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Thursday, December 09, 2010
Forkballs
Great read from Mike.
What differentiates the forkball from a changeup is the amount of drop on the pitch. In addition, there is a great deal of variability in how much the pitch drops. Contreras’ forkball can drop anywhere from 18 inches, like a typical changeup, to nearly three feet, similar to a big curveball.
If the effect of gravity is removed, we can look at the effect of the spin force alone on the baseball.
Looking at spin by itself shows that Contreras must have put topspin on most of his forkballs, resulting in a negative spin deflection. This means that his forkball dropped more than it would have due to gravity alone. By comparison, a typical major-league curveball has about six inches of negative spin deflection and about five inches of glove-side movement from spin. Contreras’ forkball has similar drop to a curveball, but moves about four inches to his arm side instead.
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