DIFFERENT HITTERS: DIFFERENT APPROACHESA power hitter or a slap hitter? Patient or aggressive? Knowing a hitter's strengths and motivation is important, but a finesse pitcher like Mussina isn't locked into rigid strategies. He's notorious among hitters for varying sequences with every at-bat, based on how sharp each pitch feels that day, the game situation and the history between him and the hitter, among other factors. But if enough variables can be eliminated -- say, no runners on base, no score in the game, no previous meetings that season -- there is a particular way of attacking each type of hitter.
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The Tough Out
With two strikes, many hitters become defensive, waiting on the pitch a bit longer and swinging at anything close. Some hitters, like the Baltimore Orioles' Brian Roberts, do that all the time. These guys are difficult to get off balance, Mussina says. One approach is to throw a couple of fastballs down and away, then change the batter's eye level -- as pitchers like to say -- by throwing one high and over the middle. Over the middle is better than up and in, ''because up and in is two places that it's not a strike,'' Mussina says. ''If you get it up enough, it's over the plate, so it looks good.'' Now the hitter's eye is trained, at least momentarily, to look for a pitch higher than the next one will actually be. A pitcher might try a low curveball, hoping the hitter is expecting a fastball and inducing a weak ground ball.
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The Power Hitter
Power hitters, Mussina reasons, usually try to drive in runs rather than eke out walks. If they get ahead in the count, they can afford to wait for a pitch in a precise location and drill it if it comes. Mussina says the goal is to put them behind in the count and force their hand. ''I'm trying to get the guy to swing at a pitch he doesn't want to swing at,'' he explains. David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, a disciplined power hitter, has struggled against Mussina. Ortiz might see a first-pitch curveball and then, depending on his reaction, another one a bit lower. After he sees two curves, a fastball will seem quicker than it really is. So two fastballs might follow -- one low, one high, to change Ortiz's eye level -- and if Mussina has two strikes by then, he might offer a curveball down and hope Ortiz chases it for strike three.
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The Base Stealer
Speedsters often look to walk. A classic example was Rickey Henderson, now a coach for the New York Mets. Against Henderson, the key was to get ahead in the count: if the first pitch was a ball, he would become extra picky, waiting for a walk unless he got a pitch in a precise location. (If Henderson succeeds as a tutor, his modern-day equivalent will be the increasingly patient Jose Reyes, the Mets' shortstop.) Mussina might think of starting off with a fastball or slider near the edge of the strike zone. Hoping to be ahead -- say, 1-2 -- he could then bring a fastball inside, straightening Henderson's stance if he was leaning too far to protect against strikes on the outside corner. At 2-2, Mussina might go again to the slider; if Henderson misread it, he would most likely hit it weakly for an out.
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The Free Swinger
A different kind of aggressive hitter is the Los Angeles Angels' Vladimir Guerrero, a free swinger with power. ''It's no secret -- Vlady swings,'' Mussina says. ''If he had the ability to have a good eye and only swing at pitches that are good pitches to hit, there's no telling how great a player he would be.'' Guerrero can hit pitches thrown to almost any location, but is never a threat to work the count. So Mussina tries to stay out of the strike zone entirely. He might throw breaking balls in the dirt, low and away, and then run a fastball in on Guerrero's hands. By the fourth pitch, chances are Guerrero will have put the ball in play, and because he has seen mostly junk, he'll often make an out. Through midseason, Guerrero, a .324 career hitter, was 4 for 24 lifetime against Mussina.
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A PITCHER'S ARSENAL |
4-Seam FastballThe four-seam fastball -- so named for the four seams that bite the air each time the ball rotates -- is the hardest, straightest fastball. (Many pitchers, however, do get movement on the pitch -- most often a rising or tailing action.) The four-seamer is the dominant pitch of fireballers like Jake Peavy and Justin Verlander and is probably used more often than any other pitch, because it's the easiest to throw to a precise location. A young prospect who throws an especially hard four-seamer will be noticed by scouts, but since nearly every major league hitter can time and then catch up to even the best fastballs, success depends on developing at least one quality breaking pitch. Changeup A changeup tends to be about 10 miles an hour slower than a fastball but is thrown with the same arm speed and released with the same spin. Hitters perceive it as a fastball and swing before it gets there. Being ''out in front'' takes away a hitter's power and produces weak hits: pop-ups if the pitch stays high, grounders if it dips. To throw the change, Mussina uses all five fingers, with the thumb and index finger forming a circle on the left side of the ball and the other fingers across the horseshoe of the seams. The thumb, index finger and pinkie stabilize the sides while the middle and ring fingers guide the ball down and away from a left-handed hitter. Curveball At 14, Mussina was trying to develop a knuckleball when, instead, he taught himself a devastating curve. To throw his knuckler, Mussina would dig the nails of his index and middle fingers into the seams and spit the ball from his hands with topspin, his fingers shooting a ''V'' toward the catcher. Knuckleballs aren't supposed to spin, but his spun a lot, even though he didn't turn his wrist. As his body matured, Mussina modified the grip, resting his middle finger along a seam and digging only with his index finger. He turned his wrist, but just a bit -- pulling more than twisting. The pitch starts high and then plummets, roughly from 1 o'clock to 7 o'clock as the pitcher sees it. Slider A slider is easier to control than a curveball -- the fingers are behind the ball, not around it -- and is typically about 10 miles an hour faster. Mussina throws his with his index and middle fingers together, across the wide part of the seams, turning the wrist slightly on release. The ball breaks from 2 o'clock to 8, though some pitchers, like the former relievers Larry Andersen and Jeff Nelson, have had a more drastic, sweeping break. For pitchers who have exceptional fastballs, a slider with a late, vicious break can be a ferocious strikeout pitch. Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton, the two greatest left-handed strikeout pitchers ever, dominated hitters this way. 2-Seam Fastball Mussina throws a two-seamer, but he longs for the kind thrown to devastating effect by his teammate Chien-Ming Wang. Because the ball seems to fall out of the air as it nears the plate, batters tend to hit on top of it, producing a steady flow of ground balls and keeping Wang's pitch count down. ''If you could throw a 94-mile-an-hour sinker like that and get ground ball after ground ball,'' Mussina says, ''why do anything else?'' Wang has the advantage of velocity; if his two-seamer flattens out, he can get away with it. Not so Mussina or his teammate Andy Pettitte, who says: ''If I'm throwing my two-seamer and it flattens out, that ball gets killed. You have to be perfect.'' THE EVOLVING STRIKE ZONE THE 1990's STRIKE ZONE: During the 1990's, when Mussina was in his prime, umpires were more willing to work with him, he says. If he proved early in a game that he could hit a particular spot, the umpire would call the pitch a strike, even if it was several ball-widths beyond the black strip that outlines home plate. ''Now [hitters] are so spoiled, because if the ball is one ball or two balls off the outside corner, they complain,'' he says. ''Well, I'm telling you what, that was down the middle 10 years ago.'' The strike zone wasn't as high, either, extending not much above the hitter's upper thigh, and even there, a pitch had to be right down the middle to be a strike. Umpires did not call high strikes on the corners. TODAY'S STRIKE ZONE: Since 2001, umpires have been graded by a system called QuesTec, which uses four cameras to frame a zone with more rigid dimensions. The newer zone was jarring to pitchers like Tom Glavine, who, as an Atlanta Brave, had relied on strike calls for pitches just off the plate. The shift hasn't helped Mussina, either. ''They call a lot more of the high curveball for strikes now, but none of us want that, because if the guy swings at it, he's gonna kill it,'' Mussina says. ''We want the low strike, and we want the corners.'' The best he hopes for is a strike when any part of the ball crosses the black strip. But the human element persists, and the strike zone can vary from umpire to umpire. THE SCUFFED BALL Defacing a ball brings a 10-game suspension for pitchers, who have been known to apply scuff marks using sandpaper, a belt buckle, even a thumbtack. But a batted ball can easily get scratched up on the infield dirt. ''If there's a scuff, I'm thinking, 'I've gotta use this while I've got it,' '' Mussina says. ''It brings physics into play.'' A ball directs its flight to a place of less resistance. If he holds the ball with the scuff on the left side, that side will have more resistance. Thus, the ball will fight its way down and to the right, making it seem to the hitter as if Mussina's sinker is especially lively. ''I may get the next ball and it's completely smooth and there's no way I can make it do that again,'' Mussina says. ''But the hitter doesn't know that.'' 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