When I first became interested in pitching, I was enthralled by breaking pitches. At first sight, I'm sure one thing occurs fascinating about how MLB pitchers throw: he threw that how fast? I'd imagine most are captivated by the velocity of pitchers, which is why you'll hear various moans and groans in the stands when your local Doug Davis or Jeff Suppan opens the game with an 87 MPH fastball. "Aw, 87?"

But that wasn't for me -- I was interested in curveballs, sliders, and the almighty screwball. What do these pitchers used to deceive batters? How do they spin the ball to make it break? How do they hold it? Did the ball really just do that? Luckily for us, the curveball is not really an optical illusion (as some really thought), and from various grips and various releases, various pitchers manage to throw as many different curves as one could posibly imagine. Certainly we wouldn't call Ben Sheets' powerful dropping pitch the same thing as Barry Zito's Bugs Bunny blooper, but luckily we can investigate how they throw the ball and learn what makes each pitch do what it's supposed to.

The most interesting breaking ball artist, to me, has always been Carl Hubbell, the man who threw so many screwballs that his arm was permanently damaged. Luckily there's little video footage available of Hubbell throwing, so we can imagine his screwball completing all sorts of motions and and moving in any direction. It's even better when we discover that he threw the ball out of the back of his hand (Neyer/James Guide to pitchers), or that he threw two different screwballs for different occasions.

Breaking balls are so interesting because there are so many inventions, adjustments, and secrets pitchers can share about their trade.

Recently, however, my interest has shifted to the fastball. Why? Well, I'm not necessarily enthralled by velocity. I don't actually think a fastball is necessarily "as hard or fast as a pitcher can throw," or equivalent to "top speed velocity." Furthermore, I think that most Major Leaguers can definitely throw the ball harder than they do in games, and yet still manage to perfect a fastball that is effective -- even if it falls short of the maximum effort velocity levels one might be able to reach.

Frankly, I'm more interested in fastballs because I've realized over time that there are almost as many ways to throw fastballs as there are curveballs. There are varieties of moving fastballs, so much so that we seem to have trouble keeping track of them. Some guys throw a sinker, others throw a 2-seamer; some might even argue that a sinker is not a fastball, and there are some pitchers who do throw a sinker without throwing a fastball as a companion. Some pitchers explicitly throw two or three different fastballs. Then there's the splitter, or split-fingered fastball, which isn't a fastball whatsoever -- that's a change up (and probably one of the fastest, hardest change ups).

We can fantasize about big power pitchers who throw rising fastballs, even though we know in our minds that there's no such thing as a rising fastball -- the ball cannot literally rise. But when the ball is spun so as to drop less than its natural rate, or the rate its velocity actually suggests, that fastball "rises," and provides the batter with a difficult optical illusion.

And so, a contrast. A curveball is not an illusion. The ball actually breaks due to the spin. A rising fastball, that's an illusion.

With each distinct fastball comes a type of spin that differentiates that pitch from another distinct fastball, and this is what leads me to separate a fastball from simple, raw velocity -- like a slider or a curveball or a screwball, a fastball is spun in order to achieve a particular gain in the pitching sequence. A fastball is not necessarily blowing-past a batter on all occasions; it might also induce a ground ball, or be used to bust an opposite handed hitter inside (think Mariano Rivera's cutter). (Imagine facing a pitcher with a cutter and a screwball, kind of like Juan Marichal, who apparently threw a cutter instead of a slider. Imagine standing in the left-handed batters' box, preparing for two pitches at two speeds at two eye-levels -- the cutter busts you inside, mercilessly, on the hands, and that screwball breaks down, perfectly, outside of any feasible hitting zone. And then there's that leg kick....what an artist! A cutter/screwball pitcher might have the greatest possible tactical advantage of any pitcher, now that I think about it).

Once we forget about top-speed velocity and forget about those eye-popping radar readings, we can become even better judges of the fastball. What that pitch throw to move inside? Did it break down? Did it ride through the zone, rising with that incredible gravity-defying spin? The fastball is a weapon that can be spun for as many purposes as a curveball, and once we begin to think of a fastball in this manner, we gain great tactical advantage (both in pitching and in judging pitching.) The point isn't ever to blow a batter away; but to efficienctly, and functionally record outs. A great fastball doesn't strike batters out or induce ground balls or induce fly balls; a great fastball is thrown in such a way to deceive the batter, to deceive the batter in a manner that results in an out.

One of the mistakes of analyzing pitchers is to suggest that it is their slow stuff, their breaking pitches, their change ups, that are meant to deceive batters. That was my original attraction to the breaking pitch; no, every pitch a pitcher throws is meant to disrupt the batters' timing in some way or another, and so a great fastball will be a deceptive pitch, just as a great curveball will be a deceptive pitch. (For illustration, imagine stepping in on a guy -- like Kevin Brown or Chad Billingsley -- who throws a cross-seam, riding, "rising" fastball and a two-seam, sinking, moving or breaking fastball. Imagine that you correctly deduce that a fastball is coming -- well, which one? You have two fastballs to contend with. In this way, a fastball can be an incredible weapon. But even pitchers with one fastball can use the pitch deceptively, depending upon how they spin it and release it).

With that, we have our fastball. Now to judge them.