Whats up baseball players, I'm coach Dan Blewett, I'm a former pro pitcher
in today's video, we're going to cover when you should elevate a fastball.
So obviously there's been more in Major League Baseball about elevating
throwing high fastballs than ever
because we've learned a lot about spin rate
and how that interacts with trajectory
and what hitters perceive as the ball rising and all that sort of stuff.
And so a lot of that has trickled down into amateur baseball,
but there's a lot of confusing things that I want to clear up
today in this video about high fastballs.
All right, so before we get going,
check out the links in the description below,
where you'll find my book, my online pitching courses and other
related videos to this topic, I do lots on pitching strategy
and on how to throw different types of pitches, etc..
You'll find that in the description link below.
So here's my thing about elevating fastballs.
You only elevate fastballs when you have two strikes
or you're ahead with one strike, and it's a dire
like late game situation
and you have probably a base open and you're hunting for a strikeout league.
You absolutely have to have a strikeout in all of their situations.
Until you get to two strikes, you have to get to two strikes.
So if you elevate a fastball on the first pitch intentionally
and he doesn't swing, what happens is a guaranteed ball.
It has a 0% probability of of being a strike without a hitter swinging.
And so when I say high fastballs, I'm not talking about inside the strike zone.
You would never intentionally throw a pitch in the strike zone up in the zone
because that's where hitters can handle it.
They can smash that ball.
And when pitches are up in the zone and they mis hit them,
they go into the gaps when they're down and they mis hit them.
They become ground balls.
That's an important thing to understand.
Miss hits in the air, get looped over the infield for singles.
Misses on the ground are grounded out and of course,
they can sneak through too, but they're not going to damage you as much.
And so even if a hitter often
swings, let's say the first pitch sees a very heavy ambush hitter.
Even if you highly, you would bet your house on the hitter
swinging the first pitch.
You still don't throw high fastballs. Why?
Because it's going to be a ball 100% of the time if they don't swing.
So what you're better off doing is trying to locate something
that they will put in play and will still be a strike.
And what that would mean is
if you're pretty worried about a guy with some pop swing on the first pitch,
throw a pitch on the black on the outside part of the plate at least
has a chance of being a strike, whether they swing or not.
And if you if you actually locate on the outside part of the plate
and they swing, they're not going to be able to do much with that pitch.
But up here, if you miss down.
Oreos.
And if you hit your spot, they don't swing, it's a ball.
Now you're behind the couch, and so now you have a big, scary hitter up
and you miss.
So now you got to throw what you're one out.
You need to catch up.
You're not going through another high fastball. Then me to oh, right.
So it really puts you in a bad spot if that's your mindset where you're
trying to guess whether they're going to swing without having two strikes.
And this changes a lot when you get to two strikes.
So when you have two strikes
and you're a harder thrower and you elevate a fastball,
there's a pretty high probability that they'll swing at that.
I'd say probably better than half because hitters are antsy.
High fastballs look like hitting pitches like pretty early and pretty often
like they look like strikes for a long time in their flight .
So unless it's like eye level, which you don't swing at that very often,
if it's at the letters or slightly above like just above the strike zone,
hitters swing at that a lot when they have two strikes.
So the likelihood of you getting what you want,
which is a strikeout or a pop up or a foul ball is pretty high
when you have two strikes, but it's very low early
when they're going to be more selective and they don't have to swing itself.
That's outside the zone, whether it's a fastball
or pitch on the black or a curveball in the dirt.
They don't have to swing at that when it's early in the bat.
So that's the big distinction.
The other thing that I want to discuss is that throwing up in
the zone is a choice.
It's not a way of life.
And what I mean by this is when you watch major leaguers,
they can command the bottom of the strike zone at will.
Just because they choose to throw high fastballs doesn't mean
they can't throw it down there.
This is not true of amateurs, in most cases, amateur pitchers.
They throw up in the zone much more often than.
Pro pitchers do
because they miss their because their command is not that good
because they cannot reliably locate the ball down the zone.
And so when they're pitching up in the zone, they're doing so accidentally.
There's a big difference between that pro pitchers.
They choose to they choose to elevate, but they can throw down in
and in the bottom of the ninth and they want to.
And that's their set point
because the thing is, if you're a sinker slider pitcher, yeah, you can elevate.
But every time you throw a fastball down and then throw a slider
or a sinker after it, it looks like that fastball.
Whereas if you throw all your fastballs up here
and then throw a change up or a slider down, those look nothing alike
curve ball pitchers who they can throw up in the zone
a little bit more because a curveball that starts here breaks into the zone.
And then if you throw a fastball in that same spot
that stays up, they look identical.
So that's the distinction that's really important to understand
is that if you don't have the ability to pitch down the zone
and you're just pitching up because that's all you can do,
you're going to be in trouble in your career
as you get better and better
because and what I mean by that is when you climb the ladder,
because as you add other pitches to your repertoire,
nothing else looks like a high fastball except for a curveball.
So if you want to throw a changeup or a slider or sinker,
hitters are going to know the difference
because they're going to see it easily in the elevation.
All right.
So to wrap up, when do you throw a high fastball?
0-2 in general, if you're a hard thrower, if you're a slow thrower, it's
not going to work that well.
Number two, you can throw a high fastball as more often
when you have a high spin rate,
which you're probably not going to know that unless you use a Rapsodo
or a Trackman or one of those devices that can read your spin rate for you. You
can probably figure this
out like I did over time before Rapsodo and all those were out there.
But really,
it's better just to leave that if you don't have the data ready for you.
The other thing is, if you throw a really good big curveball, you throw a curveball
that has a lot of vertical break that's pretty effective.
You can pick up in the zone more often because they're going to look like
they start
the same than the fastball is going to stay up as the curveball breaks down.
And then obviously, you don't want to throw high pitches up in the zone
when it's not two strikes in any other situation, really,
because again, it's got a 0% chance of being a called strike,
and the hitter has to swing to help you.
And you can't predict the future.
You cannot predict whether or not they're going to swing,
so you're going to be falling behind the count.
A lot of the time, because that's never going to be called strike.
So hopefully this video is helpful spin rate and watching major leaguers,
those are important things to pay attention to,
but they can also be red herrings
and lead you in the wrong direction because not everything major leaguers do
is something that youth players should do or amateur
or even college players should do because they're not.
They're just way better than you,
and they've been through a lot to get to that point,
and that might work for them in a level that they're at.
It may not work for amateur baseball.
So thanks again for watching.
I'm coach Dan Blewett and I'll see you here in the next video.