Most times during the course of a game, hitters begin to pick up on the tendencies of pitchers.

Some are easier than others—fastballs come out of the hand at a certain angle, curveballs have a certain spin and there’s an easy red dot to pick up on a slider—but the cutter might be the hardest one to pick up.

“It’s a mixture between a fastball and slider. Obviously most fastballs are straight…When you see a slider, many times you can pick up on that dot in the middle and pick up on spin. With the cutter, it’s difficult. It’s similar to the spin on a fastball. You really can’t pick it up. you almost have to sit on it. I don’t know,” Andrew Eyster said. “It’s a hard pitch to hit. I don’t hit it very well at all.”

The cutter is a sharp fastball with a late cutting action that’s a little slower than a four-seam fastball and a tick faster than a slider with more of a later break through the zone.

Because of that, it’s an insanely hard pitch to hit and that’s why it’s becoming a growing trend for Gamecock pitchers to throw it.

There are at least five pitchers on the roster with it in their arsenal or who experimented with it in the fall or leading up to the season.

Carmen Mlodzinski started the trend, throwing it last season before he broke his foot. Then John Gilreath, Danny Lloyd and Brett Kerry picked up on the trend as well before Brannon Jordan fiddling with it this offseason.

It might not be a pitch they throw regularly—although it’s become a regular pitch for both Lloyd and Mlodzinski—but it’s something pitching coach Skylar Meade likes all guys to throw.

“I think it’s a great pitch. Could you argue some of the good cutters are sliders? Yeah, but who cares? I laugh because 10 years ago we had a guy named Tyler Kehrer who ended up being a first rounder out of Eastern Illinois,” Meade said. “He thought he was throwing a cutter but it wasn’t a cutter. It was a slider, but it went from 75 to 87 miles per hour. It was just mindset. It was a slider, but we wanted him to think like that. When your mind is right as a pitcher, you’ll get the ball to do what you want to do.”

Cutters are so deceptive because they look like a fastball coming out of the hands but, as it gets closer to the plate, begins to rotate more like a slider, which can jam opposite-handed hitters and tail away from same-sided ones.

Because hitters only get a fraction of a second to decide whether or not to swing at a pitch, something as unusual as a cutter can cause hesitation and create productive at-bats.

“As a hitter a lot of times, your brain’s made a decision that it’s going to be a fastball,” hitting coach Stuart Lake said. “Then that late little bit of run that cutter gives you, that’s why the guys who can really throw it are so successful. It gets your hands a little bit away from your body or your hands into your body. It doesn’t let you to have that same fluid swing. The cutter and the changeup are two of the pitches that, as hitters, you say, ‘I wish those aren’t allowed.’ The curveballs, you can start to pick them up. The sliders, yeah the good ones are really hard but you do start to pick them up. The cutter and changeup (aren’t). And it’s because they’re coming out of the same slot. That’s what’s so hard for us.”

It’s an insanely unique pitch, especially at the college level, with a small percentage of guys across the country throwing it and an even smaller percentage throwing it well.

When executed well, it’s something that can be a big piece of a pitchers’ success.

“I like it. I was a catcher. I enjoyed catching them because you could see the hitter and hear the hitter saying, ‘Why’s he throwing that?’” Lake said. “I enjoy that pitch it’s been good for us. We’ve had some arms for us that have made us hit fastballs.”