The Rise of the Sweeper: How a new age breaking ball is befuddling MLB batters

The sweeper is all the rage in baseball. This brand new breaking ball has a lot of pitchers using it and most of them are using it to great effect. It's not often that a new pitch arises in baseball, but the new breaking ball has debuted this year.

Shohei Ohtani uses it. Yu Darvish uses it. Nestor Cortes Jr. uses it, too. Plenty of pitchers have adopted this new pitch that acts a little unlike the other ones. It's taking the world by storm.

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What is a sweeper? Analyzing baseball's newest maguffin

When asked about Yu Darvish's use of the sweeper, Bob Melvin, the San Diego Padres' manager, admitted he wasn't even sure what it was. He said it was a big pitch for Darvish, though.

He said via USA Today:

“I don't know. It's new-age baseball talk. A slider's probably got a little more depth and the sweeper probably comes across a little more. I've made that joke, too. I still write it down as a slider.”

In simple terms, that's true. It's a more horizontal version of the slider. That technically means it isn't a brand new pitch, but that's probably never going to happen.

Yu Darvish employs a sweeper

Once pitchers figured out how to make the ball move, most breaking balls were discovered. Hybrids and other versions, like the slurve or the screwball, have arisen, but new pitches don't typically come out of nowhere.

The sweeper is literally sweeping the sport, though. Hitters are struggling with it as what they expect to potentially break like a slider ends up breaking a little more than they think it should. It's left plenty of batters looking downright foolish in the box.