There are many people who believe the slider is the most deadly weapon in a pitcher’s arsenal. In fact, Ted Williams — the last Major League hitter to bat .400 and arguably the “Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” — once told a young Sparky Lyle to throw the slider because, to quote Lyle: “Ted Williams told me the slider was the one pitch he couldn’t hit.”

Indeed, a good slider can be quite an effective pitch, and the aforementioned Lyle made an entire career — including a Cy Young Award — depending almost exclusively on that one pitch.

However, I’m going to tell you today, that if you are under the age of twenty, do not add it to your repertoire. If you are over 20 years old, and you have good command of your fastballs and a changeup, and you are having trouble with developing a curveball, then consider the slider, but use it sparingly.

The problem with the slider is that pitchers, pitching coaches, and managers fall in love with it, and want to throw it all the time, in all situations, and often want to throw it for strikes. However, the slider is not meant to be thrown for strikes, and therefore is not a pitch to be used regularly. The purpose of a slider is to convince the batter a fastball is coming, and get him to swing and miss it, or at worst allow him to get just a piece of the ball and ground out or pop up weakly to an infielder. An effective slider is all about the element of surprise, and is one of the few “trick” pitches that can induce a strikeout at a critical moment in the game.

Unfortunately, what happens is a pitcher throws a decent slider early in the game, gets a strikeout, and then continues to use the pitch over and over, to nearly every batter, throughout the course of the game. After it is thrown a few times every inning (or to every batter), it loses its element of surprise; the batters start looking out for it. Worse, if a pitcher is throwing it often, then he probably is trying to get it in the strike zone a good portion of the time. What’s wrong with that? Well, a good slider breaks very late, and breaks down and out of the strike zone.

In order to throw it for a strike, the pitcher has to release the slider a little earlier, which starts it on a higher plane, which in turn nullifies the possibility of a late break and usually eliminates the down break. In effect, he throws a flat slider (also known as a fat slider, because it is a fat pitch for the batter): it breaks sideways, on a mostly even plane. When a pitch breaks sideways, the batter has a much easier time meeting the ball with his bat, as the arc of the swing is on a similar plane of the pitch. Since a flat slider comes in on a level plane, and is by nature a few MPH slower than a fastball, a good hitter should crush the pitch for an extra-base hit.

Another major issue with throwing too many sliders is the toll it takes on the arm, particularly on the elbow. Ever wonder how it is that these days, so many college and professional pitchers need Tommy John surgery? You would think that with the advances in medicine, training, and overall knowledge of pitching mechanics, that people wouldn’t be hurting their arms. However, it seems that every pitcher above Little League is throwing sliders 30-50% of the time, and this pitch puts a tremendous strain on the tiny, fragile tendons in and around the elbow. Even if you throw the pitch with perfect mechanics, you will probably at least strain the tendons a bit. If you throw the pitch with imperfect form, you’ll put even more of a strain on the tendons and the ligaments, and eventually tear something.

If the slider is so bad for your arm, and not effective as a pitch for strikes, why are so many kids throwing it? Simple: because it is an easy pitch to learn, and a pitcher can fool enough poor hitters to be moderately successful. Look at the Major Leagues today and you will see a remarkable number of pitchers who throw the slider as their primary breaking pitch; you should also take note of the fact that 90% of these pitchers are only moderately successful, and that Major League Pitching as a whole is at the worst level of skill and performance in the history of baseball. All of these pitchers learned a slider because it was a shortcut; it was a lot easier to pick up a slider than it was to develop a good overhand curveball. Or, it was quicker to throw a mediocre slider that got a lot of weak batters to swing and miss, than it was to learn how to make a fastball move enough to jam even the best hitters. Sliders are a shortcut for ineffective, lazy pitchers.
Pitching coaches love to see batters swing and miss; too many think this is the core goal of a pitcher. And there is no doubt that even a mediocre slider will cause 60-80% of batters to swing and miss, most of the time. However, a good hitter will recognize a bad slider, and if given the opportunity, will mash it over the fence. Eventually, even the poor hitters will realize what’s coming — the good hitters will tell them about that bright red dot — and they’ll hit it too. The very best pitchers, at every level, learn that 1.) command of the fastballs and the changeup are paramount to success; 2.) being efficient with your pitches is a better strategy than trying to strike everyone out; and 3.) the overhand curveball is the best breaking pitch, because it can be thrown for strikes and it can induce ground balls.

If you must have a slider in your repertoire, use it wisely. It should be aimed at the outside corner (opposite of your throwing hand), out of the strike zone and down. In fact, the ideal target for the pitch is the catcher’s right foot (for a righthanded pitcher), with the catcher situated so that his belly-button is directly lined up with the black on the outside corner of the plate. At most, you should throw it five times a game in a nine-inning contest, and used most frequently on two-strike counts, in situations where you absolutely, positively, must get a strikeout. Used appropriately, it can be a very effective weapon in your pocket, to pull out every once in a while. Overused, it will eventually be hit hard, and put undue stress on your arm.

Before you try to throw a slider,? learn how to move your fastball in, out, and down, and develop a change-up that dives down to the right and down to the left. It’s boring, I know, but if you can truly command those pitches you’ll never need a slider to be successful — even at the Major League level.

Balance is the most important aspect of pitching. Without balance, there is no control. Without control, there are no strikes. Without strikes, there is no pitching. That said, a pitcher’s first goal — especially a beginning pitcher — should be to have balance from his first movement to his release.

Beginning the motion in balance is easy enough: stand straight up. When working from the full windup, make a small step backward and maintain your balance. This is the point where many neophytes make their first mistake, by stepping slightly (or fully) to the side, and/or by stepping too far. Either of these movements will throw your balance off. So again: step directly back and just a few inches. A good rule of thumb (or toe) is to step straight back behind the rubber, with your toe just barely brushing the back of the rubber.

The purpose of stepping back is to firmly plant your pivot/push foot. Step back just enough so that you can maneuver your pivot foot (right foot for righthanders, left foot for lefties) in a comfortable spot against the rubber. Once that foot is planted, pivot your hips and lift your opposite knee up toward your chest and above your pivot knee. Notice I stated “lift your knee” and not “lift your foot”. Lifting your foot, or “kicking” will put the wrong visual into a pitcher’s head, and possibly throw the body out of balance. Although many people might call this part of the motion the “kick”, I avoid that term because of the possibility of imbalance. Instead, call it the “knee lift”; it gives a more positive visual.

The knee should be lifted as high as you possibly can while still maintaining balance. You should be able to hold yourself in position for 5-10 seconds. If you can’t, then you need to either work on your balance or lift your knee lower. Generally speaking, the higher you can lift your knee (in balance), the more power you will generate. So, a pitcher should work on keeping his balance while getting his knee as high as he possibly can.

Luckily, this is a fairly easy action to accomplish. All it takes is standing on one leg. Do two drills: (1) lift your knee as you would in your motion and hold, and (2) standing straight with your arms crossed over you chest, lift your weak (left for righties, right for lefties) foot back behind the same knee, so that your heel is almost touching your hamstring. Do these drills with your eyes open and your eyes closed, and hold the position for as long as you can. Count as you hold, and make goals (for example, start with 5 seconds, work up to 10, then 15, then 20). You can do balance drills anywhere: at home, in an elevator, on a subway car, on a bus, wherever (a buses and trains are fantastic places for advanced drills, if you don’t mind people looking at you like you’re crazy).

Once you have accomplished great balance with your knee lift, it will be very easy to stride in balance, and thus release the ball in balance … and the result should be more strikes. In fact, a pitcher with very good balance should be able to throw strikes with his eyes closed — literally. Try it for yourself: after working on your balance for a few weeks, try, from the stretch position, pitching with your eyes closed. If you’ve achieved proper balance, you may surprise yourself by throwing perfect strikes.

One of the greatest, most illogical blasphemies occurring at all levels of baseball is the notion of limiting the pitch count.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that a pitcher’s pitches in a game should be counted, and that the count can help a manager decide whether it’s time to pull a guy out. What confounds me are two major issues: the 100-pitch limit and conditioning athletes to stay within that limit.

For the first hundred years of baseball, the term “pitch count” did not exist. Every game, a team would have their best available pitcher for the day start the game, and keep throwing until he was pooped. Starters were expected to also finish, and even the #3 and #4 men in the rotation would go at least to the seventh inning, guaranteed. (Oh, and by the way, NO ONE used a 5-man rotation until the 1970s.) Through the years, thousands of pitchers threw and threw and threw, many for 250 or 300 innnings or more in? a season. And they did it without the benefit of today’s medicine (and drugs).

In the late 1960s, Mets’ manager Gil Hodges started counting pitcher’s pitches. It was unheard of at the time, but it was a good idea. Unfortunately, somewhere between that idea and today, a whole lot of “experts” decided that no pitcher should throw more than 100 pitches in a game, and today no starting pitcher is expected to go beyond the sixth inning.

Despite the geniuses coming up with these asinine, unfounded rules, we still have pitchers injuring their arms, and to me, arm injuries seem a lot more common than before. I’m convinced it’s because pitchers don’t pitch enough.

There is no reason a healthy young man, with good mechanics, throwing fastballs the majority of the time, can’t throw 140-160 pitches per game — especially with four days’ rest between starts. However, the key is to condition the pitcher to reach that plateau. It can’t be done immediately; a sound throwing program will build up to that goal over an 8-10 week period. But, once a pitcher builds up to that level, and maintains the conditioning program throughout the season, he should breeze through 150 pitches or more during? a game, without tiring.

Check back soon, as I’ll post a typical program to reach this level.

?