What's up baseball infielders. I'm Coach Dan Blewett. In
today's video, we're going to talk about sidearm, throwing
mechanics, and the mechanics of throwing on the run, and making
all these tough plays that you see on TV.
Alright, so if you're new here, I'm coach Dan, I'm a former pro
baseball pitcher. In the description, you'll find my
online courses, links to other videos, all that good stuff my
books. In today's video, let's talk about infield throwing
mechanics, specifically, how to throw sidearm and how to throw
sidearm on the run. Alright, so the first thing let's talk about
the arm action. And then I'm going to go through the
mechanics and a little bit of slow motion. And then I'm going
to give you a drill that I like at the end. So the first thing
to understand is, most baseball players don't need too much
instruction on how to throw sidearm. If you already throw
reasonably well over top, and you have generally good
mechanics, pretty much just trying it just running around
mimicking your favorite players, throwing different angles, and
really just experimenting with it is probably going to be
enough to get you where you're where you want to go. But if you
need to be if you're a coach, you need to coach kids, or if
you're a parent, you want to coach your son. Or if you're a
player, and you just want to like learn all the mechanics of
it, then obviously, we're going to go through it. So here's the
big thing, it's not that complicated. When you're on the
run, the first thing to know is that you're going to make this
throw off your right foot. So the reason that you're going to
throw off your right foot when you're on the run is because
your hips will open that way, if you're running, if I'm running
towards home plate, and I and I play with my left and I try to
throw up there to first base, my hip is not going to open, it's
going to be stuck closed. And that's going to be really,
really tough to get a strong throw off of. So your body
again, this is not something you need to think too much about you
will figure it out, your body will figure it out. But just so
you know, these are always right foot throws, and that allows
your hips to open up normally just like when you hit your hips
open up. When you throw overhand your hips open up. So you've got
to be on the right foot. So your hips open up when that's the
only foot that's down. So that's a critical first point to
understand. The next thing that's important is you're going
to get a lot of your velocity from this angle and your elbow
being tighter than 90 degrees. If you watch baseball pitchers,
they're typically 90 degrees, or a little bit less, but they're
typically not in here like this, when you see infielders make
throws, they're going to be a lot tighter in this joint angle,
because they're getting more from their arm than they are
from their lower half way, especially when they're throwing
on the run. So you don't have to think too much about where the
angle is going to be. This is how you get that angle. Once you
feel it, whether you're scooping it, and you're just taking it
from your glove and pulling it here or you're feeling it as an
infielder and you're bringing it to your center and then going to
throw sidearm. Either way, when you pull it back, you're pulling
in just like a lawnmower cord. And you're taking the ball to
your right pack. If you're a righty left pack, if you're a
lefty, you're going to pull it to your pack. And by doing that,
it's going to pull your shoulder blade back, which is the other
really critical thing here. You don't want to have your arm up
here, then you're just going to push it like a Dart, you want to
pull your shoulder blade back like a bow and arrow like you're
Superman, you know, ripping open your street close to reveal your
cape underneath. But again, the big really good analogy is like
a bow and arrow, pulling the bow all the way back. Now I'm here,
if you look, I've got that tie join angle. So if you pull the
ball to your pec, you're going to be in good shape, you don't
have to think about it. And again, we do need to get our
shoulder blades all the way back, because that's what's
going to get our shoulder sort of connected to our hips and our
core, you're going to get more velocity from that angle and
your shoulder blades being back. Those are the big three things
right foot, pull it to your pack, shoulder blade back. Now
with your glove arm, what's going to happen is your glove
and your hips are going to kind of go together, they're going to
open up before the arm opens up. And I will again I will
demonstrate these in just a second. But as you start to make
your throw, you'll see this glove arm starts to swim its way
over as your hips sort of opens up like a fire hydrant and that
gets your hips clear. And then you're on rockets through. So
that's the last important piece to understand. That's what your
glove side will do. When you're making this throw. It's going to
get on all the way to the other side of your body to let your
hips open up, and then all that power is gonna transfer through
to your arm. Alright, so now I'm gonna do a couple slow motion
examples. You see you can see how it looks.
So the last thing to remember here is this is something that
you're going to learn by doing. So when you're playing cats, you
should work on these throws, run right, run left throw from
different arm angles, throw from dead side arm, really, really
low side arm, pick it up and barehanded throw from the
ground. Add these things as part of your routine. Don't just do
standard overhand throwing drills and the same boring
throwing drills over and over. allocate some amount of time in
your infield throwing routine as an infielder to work on your
footwork do all the different stuff you do in the game, throw
left or right feed your shortstop from second base, use
that end time that garbage time to do the stuff that you would
do in the game. That's how you're gonna get better at it.
Now if you do want to drill, this is one that I really liked
that I would teach kids with is that we just take the ball, I'd
start sideways. So this is my target here. I'd start sideways,
I'd tap pull, and I'd throw really, really simple I just
called the tap and pull low throw. I don't know who cares.
But again, tap hole and let it loose. And that's really really
simple. It's really really easy to do but again, I don't think
this is something that you need lots of drills on. I just think
you need to go do it. play catch literally mimic your favorite
Major League shortstop. second baseman Nolan arenado is a stud
mimic these guys go out there and just have fun throwing the
run, move left move right do it all and you'll get vastly better
at throwing sidearm. Alright, so if you're an infielder I hope
this video was helpful. Be sure to subscribe the channel share
with a friend and coaches. You have any questions and players
obviously to leave it below. I'd love to chat with you. I reply
to almost every comment that you leave. Thanks again for
watching. I'm Coach Dan, and I'll see you here on the next
video.