Stripling reveals new ‘Deathball’ pitch added to his arsenal.
Stripling unveils new ‘Deathball’ pitch added to his repertoire first appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area.
If you need a cause to get excited about the impending MLB season, look no farther than Giants right-handed pitcher Ross Stripling’s “Deathball.”
Yes, you read it correctly. Deathball. Stripling gave a behind-the-scenes peek at the latest pitch to adorn his repertoire during an exclusive interview while working out in Houston, as captured in a video published by Ari Alexander on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
“I’m throwing the ‘Deathball,'” Stripling told Alexander. “Which is just an ineffective spinning slider that, from my arm, angles extremely high; if you reduce the efficiency of the spin, it can’t go horizontally, so the only way it can go is down. So it’s basically a strange, downhill, tougher slider that people with high arm angles are attempting to figure out.
Stripling noted that, while his pitch-to-contact method has proven beneficial, the Giants pitcher’s reason for working on the new addition to his pitch arsenal originates from a desire to generate more strikeouts in the future.
“Even though I feel like I have a good arsenal and I get a lot of soft contact, I just don’t miss a lot of bats,” Stripling said. “So there is a pitch that [Tyler Glasnow], [Justin Verlander], Luke Jackson, and Nick Anderson, among others, throw, and they get a lot of swings and misses. Some of them are over 50%, so even if I only get a quarter of that, being able to put people away would be a great boost to my game.”
Stripling opted into the second year of a two-year contract he signed with the Giants prior to the 2023 season, after going 0-5 with a 5.36 ERA in 11 starts and 22 total appearances in his first season in San Francisco.
Stripling, who has 70 strikeouts in 89 innings, expects that the “Deathball” will help him improve even more as he prepares for his tenth season in the majors.
