Pitcher to evaluate

[Catchingcoach]

Fellow Coaches,

Below is a link to a clip of a pitcher that throws to one of my catchers. I am curious to get some opinions on his mechanics. He is 18, HS senior, throws hi-80's

Sorry for the poor image quality, all I had was my cell phone camera with me at the time

Dave Weaver.....aka Catching Coach

http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n294/catchingcoach/Pitchers/?action=view&current=PitchSide.flv

[Jake Patterson]

Fellow Coaches,
Below is a link to a clip of a pitcher that throws to one of my catchers. I am curious to get some opinions on his mechanics. He is 18, HS senior, throws hi-80's
Sorry for the poor image quality, all I had was my cell phone camera with me at the time
Dave Weaver.....aka Catching Coach
http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n...=PitchSide.flv

Hi Coach,
I think people hesitate to evaluate pitchers here because it always seems to digress into a traditional versus MM discussion. Looking at the clip from a traditional standpoint I have two observations... First his throwing side leg seems to finish just short of what we might consider full rotation, almost as if his deceleration muscles are preventing full rotation. Second the frame in which we can see his arm extension and where he's pointing the ball is slightly blurred so it is difficult to see if he's pointing the ball in the right direction and is keeping his arm long. JMO

[Billybob622]

to me it seems as if his elbow may be getting a little too high at :01 secs. It reminds me of Billy Wagner's arm action a lot.

[Chris O'Leary]

to me it seems as if his elbow may be getting a little too high at :01 secs. It reminds me of Billy Wagner's arm action a lot.

I see the same thing.

[TG Coach]

I'd like to see him from the front. I'm wondering if his lead foot is coming down in the right place. From the side it looks like he might be pulling his body through rather than natural motion because his stride isn't extended enough or it's not at the target.

[APPpitch]

Hi Dave.

Your pitcher looks like a typical upper body thrower with a slow methodical start resulting in a short stride as he attempts to muscle the ball and speed up his arm to compensate for the lack of speed from the chest down. Because he moves slow, his hand break is early. Because he moves slow, his back leg never gets to full extension while in contact with the rubber, thus hip rotation gets an early start, interrupting the kinetic chain of events. He is then forcing his arm to try and make up for this loss of energy flow.

His throwing elbow does rise above his shoulder height as he gets into a high cocked position. Because of the slow start, and lack of lower level explosiveness, his landing foot opens too early.

If you had a front shot, I suspect his alignment is off.

Sit down with this kid and review the mechanics of Nolan Ryan and compare what he does and what your kid does not. He seems like a big strong kid, but he has not learned what everything from the chest down needs to be doing. It starts in the step back and it all flows forward. Slow controlled steps to the side, hesitations and pausing are velocity killers. Upper arm throwers are often TJ surgery candidates. Hitters like slow controlled pitchers, because it reminds them of batting cage machines. It's easy to time.

Watch Ryan. Watch his first movements, watch how late his hand break is. Watch how far his hips have travelled before he breaks the hands. Watch how fast he moves from start into finish.

A great kinetic chain of events.

Work this kid out of the stretch for awhile. Movings sideways explosively into a stride length of at least his height should be your first goal. I'm a fan of Whitey Ford's stretch movement. I'm not a fan of up, down and out from the stretch. I don't think it helps get the body moving. I also like Bob Feller from the stretch.

Again, you can't go wrong watching HOF pitchers on youtube. Watching today's robots is not helpful. Short of a very small handful of today's pitchers, the rest grew up learning like robots and hence, we have to suffer with this lack of quality. But that is changing. It's not difficult to see why the last 20 years of pitching experimentation is getting harsh criticism. The long term results don't measure up to the pitching of the 40's, 50's, 60's & 70's.

Be part of the solution. Dismantle the robot.

Kind Regards,

-scott

[devilsadvocate]

As APPpitch said, the pitcher does not effectively use his lower half. He needs to start forward movement sooner and faster. Excellent comments from APPpitch.

This pitcher also strides significantly to the throwing arm side and then throws across his body. This results in posture issues as the shoulders square up to the target. It also can block off hip rotation. The first thing I would do for this is to move him to the glove side of the rubber.