What's up! Dan Blewett here and today I want to talk about the change-up. so this
is one of my favourite pitches to teach I've got a lot of stuff about on the web
I also have a great in-depth changeup course so if you're interested
definitely check that out I'll put the links in the description but the
change-up it's so misunderstood and I really just want to make it simple on
everyone so basically here's what you need to know and we'll cover this more
in the body of the video but here's my grip you make the hook em horns sign
just like this put your palm flat put the ball in it like this put your thumb
on the sweet spot and then fold these two fingers down like a two-seamer so
you'd hold the two-seamer like this you know what a changeup kind of the same
with those two fingers together and these two fingers are just gonna sit on
the side of the ball gently and what happens here is these two fingers they
become mega finger and they help put pressure on the inside of the ball
pronating on the inside of it and that's where we get speed reduction and spin
that helps the ball sink and run to the arm side so when we throw sliders and
sinkers and sliders and kerbals and cutters they go to the glove side they
cut sinkers and change ups should go to the arm side they should run so we're
trying to produce run by pronating on the inside of the pits just a little bit
early and that's also where we reduce the speed of the pitch and give us a
consistent 10% speed reduction so if you throw a tee you'll get a changeup that's
around seventy to seventy three seventy one you throw a 90 it'll be 81 82 83 84
something like that you throw 60 it'll be 52 53 54 55 again in that plus or
minus 10% range so this grip again is very important and we'll go into more
detail in the body of the video but I just want you if you don't have a great
changeup understand number one if you have a good process we're throwing it if
you consistently throw it in all of your side sessions every time you play catch
there should be a heavy mix of change ups teach all my pictures that if you're
playing catch you should throw some amount of change ups at almost every
drill that you do in almost every time that you touch a ball for me the windup
of the stretch because every time you play catch you
might throw 50 to 100 throws you needed Pertino throwing some amount of change
ups to the leaf 30 40 percent if you wanted to get better over time it's kind
of like a race long-term to see how many you can throw compared to your peers I'm
a high school pitcher and I've thrown 6000 change ups in my freshman and
sophomore years and you've thrown 1000 change ups in practice I'm gonna be a
lot better than you I'm gonna throw a lot more of these 4 strikes I'm gonna be
a lot more consistent it's still just like anything else about getting
consistent reps and having a long-term practice plan so this is the grip I'm
going to go into more depth in the video today if you're new the channel
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long as a player okay so let's go over the change-up grip one more time so I'm
gonna take the ball like this so you can see the stamp here I'm gonna put my
thumb right in the sweet spot and then I'm gonna put my two fingers I'm gonna
stick these ones together like that and they're gonna go around the two-seam
spot and then my thumb's gonna be there so now I'm gonna see my pressure from my
thumb straight to the bottom of my fingers alright so our pressure point is
here and if you do this right all four fingers are straight on the ball just
like that so that means my pressure to the bottom and I'm not forcing it into
my fingertips I'm not gonna eagleclaw it into the ground so if I have my pressure
here all four fingers just relax on the ball and then as I go through it's gonna
sort of roll off longer it's gonna roll off my fingertips and eventually come
off the inside of this finger tip there so from the front my grip looks like
this and it'll not be easy to stick your two fingers together at first because it
really they just have to stretch out over time this is still my hand even
though I haven't pitched in a couple years I just have on you
gaps because over time these ligaments stretched out a little bit but again
thumb on the bottom of the pitch is really important because it allows you
to hold the ball secure or it's not gonna feel like it's gonna fly out so
therefore you don't have to tense your hand to keep it in place if your hands
on the side if you have the circle change and granted there's grips that
work for all sorts of people everywhere I've just had tons and tons of success
of this pitch personally and with hundreds and hundreds of pitchers who
I've taught this to it's a really easy pitch and we get a really good result
with not too much effort so having your fingers on the side there's nothing
underneath the ball now so you have to have some amount of tension and your
fingertips to keep it in place and that's not really something that we want
with the change-up but if our thumbs on the bottom now the rest of the hand can
relaxed because it's got a base it's got somewhere to sit and so then
the pressure is very gentle from the thumb to the bottom of the fingertips
just like that so now as I go through I can paintbrush spin onto the ball and
allow it to roll out longer again kind of like painting a barn with long
strokes versus tiny little strokes if you're on your fingertips that's going
to be tiny little strokes again when it's deep in your hand and you can roll
off like that that's the long strokes so we want as much spin on the ball as
possible that's what's gonna give us the most consistent action our change of as
we can so with a curveball slider we have a consistent spin right curveball
has a cleaning spin axis whether it's 12 6 or it's 1 7 or 11 5 for lefties we
know that a curveball should have that spin same thing with a slider we get to
the side of it we get to the front of it a little bit we both get a combination
of bullet spin and forward spin and it makes that dot and we know what it's
going to do but with a changeup typically in the past we've never had a
consistent spin and so there's no way to expect the ball to do the same thing and
be relatively the same speed every single time so what we want is a 10%
reduction in speed and that is going to be 5% from the grip just because these
fingers holding a little bit deeper they're not as strong and this group
kind of chokes it a little bit that's where you get 5% of the grip and the
other 5% of the speed reduction we get from putting a little bit of our arm
speed onto the inside of the ball convert
and to spend so the reason all breaking balls are slower is because they don't
throw any slower they're thrown just as hard with the arm speed gets converted
into spinning the ball so curveball comes out at 75 off of a 90 mile per
hour fastball it's not thrown 75 miles per hour it's thrown 90 miles per hour
but we lose 15 miles per hour into getting more to the front of the ball
with our fingers and spinning it same thing with the slider saying the cutter
sanding with it slightly with a sinker and same thing with a changeup so we're
getting to the inside portion of the ball
we're pronating slightly on the inside of it like we're pouring out a can of
coke we're getting slightly to the inside the ball and that's where we're
applying some of our arm speed to the inside of it which then converts into
spinning the ball and that's where we lose some of our velocity so if we
always do that consistently we know we're gonna get consistent speed change
we know we're going to get that 5% and if we have our drip we know we're gonna
get the other 5% so if you're throwing 90 the change-up that I teach will take
a look typically between be between 81 and 84 or something like that it's
slightly harder than average but it has a ton of sink and run so it easily makes
up for it but again 10% is about what you'll get out of this so if you're a
kid throwing 60 you'll your chain will be 53 54 55 and that's about right you
can't expect a 10 the same 10 miles per hour to show up whether you throw 60 or
90 if you're throwing a 50 mile per hour changeup as a kid you throw 60
mile-per-hour fastball that's too slow and I guarantee if you're using most
grips you're gonna be slowing your arm down to get that amount of speed change
nor do you need that amount of speed change 10% is about right no matter what
age you're at so the next thing to remember is that we're trying to get on
the inside the ball and to do that we have to sort of once we land we have to
really deliver our chest towards our plate we don't want to be rotating too
much because if we rotate too much and flyable in our front side our hand tends
to slip around the ball and then we can't get out in front of it
pronate it and do all that stuff that we want so we had up cutting these we end
up starting to imply or impart flat spin to them so once we're here we want to
move forward as much as we can drive our chest to our target
our chest and chin hand are gonna help pour over the ball as they drive towards
the plate so that's just a little cue that I use that works super well with
myself and all the pictures that I work with moving their chest and chin towards
the plate helps them get their hand to the inside of the ball so the chain-up
is a really important pitch it's something you can throw behind the count
a lot better than a slider or curveball because hitters are gonna see fastball
and they're gonna react and they're gonna give you more swings when they're
ahead an account so most pitchers don't have a great changeup they don't have a
consistent one they can throw that they understand that they know it's going to
do this movement it's gonna make consistent movement and they can rely on
it but with this grip and with this hand action you know you're gonna get
consistent movement and a consistent speed change that you can then rely on
as a pitcher and sort of take into battle and continue to throw it and
throw it and throw it and hone it over time and that's we're going to get your
long-term results as a pitcher so hopefully this quick changeup
tutorial helped you it's one of those pitches that's often misunderstood but
it really doesn't have to be you can really be a simple pitch and if you
consistently throw it every time you play catch every time you throw a flat
ground every time you throw a bullpen then you'll end up being in really good
shape so if you enjoyed this video definitely share it with a friend hit
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right we'll see you in the next video
you