What’s the Deal With Thumbs?
Recently while feeding my frequent craving for submarine pitcher highlights, I came across what I thought to be a rather unusual fastball grip from San Diego’s Kazuhisa Makita:
To me, the position of his thumb tucked underneath the ball looked a bit strange. When I tweeted this out, I was presented with an interesting hypothesis for this grip.
Well, let’s put it to the test for some Japanese pitchers and their four seam fastballs.
The Test:
Does Masahiro Tanaka Tuck? No!
Does Hisashi Iwakuma Tuck? No!
Does Kenta Maeda Tuck? No!
Alright. Well, at least we tri- WAIT, WHAT ABOUT DAISUKE MATSUZAKA, YOU ASK???
Did Daisuke Matsuzaka Tuck? Ohhhhhhh yessssssss
There’s hope for The Theory! Let’s keep going:
Did Koji Uehara Tuck? Yes!
Was Koji Uehara a Fastball Spin Rate God? Yes!
Coincidence? Probably!
Does Junichi Tazawa Tuck? Yes!
Did Hideki Okajima Tuck? Yeah….kinda?
Unrelated picture of Hideki Okajima because he crushed my dreams in the 2007 World Series:
Did Hideo Nomo Tuck? Yes, but in XGames mode
Does Our Lord and Savior Shohei Ohtani Tuck? Yes!!!
How did I not notice this before?!
Why Was Kei Igawa Allowed To Wear Sunglasses On The Mound? idk
Seriously, Satoru Komiyama, How Was This Allowed? And if it was, why didn’t more players do it?
Regroup
Ok, got a little off the rails there. So, in terms of the Thumb Tuck, it appears that Japanese pitchers who do outnumber those who don’t. Is the case closed? No. Mysterious cases like this may never be closed, especially with more Japanese pitchers to debut in the MLB in years to come. Also, I didn’t include images of Hiroki Kuroda, Yoshihisa Hirano, Takashi Saito, who do not tuck. So that muddies the water even further.
One case particularly disturbs me, though. That’s the case of Tsuyoshi Wada.
This is a pretty clear tuck. Hey Tsuyoshi, can you show us what your fastball grip looks like up close?
OH NO. IT’S NOT TUCKED.
Now there are several explanations for this inconsistency, but this image made me realize that pitchers’ fastball grips may be different mid-pitch than they are held in the glove. And since players’ pre-delivery grips aren’t very public, it may be hard to determine if this pattern is actually a result of some Japanese pitchers having been taught to tuck their thumbs on their fastballs and some getting different instruction. As far as I know, every Japanese pitcher might have been holding their fastballs the exact same way, but the grips looked different at release due to differences in mechanics or discrepancies in wrist angles.
A Bubble, Burst:
At one point in my research on this topic I figured I’d look at the geographic origins of the Japanese pitchers in question, and see if the tendency to tuck or not to tuck was split on some easily explained geographic line. Well, you know what was easier and made way more sense? Looking at a few non-Japanese born pitchers!
Two of the league’s most prominent pitchers…tuck. And they aren’t the only ones. The trend for MLB pitchers I looked at mirrored the trend we found for Japanese pitchers. About half tuck, and it’s seemingly random who does and doesn’t.
So after all of that, I think I’m going to have to put this in the “inconclusive” folder. We don’t know if pitchers who tuck are doing it intentionally, and it seems like nationality has little to do with it.
I never clarified an essential part of this exploration: Who cares? Well, I have zero evidence to say that a pitcher tucking his thumb under the ball makes any difference whatsoever. But I also have no evidence that it doesn’t. But if it did, I expect somebody older and wiser than me would have already figured that out.
However, I do think that there is something to be studied regarding a pitcher’s grip throughout their delivery, namely how loosely they hold the ball. Just imitating the tuck vs no-tuck grips on my own baseball, it seems that the tuck causes the ball to be a little deeper in the hand than when I didn’t tuck and just held the ball with my fingertips. Who knows?
Well, thanks for sticking around. I know it wasn’t the most satisfying ending, so to make it up to you, here are some fun gifs from the stars of this post:
