what's up baseball players i'm coach Dan Blewett in today's video we're going to talk about
when you should start learning a curveball
all right so if you're new here i'm coach Dan be sure to check out the description below i'll
put my links to my other curveball videos i have one of the most popular how to throw a curveball
videos on youtube so i'll link to all that below along with my books my online pitching courses
and other resources for coaches so this is a hotly contested question about when to throw
a curveball and understand that there's multiple factors involved it's not just skeletal immaturity
and health which is what doctors will that's their perspective when they give recommendations
typically there's also the developmental aspect and being recruitable in high school so let's
talk about some of that so number one i'll just give you the answer right now i believe and this
is my opinion this is the way i did as a coach that you should teach a curveball to a kid in
his 14u summer so the year before they're going into high school and the reason being is that
your our goal is to have a really good curveball when recruiting time runs around at 16u or 17u now
teaching a curveball is not super difficult again my video below if you need to learn
it's really thorough it's easy it's not hard to grab the grip and start to understand the physics
of it and what you're trying to accomplish and the spin you're trying to put on the ball
that stuff's not that hard what is hard is to have a really excellent curveball not only that has
extremely tight spin and thus has really great break but you that you also feel comfortable
throwing it as hard as you possibly can which is necessary to get better break and more deception
and also that you can locate not only for a called strike but then balance it when you
need to or throw it on sort of like the one two location which is at the kind of the black of
the strike zone at the bottom of the strike zone it's really hard to do that to have a really sharp
dynamic curveball that you can actually throw for strikes so then hitters can't just like ignore it
it's a long process and there's more evidence for this than now because if you look at most
college and pro pictures a majority of them throw sliders despite the fact that almost all all
pitchers learn a curveball as their first pitch so what does this tell you this tells you that
most players when they get to college their coach says that curveball's not good enough to play here
we gotta teach you another breaking ball so they teach him a slider that's typically what
happens so more than half of kids who go on to play college baseball end up learning a
slider because their curveball just wasn't that good that just should show you how hard
it is to have a really excellent curveball so now if we're taking that premise as fact whether
you believe that or not it's okay i believe it's fact that most players are not going to develop an
amazing kerbal over time they're going to have to switch to a slider if it's that hard then we need
to give it a couple years in my experience as a coach it takes typically two good years for a kid
to have a pretty reasonably decent there's a lot of words a lot of verbs a pretty decent curveball
that he can throw for strikes feels confident in and has decent break two years so if you start to
extrapolate this out if i teach him that in his 14 new summer by time he hits his 16 you summer
which is right at the cusp of that 17 you really critical season for recruiting then his curveball
is going to be pretty good and that's what we really need to focus on now i wouldn't give that
recommendation if that was going to you know be a direct conflict and really cause a lot of injuries
if you look at research with curveballs it's clear from research through asmr you know this
very reputable you know american sports medicine institute some of the best biomechanics analysts
in the world have done this research they found that the most stressful pitch is the fastball
because velocity is heavily tied to how much stress you put on your arm now you do throw the
curveball at the same arm speed as a fastball you throw them exactly as hard you throw them
both as hard as you can but the curveball comes out slower and the release is slightly different
so but they found that the curveball puts less stress through the arm than the fastball does
so when you start to talk about why uh does the curveball so demonized and why are we so afraid of
teaching it um it's not exactly clear from stress but what the asmi has also found through their
research is that kids who throw more curveballs report more pain than kids who don't or throw
less curveballs so yes the curveball is a less stressful pitch but kids who throw more of them
report more arm pain so again the verdict is a little bit out so here's my recommendation i i
just it's really sad when i see coaches call the game for kids and they're calling like 50
curveballs it's too much it doesn't teach kids to pitch well it doesn't teach them to rely on
location and change of speed it just teaches them hey i've got a curveball and young players don't
hit curveballs well so i'm just going to push this button like a video game and get a swing
and miss whenever i need it and then when they hit high school ball they're not very good pitchers
they just have a curveball and now if their kerbal isn't even that good for the high school level
they don't really have much at all so when i teach a curveball i'm very explicit at telling kids this
is a tool that you are not to use all the time because our goal if you're looking at a pitch mix
for a three pitch player it's on average 70 fastballs 15 of uh off speed pitch one which is
you're going to be your change up and then 15 of off speed pitch 2 which is either a curveball or a
slider because a curveball is not the right pitch for everybody i'll try to figure out if it kid's
better for a slider or better with a curveball a lot of that's depending on their arm slot so
lower arm slots should really go to sliders higher arm slots normal arm slots should go to curveballs
or sliders it's up to them but you want to fit the breaking ball to the player and some kids
just really spin a curveball well and don't spin a slider as well some kids really spin a slider well
and they don't get the curveball as well so again it's just it's a it's a process so understand what
i'm saying how to throw when to throw a curveball it's really when to teach a breaking ball
and that's again i think the 14u summer but again i tell kids look you're learning this
at 14u i'm not giving you this gift this new piece of knowledge this new pitch to go abuse
it and throw it half the time i'm telling you now that you've learned it practice it every time you
play catch with your buddies throw some curveballs you know throw 10 15 curveballs every time you're
playing catch you're going to throw them half speed 50 while you're playing catch and those
hundreds and then thousands of reps just playing catch with it all the time that's where that
curveball's really going to get good so they need to start practicing it consistently but when they
get into games during their 14u and 15u summer and spring they're going to only throw that curve ball
10 to maybe 20 percent of the time tops and so if you throw 80 pitches in a game that's eight
curve balls up to 16 curveballs and if anyone's saying throwing 15 16 curve balls is going to
blow your arm out then no one would have an arm really i mean if you think about it no one would
have an arm left if that if that quantity of curveballs would blow your arm out so obviously
your injuries are happening because of your own individual factors like i had tommy john twice
i didn't have like terrible mechanics and i also wasn't overused as a kid my elbow ligament just
like didn't like the way my body threw that much even as i evolved and threw harder and got and
improved my mechanics i still just always had elbow problems so rem remember that injuries are
are highly subjective to one pitcher you can have someone like max scherzer who throws 2 000 innings
and never needs elbow surgery and someone else who's had two of them by the time they're 25
it's highly variable but anyway the big thing is if your kid's not relying on his curveball way too
much and he's throwing 10 to 20 percent it's gonna be totally fine and completely compatible with the
overall relative amount of risk of throwing a baseball because throwing a baseball is
just inherently risky for your arm it's when you're throwing 50 curveballs you're throwing
40 curveballs a game that you really start to see problems and that's again what the
asmi research seems to suggest that players that throw more curveballs report more pain
so understand that i'm telling kids hey we're going to teach you this at 14u mostly so you
can practice it mostly so you can throw it in bullpens mostly so you can play catch with it a
lot and really learn it and get the feel and then throw it 10 to 20 percent of the time in the game
and continue to rely on command and your change up as well because those are the
things that are you're always going to need no matter what level in baseball you get to
so and the last thing i want to cover here when you're trying to determine whether you're going
to throw a curveball or a slider for the rest of your life you need to give it time so don't
just spin curveballs for a month and be like i can't do this i'm going to go to a slider
also don't throw a curveball for the you know the entire first half of the year and
then when you show up at high school tryouts you bounce a couple and your coach goes oh
let me teach you a slider and then you scrap the curveball for the slider you have to give
yourself a chance to throw it in games it's hard to throw them in games you have to throw them in
the pressure zone you have to take that whole learning process you can't just throw them in
practice throw them in all winter and then you get in the game and you balance a couple and you get
nervous and you're like uh i don't want to throw this curveball anymore i'm just going to throw a
slider because it's easier easier to throw for a called strike but it's not as good of a pitch
you can't let people pressure you if you believe if you learn the curveball or you learn the slider
and you and you really believe in it and you feel like i've got something here this is the
pitch that i want to stick with you have to stick with it through thick and thin and you have to go
through those growing pains of hanging them and bouncing them and not being able to find them in
the game that's a crucial part of the learning process and a lot of kids chicken out when they
get to that place or coaches wrongly say ah you've really struggled with that curveball first week of
practice let's teach you something different it's a long term process two years or three
years to get that curveball really good and again good isn't just the spin it isn't just the grip
it's commanding it it's throwing it for strikes it's throwing it again balancing it when you need
to bounce it throwing it for a called strike when it needs a call be a call strike so understand
it's hard it's really hard to a throw hard enough to play in college it's really hard to develop to
develop a college or pro quality curveball and a college or pro quality change up and
college or pro quality command and stay healthy it's hard to be a pitcher so the biggest thing is
you've got to learn the curveball with enough time to really nurture it and practice it so that it's
ready for you when the recruiting stuff really picks up at 16 or 17 you again and if you're not
throwing too many of them then that should be completely safe and compatible with the general
level of risk that pitching just provides you know as a baseline all right if you have any
questions leave them in the comments below thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video
you