NEWSLETTER
San Francisco Giants reliever Tyler Rogers is already a rare bird by virtue of his extreme submarine pitching style. Sidearmers are relatively uncommon these days, let alone true submariners – the guys who almost seem to be scraping their knuckles on the dirt as they pitch.
But Rogers is even more rare by way of a particular pitch he throws: a rising slider.
Now, to be sure, physics won’t actually allow his slider to rise, but Rogers’ slider gives the appearance of rising in relation to his fastball, because the latter drops far more than the former (the reverse of what normally happens with a fastball-slider combo). Moreover, when you take gravity out of the equation and simply calculate how much vertical rise his slider induces, you’re talking about something like 16 inches of rise, akin to a pretty darn solid four-seam fastball. It makes no sense, since sliders are supposed to have lots of induced DROP.
Anyway, combine the supremely bizarre movement of the slider and the unique delivery, and sometimes you get a truly special moment.
Like a guy striking out on a pitch that hit him in the face. Poor Graham Pauley:
Now, did Pauley actually foul that one off before it hit him? It’s possible, though really hard to tell even on a close, frame-by-frame watch. But it went down in the books as a strikeout, officially, and it definitely hit him in the face after the shoulder ricochet. So the enjoyment stands.
