Cut fastball

In baseball, a cutter, or cut fastball, is a type of fastball which breaks slightly as it reaches home plate. This pitch is somewhere between a slider and a fastball, as it is usually thrown faster than a slider but with more motion than a typical fastball. A common technique used to throw a cutter is to release a two-seam fastball with slight pressure from the tip of the middle finger.

Professional practitioners

The cut fastball has been associated with Mariano Rivera, a closing pitcher for the New York Yankees, whose cutter is particularly effective because of the amount of movement (away from right-handed batters and in on the hands of left handed batters) at a high speed of around 95 mph. Mark Buehrle, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Pedro Martinez, Al Leiter, Roy Halladay, Justin Duchscherer, Mike Mussina, and Andy Pettitte also use the cutter effectively.

When the cutter is working correctly, mainly against left-handed batters, the pitch can crack and split a hitter's bat. Ryan Klesko, then of the Atlanta Braves, broke three in one at-bat during the 1999 World Series while facing Rivera. Switch hitters have been known to bat right-handed against the right-handed Rivera (the "wrong" side; switch hitters generally bat from the side of home plate opposite to the pitcher's throwing hand) to avoid shattering their bats.