Tweet
Hi,
My son Kevin is 13 yrs od., ~5'1" and ~105 lbs. Two years ago, while pitching during a preseason scrimmage, he suffered an avulsion fracture in his throwing elbow's growth plate, as well as a partial tear in the MCL. After not pitching at all that whole year and doing some physical therapy over the winter, he came back for his 12YO LL year and pitched very well and w/ no pain in the elbow area.
Last fall, he moved up to the big field. He pitched a little there and is obviously going to take awhile to get used to the longer throws all over the field.
I'm much more comfortable/experienced coaching hitting, but I'd like to do what I can to help him make his arm a weapon and not a liability. Personally, I'd rather he just stopped pitching and focused on positions. But he likes it AND he throws strikes (plus a nice changeup).
I left a bunch of throws in these clips, so you can really see what he's doing, rather than me trying to pick one throw from each angle, and possibly hiding some details. My wife filmed from 3 angles, so hopefully there's enough. Note: he's only thrown a 1/2 dozen times or so this year. And a few days prior to this, he was feeling some soreness in his elbow. So he might've been a bit tentative today. He's certainly not trying to throw anywhere near 100%, probably closer to 75-80%.
What do I see?
Good: arm action/angles/height at footplant seems ok.
Bad: from there, no glove-side arm action (it just flops out of the way) and not much hip power. I would think we'd want to see his right leg come around a lot more and more forcefully. It's almost like he stops w/ his body and just pushes w/ his arm?
Today tho, we played catch again and I had him focus on really cranking his hips through just before his stride finished. We noticed that his first few throws like this were high and seemed to have more oomph. He felt like he wasn't really trying to throw harder, like his arm wasn't being stressed, yet his throws seemed to have more on 'em, just from adding some conscious hip rotation.
Anyway, I have my reservations about what I might glean from posting this, and I'm certainly not looking for yet another [tired] Marshallite vs. the rest of the world debate.
But I'd appreciate suggestions for improvement - if that's possible w/o launching THE eternal online debate? 
Thank you.
http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseba...20throwing.mp4
http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseba...20throwing.wmv
Please let me know if most folks would rather view the mp4 or wmv format, so I can remove the less-desired one from my webspace. Thanks.
My son Kevin is 13 yrs od., ~5'1" and ~105 lbs. Two years ago, while pitching during a preseason scrimmage, he suffered an avulsion fracture in his throwing elbow's growth plate, as well as a partial tear in the MCL. After not pitching at all that whole year and doing some physical therapy over the winter, he came back for his 12YO LL year and pitched very well and w/ no pain in the elbow area.
Last fall, he moved up to the big field. He pitched a little there and is obviously going to take awhile to get used to the longer throws all over the field.
I'm much more comfortable/experienced coaching hitting, but I'd like to do what I can to help him make his arm a weapon and not a liability. Personally, I'd rather he just stopped pitching and focused on positions. But he likes it AND he throws strikes (plus a nice changeup).
I left a bunch of throws in these clips, so you can really see what he's doing, rather than me trying to pick one throw from each angle, and possibly hiding some details. My wife filmed from 3 angles, so hopefully there's enough. Note: he's only thrown a 1/2 dozen times or so this year. And a few days prior to this, he was feeling some soreness in his elbow. So he might've been a bit tentative today. He's certainly not trying to throw anywhere near 100%, probably closer to 75-80%.
What do I see?
Good: arm action/angles/height at footplant seems ok.
Bad: from there, no glove-side arm action (it just flops out of the way) and not much hip power. I would think we'd want to see his right leg come around a lot more and more forcefully. It's almost like he stops w/ his body and just pushes w/ his arm?
Today tho, we played catch again and I had him focus on really cranking his hips through just before his stride finished. We noticed that his first few throws like this were high and seemed to have more oomph. He felt like he wasn't really trying to throw harder, like his arm wasn't being stressed, yet his throws seemed to have more on 'em, just from adding some conscious hip rotation.
Anyway, I have my reservations about what I might glean from posting this, and I'm certainly not looking for yet another [tired] Marshallite vs. the rest of the world debate.
But I'd appreciate suggestions for improvement - if that's possible w/o launching THE eternal online debate? Thank you.
http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseba...20throwing.mp4
http://members.cox.net/sandmanbaseba...20throwing.wmv
Please let me know if most folks would rather view the mp4 or wmv format, so I can remove the less-desired one from my webspace. Thanks.
Comment