Submarine (baseball)
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In baseball, a submarine is a pitch delivered with a three-quarter sidearm or underhand motion. The pitcher delivers the ball while almost scraping his knuckles on the dirt. The pitch has a tendency to break more than one delivered with an overhand motion. Pitches thrown via a submarine motion are also generally more difficult for hitters to see relative to pitches thrown via an overhand motion. These are the toughest pitchers for same-side batters to hit (if the submarine pitcher is right handed, then he or she is the most difficult for a right handed hitter to hit). However, a lot of their breaking balls seem to float to an opposite-side batter.
For example, assume that right-handed submarine pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim were to face right-handed hitter Alex Rodriguez. From the view of the pitcher towards home plate, Kim's submarine style pitch tends to break toward the left of the plate away from Rodriguez, who stands on the batter's box on the right of the plate. However, against a left-handed hitter, such as Tino Martinez, the pitch would break towards the batter, allowing him to wait for the ball to come to him for an easy hit. (The latter actually happened in the 2001 World Series between Kim's team at the time, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Martinez's New York Yankees)
The converse is true for left-handed submarine pitchers: a pitch from left-handed submariner Mike Myers would break away from left-handed hitters, but towards right-handed hitters.
The rarity of submarine pitchers is sometimes attributed to the different technique required, rather than being an inferior pitching style. The technique is unknown to most coaches simply because the vast majority of pitchers use overarm motions. Thus, most young baseball pitchers are encouraged to throw overhand.
There are not many hard-throwing submarine pitchers. Perhaps the most notable was Carl Mays, whose unorthodox delivery possibly contributed to the fatal beaning of Ray Chapman.
In the present day, Matt Miller of the Cleveland Indians, Chad Bradford of the New York Mets, Mike Myers for the New York Yankees, and Byung-Hyun Kim with the Colorado Rockies, are regular submariner pitchers in the major leagues. Some in the past have been more deliberate, like Ted Abernathy, Elden Auker, Kent Tekulve and Dan Quisenberry.
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