It wasn't good at all. Indeed, Rivera told The Athletic's Lindsey Adler this spring , he "threw a slider early in his career, but mostly abandoned it. Rivera's not even sure he'd identify anything he threw at that time as a breaking ball, so to speak. He definitely had a great fastball that day, no denying it. The clips of White Sox batters whiffing on it -- or taking it for strike three -- look a lot like clips of hitters in later years whiffing or freezing on his famous cutter. Technically, Rivera wouldn't develop his cutter for two more years , but the fastball clearly shares some DNA with that pitch: late movement, some hop and easy velocity between 91 and 94 mph.
But the White Sox took to blaming their struggles that day not on a dominant fastball but on a faulty scouting report. At least four Chicago hitters, then and later, have said they were given a scouting report of a pitcher who threw "85 or 86" mph, rarely came inside and had a good changeup.
In fairness, a month earlier that might have been true. Rivera was throwing in the high 80s during his first stint in the majors. He was also, apparently, hiding a muscle pull in his shoulder. When he got back to Triple-A, he admitted to the pain and went on the injured list.
While he was sitting out, the Tigers and Yankees discussed a possible trade involving Rivera. Then he returned to the mound for a minor league start and, according to the legend, shocked everybody with his velocity -- a velocity jump he later explained as a miracle.
Yankees scouts had him at 95 to 96 mph in that minor league start. From "Chumps to Champs" by Bill Pennington:. Rivera had never consistently thrown that hard in any start. Michael doubted that Rivera had ever been clocked at more than 91 miles an hour. He called Columbus to verify that the report wasn't a mistake and was assured that everyone in Columbus was as flabbergasted as Michael by Rivera's newfound velocity.
So when he got called up for the July 4 start, he was a brand-new pitcher, the product of a miracle -- according to the Yankees' radar guns. The Orioles had a scout at the "miracle" game. He filed his report. In his report, Rivera was throwing " Taken together, the portrait we get is completely contradictory.
Or else it's an honest sketch of a pitcher who was in remarkable flux, of a pitcher who was still hard to figure out. On and around July 4, , Mariano Rivera was apparently capable of throwing a great pitch, but not obviously capable of doing it twice in a row.
It was easy for observers to look at him, his strengths and his flaws, and see almost anything. This might be because he was a unicorn, or it might just be because he was a young pitcher, still finding his way. The reason it matters is that this was the moment Rivera's career path was being decided for him. Remember, the Yankees had been in touch with the Tigers about a trade -- Rivera for David Wells -- the previous month.
They were desperate for starting pitching. Rivera was the emergency patch, and as soon as he made that start a big conversation began about how he might be the answer: He could be the starter they needed, or he could be packaged in a trade to get the starter they needed.
More likely, it seemed, the latter. It was as if he didn't want to say too much, in case others hadn't noticed. But you didn't need a radar gun on this day to be impressed by Rivera's fastball.
He registered consistently, but more telling was the way the Twins were chasing fastballs up around their shoulders all afternoon. As Kirby Puckett said, "the kid's got a great arm, man. That fastball's got real good movement.
He threw a couple right by me today. 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.
Now we go to Figure 2, featuring Grace starting his swing and Pudge's glove moving noticeably to his right:. Now we go to Figure 3, featuring Grace probably realizing that he's made a mistake while Pudge's glove continues to drift right:.
In which Grace, upon hearing the sickly thud the ball made on contact, is thinking: "Dang it. Again, the camera angle isn't ideal, but these images show an unfamiliar catcher reacting to an unfamiliar pitch and a left-handed batter being totally overpowered by what was indeed an unfamiliar pitch at the time. This was Rivera's new weapon in action. It's a shame that we can't see what Grace was seeing in that instance, but there's some dandy modern technology that can give us an idea.
Pitch movement is tracked over at TexasLeaguers. Quite the difference. One pitch moves ever so slightly toward left-handed batters. The other moves not so slightly at all toward left-handed batters. For them, Rivera's cutter is essentially a homing missile. I can't re-post it here, but it's definitely worth checking out.
With his new weapon locked and loaded, Rivera went on to be quite the dominant pitcher down the stretch in ' Before the Detroit series that was supposedly the birth of Rivera's cutter, opponents were hitting. From the Detroit series on, opponents hit just. And at the end of the year, he had given up a grand total of five extra-base hits to lefty batters.
That's obviously the story of Mo's career. Lefties own a. Among right-handed pitchers with at least 1, at-bats logged against lefty hitters, Rivera's.
To left-handers, cutters move in on the hands. While its origin may be unclear, its influence within the game is indisputable. Also, his arm action is identical to that of his four-seamer.
Rivera changes the movement on each pitch by varying the pressure he puts on the baseball with his fingers. Overall, According to Telecommunication, Lefties are more likely to foul off the cutter Against right-handed hitters, Rivera throws many more four-seam fastballs Though the movement of the cutter is easier for righties to handle — they break away from the hitters instead of toward them — it is more of a swing-and-miss pitch. Right-handers whiff at Right-handers foul off cutters A save is a statistic credited to a relief pitcher, as set forth in this Rule The official scorer shall credit a pitcher with a save when such pitcher meets all four of the following conditions:.
Source: Major League Baseball. For more Yankees coverage, follow Marc Carig on Twitter at twitter. Marc Carig: mcarig starledger. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission. All rights reserved About Us.
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