It is natural movement. Essentially, every pitch that Rivera throws features a certain amount of cut. The only difference is to which degree Rivera allows them to do so — an element he can control by the amount of pressure he imparts with his fingers when he grips the baseball.
While his four-seamer features only a slight cut, his cutter is defined by its pronounced movement, veering away from right-handed batters, while boring into lefties. With Rivera, pitching is reduced to a central question: On any given pitch, how much does he allow his natural gift to take over?
Over the years, Rivera has discovered the right balance. It took time for Rivera to learn how to best use his gift, to fully exploit his natural cut. The result is a pitcher, who at age 41, has shown no signs of letting up. He defies time by exacting total control of a slice of space — a distance that amounts to mere inches.
Said Rivera: "If I knew then what I know now, it would be different. Gallery: Yankees Mariano Rivera becomes all-time save leader. But both have much more downward action on their pitches. Three miles per hour, just like 5 measly inches, makes all the difference. Just how much of a difference? For five years running, among American League relief pitchers, the pitch is second to none. First, there is the way Rivera can throw his cutter to any part of the strike zone, in seemingly any count.
More coverage:. They look the same coming of his hand, but since hitters only have a fraction of a second to decide whether or not to swing and where and when , those inches make a big difference. Among hurlers logging as many innings as his 1, He logged innings over 96 appearances, notching a microscopic 0. Absolutely amazing considering he produced those results pitching against the best teams in baseball at the highest-leverage moments of the biggest games of the season — and he did it year after year for nearly two decades.
How about the number ? Have you heard that one? We always knew that Rivera was special, and that he would gain induction on the first ballot. But his unanimous election pushes him to the very center of that inner circle in Cooperstown.
You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service. You will be notified in advance of any changes in rate or terms. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. Skip to Main Content Skip to Search. One is a slider. The other, of course, is a cutter. Now, Rivera did throw a slider back in those days.
A scouting report on him from way back in plucked from Diamond Mines described it as "a hard one" that had quick break. But the pitch we just looked at moved a lot faster and broke a lot quicker than an ordinary slider, and that calls to mind something that cutter guru Gil Patterson told Sports Illustrated a couple years ago:. Maybe today those are cutters.
Perhaps that's true of the slider Rivera was throwing way back in the day. It may have been a slider in name, but maybe it was actually the "embryonic" cutter that Girardi found himself catching in It's either that, or the pitch we just looked at was a simple fastball. Maybe some of Rivera's heaters moved like that inadvertently, and maybe those are the ones that Girardi saw as precursors to his cutter.
Whatever the case, '97 was indeed the year that Rivera's embryonic cutter ceased to be an apparently random occurrence and became more of an exact science.
He recounted the incident for Miller:. I wasn't doing good. I was trying so hard. Nothing was moving. Anyway, as Rivera threw with Mendoza on that now-hallowed day in Yankees history, the ball suddenly started to move.
The ball is moving, and I have no control. I told Mel that I won't be throwing no more balls in the bullpen because I need to be ready for the game. We worked a lot and this thing is still the same and let's leave it like that. Miller then says that Rivera went on to save all three games the Yankees played at Tiger Stadium. Using my powers of deduction —such as the power to click on "Game Logs" over at Baseball-Reference.
Sadly, there's no video of that wondrous time available over at MLB. But Rivera found himself closing out the '97 All-Star Game a couple weeks later, and one of the pitches he threw to get the job done warrants a closer look.
Pay close attention to this pitch to Mark Grace in this clip:. Looks familiar, right? The camera angle doesn't make it easy to get a good look at the movement of the pitch, but the usual trappings of a classic Mo Rivera cutter are there. They become even more apparent if we break it down frame by frame and imagine some inner dialogue for Grace and Ivan Rodriguez, who was doing the catching.
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