A New(ish) Pitch on the Block

There’s a new fixture at ballparks this year, besides the pitch clock and bigger bases. This one did not have its own marketing campaign, and it wasn’t tested with focus groups and minor leaguers. Even those responsible for it have been startled by its presence on stadium scoreboards.

“When it said ‘sweeper,’ we were like, ‘What the heck?’” said Michael King, a Yankees right-handed reliever. “We had no idea. But I think it’s just a different way to classify a pitch, because there’s so many different sliders out there.”

Major League Baseball’s Statcast system, which feeds information to scoreboards and television screens, has quietly introduced the sweeper and the slurve as new pitch types this season. The slurve is well known, though, as a combination of a slider and a curve. A sweeper is … what, exactly?

“It’s kind of a glitch pitch,” said Matt Blake, the Yankees’ pitching coach. “Some guys were throwing it, but maybe didn’t really understand how they were doing it. And then as information came out, all of a sudden more people were starting to look at it and saying, ‘OK, I can take it to this guy or that guy,’ and now all of a sudden everybody’s got it.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/sports/baseball/sweeper-pitch-yankees.html