In baseball, a sinker or sinking fastball is a type of fastball pitch which has significant downward and horizontal movement and is known for inducing ground balls. Pitchers who use the sinker tend to rely on it heavily and do not need to change pitch speeds as much as other pitchers do because the sinking action induces weak bat contact. Other pitchers normally change pitch speeds to achieve this effect. The sinker is much more often used by right-handed pitchers than left-handed pitchers.
One method of throwing the sinker is to simply grip the baseball along the two seams and throw it similar to a fastball. Some pitchers use a downward motion on their wrist when throwing it. The pitcher's palm turns to the right at release for a right handed pitcher. This causes a sharper sink, but also has a greater risk of a wild pitch. This wrist movement is also called pronation.
Many sinker ball pitchers today turn the inside of the ball over just before releasing the ball, combined with slightly increasing the pressure on the ball with the index finger ("press inside") which creates a tilted sidespin motion that causes horizontal movement.
The sinker drops 3 to 6 inches more than a typical two-seam fastball which causes batters to hit ground balls more often than other fastballs, mostly due to the tilted sidespin on the ball. Horizontal movement also occurs when sinkers are thrown. Sinkerball pitchers can often get called strikes and swinging strikes on the pitch, so sinkerball pitches can obtain large strikeout totals.
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Baseball" and "Sinker", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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