Cleaver (Baseball)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. This article has been tagged since May 2008.

This article does not cite any references or sources. (May 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

[edit] The Cleaver

A variation of the Knuckleball, the cleaver is a pitch thrown in baseball. The use of this pitch is minimal because of the degree of difficulty in throwing the pitch for a strike, while at the same time putting movement on it.

[edit] Movement/throwing techniques

Movement

The cleaver moves similarly to a knuckleball. One major difference is the sharp downward movement which is the goal of pitchers throwing the cleaver. This downward movement is comparible to the movement exhibited by a forkball or splitter. Also, unlike a traditional knuckleball, the cleaver spins much more. A good knuckleball has almost no spin when thrown, which in turn allows it to move unpredictably.

Throwing Techniques

The cleaver is gripped basically as a knuckleball is. The middle and pointer fingernails are dug into the laces of the baseball. Unlike a knuckleball, instead of pushing equally hard with both fingers and thumb, you instead push harder with the pointer and middle fingers. This should give the ball a little downward rotation and also downward movement.