What is the Eephus? Definition and Examples
The eephus is an ultra-slow, high-arcing lob pitch — typically 45 to 65 mph — designed to disrupt a hitter's timing by appearing 30-plus mph slower than a pitcher's fastball.
What is the Eephus?
The eephus is the slowest legitimate pitch in baseball — a high-arcing, junk-ball lob that floats toward the plate at speeds usually between 45 and 65 mph. It's not thrown for movement or location in the traditional sense; it's thrown to wreck the hitter's timing by being absurdly, almost insultingly, slower than every other pitch in the at-bat. The pitch was invented by Pirates pitcher Rip Sewell in the early 1940s — the name reportedly comes from the Hebrew word "efes," meaning "nothing," tagged onto the pitch by teammate Maurice Van Robays who said, "An eephus pitch ain't nothin', and that's a nothing pitch." It's been a cult-favorite weapon ever since for pitchers willing to embrace the spectacle.
How the Eephus Works
Mechanically, the eephus is a slow-arm lob delivered with a normal-looking arm slot and almost no spin (often under 1,000 rpm versus 2,300+ on a fastball). Statcast classifies it as "EP" and tracks it like any other pitch type. The trajectory is the weapon: instead of crossing the plate on a flat plane, it arcs upward to peaks of 12-15 feet before descending steeply into the strike zone. From the hitter's perspective the ball appears to hang in the air for an extra fraction of a second — long enough to disrupt a swing path calibrated to 95 mph fastballs and 88 mph sliders.
The effective velocity differential matters more than the absolute speed. A pitcher who sits 95 with a 50-mph eephus is creating a 45-mph gap; the brain has no template for that change. That's why even hitters who recognize it often produce check swings, weak pop-ups, or stunned takes for called strikes.
Worked Example
Zack Greinke threw the most famous modern eephus. In a July 2022 start against the Mariners he froze Eugenio Suárez with a 51.6-mph eephus down the middle for a called strike — the slowest pitch in the Statcast era at that point. Greinke's average four-seam that night sat 89 mph, creating a 37-mph velocity gap. He used the pitch sparingly (8-12 times per season) but it routinely produced whiffs and called strikes, with a career run value on the eephus that beat his slider in some seasons.
Other notable practitioners: Orlando "El Duque" Hernández, Vicente Padilla (his version was nicknamed "soap bubble"), Bill "Spaceman" Lee, James Shields, and more recently Clayton Richard and Yu Darvish. In 2025 Statcast logged 142 eephus pitches across MLB — fewer than 0.02% of all pitches thrown.
Why the Eephus Matters
Strategically, the eephus is a counter-weapon against pull-happy, timing-based hitters who sell out for fastball velocity. In a league where average fastball velocity is now 94.2 mph and rising, the eephus exploits the gap between hitter expectation and reality. It's also a survival pitch for finesse veterans whose stuff has declined — the eephus turns a fastball-only hitter's timing into a liability.
For pitchers, the eephus is a low-leverage curiosity in most counts but a genuine weapon in 0-2 and 1-2 — getting a called strike or a check-swing whiff on a 50-mph lob is a free out, and the psychological residue ("if he'll throw THAT, what's coming next?") often pays off in the next at-bat.
Limitations and Common Misconceptions
The eephus is not a knuckleball — knuckleballs rely on near-zero spin to flutter unpredictably; eephus pitches are simply slow lobs with normal-shape spin. It also is not a curveball thrown slow; classification depends on extreme velocity drop and arc trajectory, not grip. And it is genuinely risky: if a hitter sits on it, an eephus left over the middle can be deposited 450 feet (Manny Machado has crushed two for homers in his career). Most pitchers throw it once or twice a game at most.
Related Terms
In Legends Deck
Pitcher cards in Legends Deck reflect actual arsenal usage, so the rare pitchers who throw an eephus get a unique pitch slot that scales velocity differential into a "deception" rating. A card with a 95-mph fastball and a 52-mph eephus generates more swing-and-miss in simulation than the raw pitch grades would suggest — replicating the real-life timing chaos the pitch creates.