When the current Arizona State pitcher throws a so called rise ball on TV and the spin is being shown in slow motion it is actually tumbling forward, especially visible the year ASU won it all her Freshman year- the pitch is purely a trajectory pitch that starts low and finishes high in the zone as you say. When you include Tincher in the mix of pitchers that aren't actually throwing a rise ball, I've had a tendency to put her in the class of a Kat Osterman where the ball actually appears to rise as evidenced by how she literally made our Olympic team look silly swinging at her rise in 2008 with pitches being swung at literally over the batter's head; but I have to confess that I've never seen her spin in slow motion. I've had the privilege of working briefly with a student of Denny Tincher's who was the high school Gatorade pitcher of the year last year whose rise spin was as close to straight back as I've ever seen; but to do so she was taking a few miles an hour off the pitch to make it happen as has been my experience in teaching the rise for the last twenty years. In baseball, many pitchers lose as much 15 miles an hour when coming over the top of the ball for the curve: so why shouldn't we expect true back spin on a rise ball to also cause some significant slow down in the speed of it as we come under the ball. I can't begin to tell you how many of my students who had what I considered to be true rise spin get ruined on that pitch when they've gone to college because the college pitching coach is insisting that the rise be thrown harder and it can't be significantly done without the spin becoming bullet spin. It is going to be interesting to me to see what happens to Denny's student in college with her rise.
(Notice I'm on not entering into the argument whether a ball actually rises or not- but I know this that it is harder to hit when it actually spins backward with "enough" speed.)
Also to address the thread, it is my experience that most students lose a little speed, especially for awhile, when learning to throw a drop which would cause me to believe that the spirally spin can be thrown harder. The question that needs to be asked is " which pitch is most effective" eh?
Gotta bump this one up--great thread!
Hoping Coach Balswick stops by again soon to announce the release of his new video, not to mention sharing more of his experience and perspectives. Not only a master instructor; but a master student of the game...
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