Hey! This is Dan Blewett and we're going to go over the change-up today. So number
one, we'll go over to change-up basics so when we throw a fastball that pitch is
going to be as fast as we can possibly throw a pitch because we're going to put
all of our arm speed through the center of the ball okay so with the change-up
or any other breaking ball there's going to be ways for us to put some of that
arm speed on to the edge of the of the ball so that it becomes spin so the
change-up I basically described everyone that five percent of the speed reduction
because we're looking for about ten percent in general so if you throw 90
miles per hour your trainer should be about eighty one you know 78 to 82
somewhere in that range we're going to get 5% of that speed reduction by using
fingers that are weaker than hour fastball fingers are index in our middle
fingers so we're going to get a couple that 5% from not throwing the ball off
of our fingertips quite as much and then we're going to the other 5% by turning
over the pitch rather than coming directly through the center of it
because again we go directly to the center of the baseball we're putting all
of our force into the center of the ball when we're going on one edge or the
other as in any kind of breaking ball then we're losing some of the velocity
as it converts them to spin okay so the change of grip I teach is awful hooking
the horns sign so you just go like this open your palm slap the baseball in the
center of it in a two-seam fashion and I like the middle of two fingers to oppose
the thumb with these two fingers following a two seam grip from that
these two fingers are going to fall down the side and just gently relaxing the
ball so you know this isn't far off from a circle change but if we're going to
just rent our fingers down there it's going to tense our hand up which is
to make the pitches effective so we don't again there's a lot different ways
the important thing and the reason I utilize this grip and teach it most of
the time is that from down here the thumb is going to put pressure on the
bottom digits of the fingers so when this pitch comes off the hand it's going
to roll off the middle fingers the middle digit of the middle two fingers
so we're doing less of the ball out in front of us and we're getting more of a
tumble over top and again the grip is important but the most important thing
is the hand position so if we're rolling over pronating just to hair early on our
pitch so if we're releasing it here versus here on a fastball that's what's
going to make on that secondary speed reduction to that second five percent
off of the pitch and this is going to give us an angled spin that's going to
give us some sink and some run okay so again to get the grip we're looking
at this position here to seam orientation I think is the most
comfortable for most people and some people will say hey you throw a four
seam fastball you should throw a four seam grip changeup I don't really agree
with that I personally threw a four seam fastball
and I throw a two seam changeup and so far the swings that I get from hitters
do not indicate to me that they can easily pick up the difference in spin
I'm sure there are some eyes that can but I don't think that's really that
relevant for most pitchers so again from here the most important thing is turning
the pitch over just a hair early upon release and that the pressures in the
middle of the finger not on the fingertips and not going through the
center of the ball so we teach this explain there's two main errors which is
number one going through the center of it so we don't want to be going straight
through here and get flat spin regular two-seamer so that pitch will be
too hard and too straight and then we don't want cut spin so that's when the
hand goes on the wrong side of the ball causing slight break to our glove side
so flat air cut hair and then this is the proper release or pronating hair
early you can own the inside half the ball and getting that angled spin what
they do is right you'll see these scenes rotating making a thick red line on a
diagonal ok so that's the long and the short of how I teach the change-up again
the grip is important but it's much less important than the actual execution of
the pitch which again comes from slightly pronation and pressure coming
off of the middle digit of the middle two fingers.