Pitching gets much easier when you have great throwers, and we develop great throwers in our daily throwing program.
Windup or Stretch?
Pitchers need to decide if they are going to throw out of the stretch or the windup. By age 13 or if they play travel baseball they will need both.
I always recommend that young baseball pitchers learn both. The stretch might be a little easier to learn in the beginning. But the windup usually does a better job of getting young pitchers to load up properly on the back leg.
We want pitchers to coil up and explode to the plate. From the stretch they sometimes have trouble getting coiled up to explode to the plate.
I don’t think that one is easier so we should teach that one only. Kids are capable of unbelievable things. They can learn both.
Often if we need to find the most simple one to get the pitcher some success, the problem is a throwing issue that needs to be addressed in the Throwing Program.
Pitchers front leg needs to be striding to home plate. Throwing on a line can tell them if they are landing closed or open.
As the knee comes up for the load, have them think about loading into their back hip. Many pitchers only stay tall on the back leg and fall toward home plate. We want a loaded up active push off toward home.
Hands Separate when the front leg starts coming down. This timing doesn’t need to be exact but it needs to be close.
Deviate too much from this and the arm will be either rushed or it will be hung out to dry on the back side for too long.
Front foot goes up, down and out. Not up, out and down.
Have grip experimental time for pitchers. Give them ideas and teach about grips then let them experiment.
All pitchers should be experimenting with these 3 pitches
- 4 seam fastball
- 2 seam fastball
- Changup
Changeup
The purpose of the changeup is to have the arm action look like a fastball to the batter, but the speed of the pitch is about
10-12 mph slower to fool the batter and mess up his timing
Try to move the ball back in their hand about 1 inch