What’s up baseball players coach, Dan Blewett.
In today's video, let's talk about how to keep hitters off
balance.
All right. So if you hear I'm Coach Dan, I'm a former pro pitcher.
And in today's video, we'll talk about
tempo changes, velo changes, rhythm changes, all these different things
that will help you as a pitcher keep hitters off balance.
Okay.
So first tip here and how to keep hitters off
balance is changing eye level, but there's a couple of things I want to mention.
So changing eye level means you throw a couple of pitches down low,
then you come with one up high.
A lot of times this might be curveballs or sliders that break down low,
and then you raise their eye level with the fastball.
Obviously, we all know that pitches high in the zone.
They look really good to hit because they're high levels.
We can see them well.
But hitters
also really struggle to get the barrel up and get on top of the ball in time.
So they often swing later, pop it up. Right.
So we know they're going up the ladder with hard stuff.
Not slow stuff can be really effective.
But here's the thing.
You don't want to change eye level and start throwing pitches up here
that are out of the strike zone before you have some strikes in the at bat.
If you throw this pitch on or one oh, for example, and you're saying, oh, well,
I want to throw a high first and then changes eye level going down.
If the hitter takes this pitch, it's going to be a ball, right?
Pretty much 100% of the time unless you have a terrible umpire.
So you don't want to throw pitches that they have to swing out to get a strike
when you don't have strikes in the count because then that's going to risk you
falling behind pretty early.
And hitters are pretty selective early.
So save the elevation for when you've got one strike or preferably two strikes.
That way they're forced to start to swing and stuff.
It's out of the zone. They have to expand the strike zone.
So you definitely want to change eye level.
That means it could mean two curveballs down and then a fastball up.
That could mean a one off fastball up and then two curveballs down, changing
eye level is extremely effective for keeping hitters off balance,
but you just need to know when to use the high fastball appropriately.
Don't use it before you get at least one strike.
Are the next way to keep hitters off.
Balance as a pitcher is to break pitches both in and out.
This is why you always want to learn a changeup
because IT changeup is going to run to your arm side,
whereas sliders, curveballs and cutters break glove side.
So without learning a changeup, you're never going to have a pitch
that really reliably moves to the arm side that's off speed.
You could throw a two seamer or sinker that breaks arm side,
but that's not an all speed pitch.
You always want to have an off speed pitch that breaks both ways that way.
So you're right.
And I'm righty hitter
and you're throwing me slider, slider, slider and they're all breaking away.
I don't have anything that makes me be honest about pitch coming inside.
I can start to cheat away knowing that the only pitch you could get in here
is a fastball, essentially.
But when you throw a changeup that's going to break into me and say
you throw a nice like back foot changeup, it starts here and breaks down here.
Now I've got to have when I when I see that pitch release out of your hand,
I've got to watch it longer to pick up what pitch that might be if I see spin
and I can't just make that snap decision that, oh, this guy only throws sliders
and they always break away.
Therefore, as soon as I see
that spin, I can start to dive and punches the opposite field.
I've got to stay honest because it might break in or it might break out.
So having an arsenal where you have a change up
that has some movement
and a breaking pitch that breaks away, that's a really good way to help
keep hitters honest and keep them off balance. All right.
The next way to keep hitters off balance is by changing speeds.
But let's talk about some of the more advanced ways to do that.
So obviously, just changing speeds
makes it hard, right, to throw a curveball that's down at 70 miles per hour.
Then you throw a fastball that's 85 miles per hour.
That's a tough speed change to go back on.
But here's to advanced ways to think about this.
Number one is doubling up pitches.
So if you throw a curveball, curveball now I'm like kind of really tuned
into that curveball speed because I've seen two in a row
and I haven't seen a fastball in a couple of pitches.
Therefore, when you throw that next fastball,
when I've seen 70, 70, then I see 85, it's going to make me more,
more likely to be late or just swing and miss.
So doubling up pitches is going to have a better sort of speed changing effect.
The thing is, you have to just be careful when you start to throw three curveballs
in a row or three changeups in a row that take pitches.
Got to be really, really excellent for them to start to miss on that third one.
So be careful.
It's not typically a great idea for a three
breaking pitches in a row or four breaking pitches in a row.
It happens sometimes.
Sometimes it does make make sense for the situation, but in general,
doubling up is the right thing to do to get hitters off a pitch, right?
Whether that's you want them to get off your fastball.
So you throw them two curveballs and then come back to the fastball.
But three or four, just be careful with that.
The next speed change technique is to use effective velocity,
sometimes called perceive velocity well, which means pitches away
seems slower because I can wait longer and still barrel them up,
pitches inside seam faster because I've got to get my bat head
farther out in front to hit on the barrel.
So therefore if you throw changeup away, changeup away,
the biggest effective speed change you could make would be a fastball
that comes up and in on the next pitch.
That's because I've got to get my barrel way out in front and up
to make contact with me, which means I essentially have to have
a swing that starts a little sooner
or I've got to have really fast hands to catch up to it.
So using effective velocity again, which just basically means
pitches inside or fast seam faster and pitches up seam faster.
And so the combination of up and in is going to make that fastball.
You throw the fastest version of it and a breaking ball or or change up
something slow and offspeed low in a way is going to be the slowest version of it.
So the biggest potential speed change you could make would be like a change up
or a curveball away, followed by a fastball up and in.
So that's a really advanced and smart way to use your speed changes
the next way as a pitcher to keep hitters off balance is to change
your timing as a pitcher. And there's a couple of ways to do this.
Number one, you can just hold the ball a little longer when you're on the rubber,
you know, whether
when you get the sign, number one, it's good to be fast in how quickly you work.
So get the ball back, get your sign and keep moving.
That sort of makes hitters off balance in the sense
that they don't have time to get out and still with their glove.
So much and do all their routine, they have to be on your timing.
So you working fast as a pitcher is a good way to keep them off balance
because again, they don't get to like
really take their time and romance all of it, right?
But even when you do that, sometimes they can get a groove
because they know you get the ball back and they get there,
they get ready and they're in sync with you.
So when you step off sometimes just to sort of break everyone's rhythm,
that can be a really effective thing.
This is especially effective when you feel like they're on you.
And one of the best examples in a way that I use this
a lot was on three and two counts.
A lot of times in a three and two count
when there's not like a critical situation,
you're probably just going to throw fastballs
until the bat ends a lot of times because you know that it's not a huge
I don't have to punch this guy out
and maybe I don't throw my curveball for strikes that much.
So I don't really want to risk walking him him on a32 curveball,
even though he's fouled a couple fastballs off.
So I'm just going to like
stay the course and just pound fastballs and try to locate one
until he puts it in play.
That's a strategy the pitchers use quite a lot.
So when that happens, when you feel like, but you know what?
I throw in three fastballs and he just keeps fouling them off.
What you can do is get your sign, come, set, take a long time.
Just wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
And if he doesn't call time, then pitch or come set.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Then step off, then get back on.
Go through it all again.
Take some extra time to break the hitter's rhythm,
because if he's feeling good,
he's getting close and he keeps foul tipping you,
foul tipping you, foul tipping you when you can just change
the whole bat's tempo and you introduce that like 20 or 32nd gap
because you took a while and stepped off, that's what's going to break his rhythm.
And now maybe that fastball sneaks by him
or he's just a little bit off and he puts it in play and grounds out.
So that's a good technique.
You think about how you can change your tempo as a pitcher to sort of
put him back in an uncomfortable, off balance position.
So the next thing you can do, piggybacking off
of what we just said about
stepping off and all that is throwing over to first base is another thing to do.
So again, say it's like a22 count or a32 count
and they just keep fouling you off and there's a run on first base,
you know, you can just pick off and then they get the ball back.
Take your time, kick off again, get the ball back, take your time.
And now again, you've introduced that 32nd gap that's really slowed him down.
We're now his timing is going to sort of reset
because he hadn't seen a pitch in like a minute or two. Right.
So that's another way to keep hitters off balance.
And the last way
that you can keep hitters off balance and this is going to pertain
more to the stretch than from, say, the wind up,
because I really don't recommend this for amateur pitchers from the lineup.
But it's the sort of quick pitch, the hitter.
And what I mean by this is basically because you still have to come set
and you have to part pause, right?
So you can't like just come comes out and just go.
You're always going to have to have some at a pause to not balk.
But what you can do is when you're from the stretch is say you're going full leg
kick on each pitch
and he keeps falling it off and he feels like he's in a rhythm with you.
What you can do is just even though
there might not be a runner there, he's a stealing threat.
You could just slide step in real quick.
And because that quicker timing, the hitter is not ready for it,
that's a good way to get them off balance when they're up at bat.
So say you have runners on second and third
where they can't really steal you the bases loaded
and you still prefer to go from the stretch.
You can mix up your full leg kick because no one's going to steal
and your slides step just to keep hitters off balance.
If you're comfortable with that, I don't recommend doing that.
If it's going to impact your command negatively,
like if you're not really good going back and forth from one to the next,
it's probably not a good idea because you should always prioritize
making a quality pitch and being comfortable rather than being tricky.
But if
you're very comfortable with that and you want to mix in a slide step
just to get the hitter off balance, it's a smart thing to do.
So consider other ways you could change tempos.
But what I don't really suggest is having
like a really fast version of the wind up, because that's something that you're
not going to use that often and that's probably going to throw you off.
All right.
So I hope you enjoyed this video on how to keep hitters off balance.
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Check out my online pitching books, my mental training book called this Slump
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in the description below that can help you improve as a baseball player.
Thanks again. I'll see you in the next video.