinker and changeup. Needing a breaking ball when he became a professional, he learned to throw a curveball. He did not succeed with the curveball in the major leagues, and he developed a slider, which helped his results.
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Jonathan Omar Sánchez (born November 19, 1982), nicknamed "The Kid," or "The Comeback Kid," is a Puerto Rican professional baseball pitcher for the Saraperos de Saltillo of the Mexican League. He is one of only three Puerto Rican players to throw a no-hitter game in MLB. The others being John Candelaria in 1976 and Juanchi Nieves in 1987. A left-handed starter, Sánchez's pitching repertoire consisted of a low-to-mid 90s mph fastball, a change-up, and a slurve in the 80s.
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Sitting in the upper-70s, the curveball has a hard, late break as it reaches the batter, and his mechanics are consistent across all of his pitches, making any off-speed offerings more deceptive. His curveball has been referred to by some as a slurve, due to its late break and decent velocity. He also features a changeup in the lower-80s with good sinking movement, though he doesn't throw it very often. Despite relying heavily on inducing ground balls, his pitches have enough velocity, movement, and deceptiveness to make him an effective strikeout pitcher.
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The Boston Red Sox signed Aro as an international free agent in June 2011. He grew up in the Dominican Republic idolizing Red Sox legend and Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez. His pitching repertoire includes a 91–93 mph fastball which occasionally reaches 95 mph, as well as an 83–85 mph changeup and a slurve at 78–81 mph with a short, 11-to-5 break, throwing most of them for strikes. Aro made a fast ascent in the Boston Minor League system in a span of four years.
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In 2004, he posted a 4.59 ERA in 137⅓ innings of work. His strikeout numbers were 7.93 K/9, and he had 71 walks allowed. Bédard was criticized for having a high pitch count (19.5 pitches/inning), forcing him to frequently make early exits from ballgames, and he was criticized for lacking a third type of pitch. Baltimore Orioles in 2006 Under the tutelage of pitching coach Ray Miller, who rejoined the Orioles in the middle of the 2004 season, Bédard refined his control of the changeup (his third pitch) to go along with his 91–93 mph fastball and slurve.
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Yu Darvish in 2014 Darvish is a right- handed pitcher who throws from a three-quarter arm slot in a drop-and-drive motion. He has a large frame for a pitcher, listed at 6 ft 5 in and 220 lb. Darvish throws a four-seam fastball which averages 93–95 mph (tops out at 99 mph), as well as a hard slurve (slider) in the low 80s with a sharp break. He complements these two with a wide repertoire of secondary pitches, including a two-seam fastball (also described as a shuuto), a cutter, two curveballs, a splitter, and an occasional changeup.
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A common grip of a slider In baseball, a breaking ball is a pitch that does not travel straight as it approaches the batter; it will have sideways or downward motion on it, sometimes both (see slider). A breaking ball is not a specific pitch by that name, but is any pitch that "breaks", such as a curveball, slider, or slurve. A pitcher who primarily uses breaking ball pitches is often referred to as a junkballer. A breaking ball is more difficult than a straight pitch for a catcher to receive as breaking pitches sometimes hit the ground (whether intentionally, or not) before making it to the plate.
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A middle reliever, he pitched a shutout in his rookie season but started no other games and was credited with only eight saves over his six-season, 333-game career. His best season was 1986, when he had a 1.20 earned run average, and, with 34 singles and one double given up in 52.1 innings, a defensive isolated power percentage (slugging percentage allowed minus batting average allowed, a measure of extra bases allowed on hits) of .006 – as of 2014, the lowest such percentage of anyone pitching 50 or more innings in records going back to 1957. He was traded in the offseason to the Cincinnati Reds and finished with the Detroit Tigers in 1989.Created the “slurve”, slow side arm curve ball.
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During spring training in 2012, Burawa suffered a tear to his oblique muscle and a cracked rib, which cost him the entire season."Rule 5 Preview: Cubs' Marcus Hatley, Yankees' Danny Burawa Among Names To Watch," Baseball America. At the time his fastball was 93–95 mph, and he also threw a slurve (combination curveball and slider) at 75–78 mph. In 2013, he pitched for the Trenton Thunder of the Class AA Eastern League. He pitched to a 6–3 win–loss record with 4 saves and a 2.59 earned run average (ERA) and 66 strikeouts in 66 innings pitched over 46 relief appearances. He was throwing a 95–98 mph fastball, and a mid 80s slider."Yanks’ Burawa finds pen success by throttling back," New York Post. The Yankees invited Burawa to spring training in 2014. He pitched for the Trenton Thunder, going 0–0 with 1 save and a 1.59 ERA and 18 strikeouts in 17 innings in 11 relief appearances. He also pitched for the Scranton/Wilkes- Barre RailRiders of the Class AAA International League, going 3–1 with 3 saves and a 5.95 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 42.1 innings in 31 relief appearances. After the 2014 season, the Yankees added Burawa to their 40-man roster. Burawa began the 2015 season with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
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