A pitcher at the High School level can be very effective with three pitches [2-seam and 4-seam fastballs and a change-up or curve], but he can increase his performance by adding pitches to his repertoire and, with some experimentation, improve his odds of making it all the way to The Show.
A good way to do it is to study grips and angles in videos and then to try them out. No two pitchers will throw a pitch identically, because of variations in: pressure on the ball, finger length, arm/hand strength, body size, wrist movement, thumb flexibility, arm slot, and length of stride.
Since you are unique in these ways, you may discover that one pitch that “just feels right and works” for you. Some pitchers made it in MLB, because they learned to throw a single pitch with mastery. One pitcher, who was only 120-lbs and 5’9″ with a losing record, made it into the Hall of Fame.
Elroy Face [Pirates, ‘58-‘62] was the original “closer,” but he was just average, until he learned his trademark “Forkball” from Yankees reliever Joe Page. He used the pitch to confound opposing hitters, saying, “It would come in hard and break anyway it wanted to, sometimes in, sometimes out, mostly down.”
To throw it effectively, a pitcher needs large hands and long fingers to make a “V” shaped pair of “rails” with his middle and pointer fingers.
[http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/how_to_throw_forkball.htm]
Bruce Sutter was an average pitcher, until the Cubs’ roving minor league pitching instructor, Fred Martin, taught him how to throw the split-fingered fastball. Sutter went on to rack up 300 saves and was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
[http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/how_to_throw_splitter.htm]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhBLPX9xPQ&feature=endscreen&NR=1]
Until 1867, all the pitchers in baseball threw only straight pitches at varying speeds.
“Candy Cummings was an enthusiastic baseball player, and an outing with some friends in 1863, when he was 14 years old, gave Arthur the idea that changed the course of his life [and the game of baseball forever.]
He and a group of boys amused themselves at a Brooklyn beach one day by throwing clamshells into the ocean. The flat, circular shells could be easily made to curve in the air, and the boys managed to create wide arcs of flight before the shells splashed into the water.
“We became interested in the mechanics of it and experimented for an hour or more…
"All of a sudden, it came to me that it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way.” [“Candy” Cummings]"
In 1867, after four years of frustration, he found success with the curve ball for the first time. He discovered that he could make the ball curve in the air when he released it by rolling it off the second finger of his hand, accompanied by a violent twisting of the wrist.
Though it appears that Jim Creighton, a New York amateur pitcher, threw a ball with a quick jerk of the wrist [before Cummings] in 1861 and 1862, Cummings was the one who combined it with the rolling motion from the fingers to maximize the amount of spin imparted on the ball.
Candy Cummings demonstrated his breakthrough in a game against Harvard College.
“I began to watch the flight of the ball through the air and distinctly saw it curve…a surge of joy flooded over me that I shall never forget. I felt like shouting out that I had made a ball curve. I wanted to tell everybody; it was too good to keep to myself.”
All day long, Harvard batters flailed helplessly at the new pitch. The secret of the curveball was his, and for several years afterward Cummings was the only pitcher in the nation to claim mastery over the pitch.” [http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/99fabe5f]
Inventing a ball that curved made the 120-lb, 5’ 9” Cummings the most dominant pitcher in the country. His MLB record was only 21-22, but he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for changing the course of the game by introducing the first pitch that “moved.”
The knuckle ball was invented because of a hand injury.
“In 1917 an unknown pitcher, Eddie Rommel, joined the Hanover (Maryland) Raiders of the Class D Blue Ridge League. Working as a steamfitter’s helper in a shipyard during the World War, he scalded his hand severely.
While recovering, he began experimenting with the knuckle ball, a pitch he had learned on the sandlots from a veteran local first baseman named Cutter Drewry. Rommel said of the new pitch,
“I tried it and the first ball I threw broke about five feet. I was delighted and went up to Newark and caught on with the 1918 Newark Bears, of the International League.” [http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/333594e9]
"His discovery, the “knuckle ball,” was his ticket to the Major leagues with the Philadelphia Athletics."
So, pick up a ball and play with different grips, then experiment with using different pressure on the ball, wrist position [loose or tight], wrist movement, rotation, velocity, etc.—you may discover a new pitch; one that just might get you to the Majors, or into the Hall of Fame.
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