Alright in this lecture we're going talk about how hard should
to create maximum and deception so answer simple as hard as you can
possibly throw it and I know it's easier said than done so when I was when I was
still pitching I knew that my curveball need to be in
the upper 70s when I was on the mound in the game and in pre-season I throw you
know four or five miles per hour slower than my max in a game and I had a goal
my goal is always that it was above 70 72 in practice so when I'd start out as
I was getting array or ramming up for the season to be like 65 66 67 that felt
hard but I told myself no you know for a fact it's gotta be 72
get it to 72 throw the ball harder throw the ball it's an intensity thing but you
just have to get your mindset right and just keep that velocity climbing so
specifically we're looking for 20% or less reduction so that means if you
throw a 100 no slower than 80 and hopefully around 85 so again 15% is the
ideal I think and 20% is kind of the limit where if it gets slower than that
it starts to really get loopy and they can see a difference so here's some
sample speeds on the left here fast balls like high school speeds 70 70 75
and 80 you know 56 to 64 throw in 70 60 is 65 you're thrown 75 and if you throw
in 80 64 to 68 some like that those are good ranges and you want to
try to be at the top and at the bottom end of that is 20% the top end of that
is 15% if you're in the college range 84 to 88
you know 67 to 72 you're creeping into the 70s which is which is excellent and
then if you're in the pro ranks or you know still college ranks for guys that
are really hard it's 92 miles per hour 73 to 79 somewhere in that range mid you
know mid to upper 70s and if you're 95 guy you're creeping towards 80 and
hopefully you can throw that magical like 80 mile-per-hour curveball which is
incredibly hard I can't imagine hitters can hit that
stuff so slower I've heard this and this is a good question well I thought you
should throw a curveball slower because it helps them get on their front foot
well that's true but only really for bad hitters bad hitters they have no good no
they're not anything they can't keep their backside
they can't keep their weight back they can't you know they can't do anything so
when you're young slow curve balls work because kids lunge at it but good
hitters don't do that and that's the wrong way to go about it because we'll
talk about trajectory in a second but our goal is to trick their eyes and
their brain and slowness doesn't do that we want to force our fastball down or
our curveball down the same starting trajectory as long as we can so it looks
like a fastball as long as possible before it breaks and then their brain
just like doesn't get it and that's what makes it look like it has a sharp break
even though curveballs break gradually the entire way so the harder the better
the harder we throw it the more it looks like a fastball longer before it breaks
and that will trick hitters where they're on their front foot or on
whether they're not it doesn't rely on only that sort of little league get them
on their front foot kind of thing obviously big league hitters still get
on their front foot sometimes but they're really getting deceived by the
break of it because of how hard it is and how much it looks like a fastball
alright so here's the trajectory I kind of mapped out here for you so the gray
is the fastball kind of a slow gradual decline and the curveball if you throw
really slow will pop up like that for them to end
the same ending location the curveball has to go up because it has break right
it's going to break so it's got to be that much higher so when you throw
really slow it has a much bigger hump in its trajectory it's end up in the same
spot right they look very different especially as hitters get more and more
seasoned and experienced when you throw a curveball harder they start to match
longer they'll never really completely match they'll always be a little bit
different and in this location what you'll see here that's different than
this past slide is these are ending in different locations
if you throw a curveball that ends in the same spot as the previous pitch to
the previous fastball it has to go in a different trajectory to end in the same
spot to account for the break but here when we throw two curveballs that
quote-unquote tunnel they're going down the same initial trajectory and then the
curveball veers off so they won't end in the same ending location they'll start
in the same starting trajectory they'll end in a different
location the fastball would stay up the curveball go down but when we throw them
harder you can see these two lines earlier match longer before the
curveball starts to bend closer to the end of its path all right so we want to
force it down the fastball path longer that's really just the biggest thing you
want to throw it as hard as you can to force it down the fastballs path and
when you force it down the fastballs path to hitters brain things fastball
it's really relatively simple and by time they commit to it
they then realize it's the wrong pitch and it's too late so again for XP change
no slower than 20-percent ideal is closer to 15% throw it as hard as you
can possibly throw it when you think you're throwing it to her when you think
you're throwing it hard enough throw it a little bit harder alright that's it
pretty cut-and-dry throw that curveball heart
you