In baseball, a submarine is a pitch delivered with a three-quarter sidearm or underhand motion. Some of the submarine pitchers 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; as such, they are the toughest pitches 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 were to face right-handed hitter. From the view of the pitcher towards home plate, a submarine style fastball tends to break toward the right of the plate towards the batter. However, against a left-handed hitter, the pitch would break away from the batter, allowing him to wait on the ball for an easy hit. The converse is true for left-handed submarine pitchers: a fastball from southpaw submariner Mike Myers would break towards left-handed hitters, but away from 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.

Past submariners include Ted Abernathy, Elden Auker, Mark Eichhorn, Kent Tekulve and Dan Quisenberry.

Shunsuke Watanabe of Japan's Chiba Lotte Marines is known as "Mr. Submarine" in Japan. Watanabe has a low release point, even for a typical submarine pitcher, as he drops his pivot knee so low that he scrapes his knee. He now wears a pad under his uniform to not injure his knee. In addition, his release point is so low that his the knuckles on his pitching hand occasionally drag on the ground and are scraped raw.

Present day submarine/sidearm pitchers

• Chad Bradford of the Baltimore Orioles
• Joey Devine of the Atlanta Braves
• Brian Fuentes of the Colorado Rockies
• Sean Green of the Seattle Mariners
• Byung-Hyun Kim of the Florida Marlins
• Mike Koplove of the Cleveland Indians
• Javier López of the Boston Red Sox
• Jay Marshall of the Oakland Athletics
• Cla Meredith of the San Diego Padres
• Matt Miller of the Cleveland Indians
• Peter Moylan of the Atlanta Braves
• Mike Myers of the Chicago White Sox
• Pat Neshek of the Minnesota Twins
• Chris Schroder of the Washington Nationals
• Brian Shouse of the Milwaukee Brewers
• Joe Smith of the New York Mets
• Joe Thatcher of the San Diego Padres
• Ehren Wassermann of the Chicago White Sox

See also

Sidearm