The idea sounded preposterous at first, so wild that Scott Alexander didn’t believe it could work. He kept listening to his teammates, the ones that kept imploring him to throw more sinkers. Did they understand the math?
Alexander, the Royals’ left-handed reliever, knew that his sinker was his best pitch, the weapon that propelled him to the big leagues. A fastball with more than 4 inches of downward movement, the pitch was a true sinker — a “dive bomber”, in the words of Royals pitching coach Dave Eiland. It induced ground balls at a high clip and vexed opposing hitters.