What is a 'slutter' pitch? Explaining the MLB term that has fans so confused and cracking jokes

Yes, that’s right: There’s something called a “slutter” in MLB that fans, announcers and pretty much everyone else everywhere are having a laugh about.

What is it? This is where we come in.

On Thursday night, as San Diego Padres pitcher Steven Wilson tossed against the Atlanta Braves, the Truist Park scoreboard marked his pitches as “slutter.” There was some smirking and some laughs in the booth, but it’s a real thing: A pitch that’s more commonly called a “sweeper.”

Per Yahoo Sports: “It’s a variation of breaking ball distinguished by horizontal movement — more across than up and down. Sweepers are essentially a subset of sliders, an endpoint on a spectrum that includes traditional sliders in the middle and hard, darting cutters on the other end.”

But it can be called a “slutter” — a slider and a cutter, combined! — by … some people:

Padres pitcher Steven Wilson relies heavily on the ol' Slutter. pic.twitter.com/dr9poyyeyB

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 7, 2023

I call it a “Sweeper”, Petco calls it “Unknown”, and now we got the “Slutter” https://t.co/bxcOq58Fte

— Steven Wilson (@Swilson2436) April 7, 2023

More pitchers should throw a "slutter" imopic.twitter.com/tF16LFesBa

— BETSPERTS (@betsperts) April 7, 2023

Don’t believe me? Tyler Glasnow has called it that. Back in 2015, Jake Arrieta deemed a pitch a slutter. Let’s go back to 2011 with this FanGraphs story on Jonathan Papelbon’s slutter.

There you have it.