What's up baseball players?
Coach Dan Blewett, here.
In today's video, we're gonna go over our pitch grips
for basically all the big five pitches in baseball.
So that is the curveball grip, the slider grip,
changeup grip, sinker grip, and cutter grip.
Now I recommend that every player throws a changeup.
I think a sinker can be right for some players, not others.
I have another, so I have a pretty in-depth video
on the two-seamer and why I don't think it's right
for most players.
I don't think the cutter is right
for almost any amateur player
and I think every player needs either a curveball
or a slider and that's up to you
and you're gonna try to figure out which one is better
for you which one you can spin better
and which one is best for your arm slot
and your style of pitching.
But in today's video, we're just gonna go over
the basic pitching grips
and some of the things you can think about.
Now if you want to learn more about each individual one,
I will link below to my more in-depth videos.
All those videos are about seven to 10 minutes
and they're really in-depth and detailed
for each of the curveball, sinker, slider, changeup,
and cutter.
So I have a longer one for each,
so we'll cover each of these today in quick overview.
So if you're new to my channel, I'm Dan Blewett.
I'm a former pro pitcher.
I do lots of tutorials here on YouTube
on pitching, on pitch grips, on mechanics,
on the mental side of the game, on strategy
and there's tons of stuff on strategy.
So if you're looking for that kind of stuff
which you can't find in a lot of places
definitely peruse my channel and look around my videos
and you'll find a lot of stuff.
I have good playlists for you.
So the first one, let's cover the curveball grip.
So number one, you definitely want a four-seam
spinning curveball going forward.
And the reason we want that is because
when a curveball spins in a four-seam orientation,
going forward like this,
it looks glassy, it looks very white
and that's gonna mask better with a four-seamer
and now even if you throw a two-seamer a lot of the time
this one is still gonna look really white
and it's gonna be tough for them to pick up
the spin of the ball.
So to make that work, basically what you're gonna do
is you're gonna take the ball with a horseshoe this way
and you're gonna slide your middle finger up there
and basically fork your fingers like this.
So you'll see this finger is here, the horseshoe
is sideways there and my thumb is underneath it
at an angle, so these two are on opposite edges
of these seams here so I'm sort of gonna push up
with my thumb as I'm pushing down with this finger
to help turn it.
Our goal is here to utilize the Magnus effect
which is when I put topspin on the ball in the direction
it's traveling, the Magnus effect which is sort
of what helps airplanes create lift, we're gonna curate
a high pressure zone that pushes the ball down as it travels
so we want good, clean spin in the direction it's traveling
either at a 12-6, or a 1-7, or an 11-5 orientation
for lefties, you crazy lefties.
So our goal is to create this, again this clean topspin
on one axis, and to do that, we want to be here.
This is the core of the grip.
This is the grip everyone throws.
Like literally everyone, some guys throw a two-seam grip,
but here's why you don't wanna do that
'cause watch this ball spin.
See how you can see more of the red
when you have a two-seam curveball grip?
This might be tough to convey here,
although I do have good lighting.
When you do this with a four-seam grip,
it's much glassier and it's gonna conceal the spin
a lot better.
So almost everyone at high level
will throw the curveball this way.
Now here are the variables here.
A knuckle curve, number one, is not different
than a regular curveball.
It's really just the placement, so the different
placements for the curveball are this.
A, you can have your fingers just hang out.
We just don't want this one to push
into the center of the ball.
B, you can have it cross over, so it's again,
making this the pressure finger
and just getting out of the way.
C, you can stick it up, a la Adam Wainwright.
D, you can put your finger in it like this, right here
and E, you can put your knuckle down like that.
We're never pushing forward with the ball,
that makes literally no sense
because we're gonna spin it this direction.
So why would pushing it that way with your knuckle
help spinning it this direction?
It doesn't.
Obviously in real life, your hand's not gonna be like this
to the front of the ball.
It'll be coming around the center like this
and you kind of right it.
That's what we see in slow motion,
but it's okay to think about getting your fingers
to the front of the ball because it helps you sort of
get better at aligning the spin and getting a better
spin axis which makes your curveball sharper.
Okay, for a more detailed view of the curveball,
look at the links below, I have a lot of in-depth
curveball videos.
Number two, let's go over the slider grip.
So with the slider, this is very variable,
but here's the core here.
So these two fingers are gonna be close together
pretty much the same as a curveball,
and lots of guys, if you go through a major league bullpen
or a college bullpen, or a minor league bullpen
and you ask "Hey, how do you throw your slider?"
You'll get 10 different grips for 10 different pitchers
who throw a slider.
So it can be here, it can be here, it can be here
it could be on the other side of the horseshoe.
But basically with a slider, it's the action
and the way you throw it, not the grip itself.
Basically you're just gonna have two fingers
close together, your thumb placement can vary.
So some guys have their thumb more in the middle of the ball
some more towards the edge.
Basically, the fingers are close together
and they're offloaded to one side
of the ball just like that.
Then it's in the execution, so the way you throw a slider
is not by getting around it, no, no, no.
Even though it's got more lateral action.
Your goal is to get partially to the front of it.
So you're thinking about getting your fingernails forward
and then you sort of come back through it
and what you do is, this causes a mixture of two spins.
So you're getting forward, and you're starting to apply
some forward spin and then you mix it
by getting back through it like that.
So if you spun a baseball like this,
where it's just a bullet, it wouldn't go anywhere.
That's why rifles shoot a bullet straight
for a mile, right?
So you don't want to just get only bullet spin,
'cause then it will go perfectly straight, it won't break.
You also don't want to make it a curveball.
So it can't have just topspin either.
It's a mixture, so you're getting a little bit
to the front and then you're coming back through it
which is actually a very natural thing to do
once you learn it, but mentally, pitchers screw this up
when they're thinking about getting the side of a slider.
No, no, no.
Front of the slider and then get back through it.
So for a more detailed tutorial,
check out my video description below,
but again, the slider grip is not that important.
You just need to get them close together
and offloaded to the side of the ball and tilt it
and find what works well for you.
Some guys like to feel more of the seams
and really catch off the finger pads like that.
Some guys like to be more down it, like that.
It's all up to you and so you always
need to tinker with this and never, ever, ever
including for me say "Oh here's the grip, oh I threw it
"for a day or two and it's not good.
"I need a new grip."
Tinker with the grip and understand
that throwing your new slider a thousand times
over a period of many months is what's gonna make it good
not just the grip.
Number three, my changeup.
So this is the most popular changeup video on YouTube
is in the links below, so I highly recommend
you change that video, or check that video out.
But I throw this unique changeup
that is now really popular in the major leagues
and it's a little bit harder than the typical
like old school changeup, but it's got heavy sink and run.
And the way you get this, is this way.
The thumb on the bottom, these two together
inside the two seam orientation.
You can see my former Taiwanese teammate
signed this ball for me.
Name is Fu-Te Ni and he was the man.
Hilarious dude, so thumb's on the bottom.
These two are together here
and these are gonna stare at each other like that.
Then these two fingers are gonna fall
gently to the side like so.
So this is the grip.
The thumb is the key here.
For many, many years, everyone said "Put your finger
"on the side like that."
But then, with no pressure underneath the ball,
not really pressure, but no support
it makes your hand tense, because you're trying to not let
the thing fall out.
So by putting your thumb on the bottom,
you're free to now relax your hands
and the ball is still secure.
So because of that, we can get the ball pretty deep
so the pressure should not be from fingertip to thumb,
but it should be from sort of the cruck of your fingers
to your thumb and then these can all stay relaxed.
Now these two together act like a mega finger
and they're gonna help us just get
on the inside of the ball slightly
and apply spin to the pitch so that we get
this tumbling action.
And that's what's gonna cause it to not only go slower,
but it's also gonna cause it to sink
and run to the arm side.
So when you're getting on the inside,
you're losing some of your arm speed
into spinning the ball, and that's what makes it slower.
So we do want to define spin on a changeup.
We don't want to just be right through the middle of it
like a fastball because then it's gonna be close
to the same speed as a fastball.
We want to get over it, so we're losing some of our velocity
into spinning the changeup
and that's why it's consistently gonna have
a very defined action.
It's gonna be either down or down and to the arm side,
and it's gonna have a consistent speed reduction.
If we're just picking a grip and we don't know
what we're doing with our hand
and with our arm action, then it's always
gonna be inconsistent.
Consistent spin equals consistent speed
and consistent action.
So again, my in-depth tutorial on changeup grips,
but everything changeup is in the video description below.
Number four, let's go over the sinker.
So a sinker is a lot like the slider.
There's a lot of different ways to throw it.
One of the misconceptions is you do not have
to pronate it a ton to get it to move.
The sinker is a lot of the product of the arm angle.
So if you're a really high over the top dude,
it's gonna be tough for you to throw a sinker
that's worth a dang.
If you're a down here a little more, it's gonna be
a lot easier for you to make a sinker work.
Now real quick, the two-seamer and the sinker
are basically the same term, but if you throw a two-seamer
and it only kind of bears,
then it's gonna be called a two-seamer.
If you throw two-seamer and it has some sinking action,
then guess what, we call it a sinker.
So it's not really defined by the way you throw it.
It's defined by the output.
So when you throw a sinker that sinks, it's a sinker.
When you throw a sinker that doesn't sink,
it just kind of moves, just bears in,
like righty, righty, it's more just called a two-seamer.
Because you can throw a sinker like this
and you can throw a two-seamer like this.
The grip is no different, but anyway.
So you want to make sure these two fingers
are close together, that's a pretty universal trait
of a sinker and then we're trying to offload,
or we're trying to overload the ball
slightly on the inside.
So on the slider, working on this side of the ball
to then spin around it that way.
Not really spin around it, we talked about that,
but get to this side of it because we're getting the ball
to spin that way.
On the sinker, it's sort of the opposite.
We're trying to get onto the inside of the ball
to slightly pronate through it,
so now we're gonna get the ball to have some angled spin
this way and bear that way.
But, we're also working again with our arm angle.
So we want to let the ball spin this way
that's why lower arm slot guys, when we have this backspin
going this direction, it's naturally going to move that way.
If you're a higher over the top guy, and you throw
the same exact grip, this spin orientation
isn't helping the ball move laterally.
It's just resisting gravity.
So this is why lower arm slot guys are always gonna have
an easier time to throw a pretty decent
two-seamer/sinker.
But anyway, what we want to do is,
typically you're gonna look for a one-seam grip.
Most guys that throw a pretty good sinker,
they go to a one-seam and that basically just means
that here's my seam and I'm gonna be overloaded
just on the edge of it so that I can try
to catch that seam as I throw it and release it like that
'cause our goal is that we get slightly
on the inside of the ball as we let it go,
but not a lot because then we're gonna lose
too much velocity so if you throw a 92
your sinker should be like 90, 91 hopefully.
It should be just as hard, it really shouldn't
be much slower at all, we're just getting
a slight tilt to the ball
and there's a lot of different ways to do it,
but this is again, a pitch that you want to watch
my more in-depth tutorial which is also number one
on the search results if you search for a sinker on YouTube
and definitely watch that more in-depth tutorial
about different types of grips and all that stuff.
'Cause there's a lot of factors, but the sinker
is an awesome pitch for some percentage of people
not everyone.
The last one is the cutter.
This is the hardest pitch to throw
because when you practice it, it should not move
and when you throw it in a game,
that's when it will start to move
and only slightly.
A good cutter breaks this much.
When you don't throw at full speed,
it breaks almost not at all.
So basically, to learn this pitch,
you have to be comfortable throwing it
knowing that the spin is correct,
but you won't get any visual feedback
from watching it break
and when you throw a slider or a curveball,
you can see it break.
So you're like, okay I'm on the right track.
With a cutter, it's not that way.
If you see your cutter break throwing it 62 miles per hour
in the outfield, you're doing it wrong.
You're throwing it, you're putting too much break on it
and you're making it essentially a slider.
So that's what's really, really hard about it.
I was lucky, I threw a cutter for two seasons
and it really helped me, but I was lucky
because I had a teammate that threw it
at a really high level in AA in the Mets' system.
So he was like "Hey, here's the thing,
"it's not gonna move in practice.
"I'm gonna tell you if the spin axis is right."
He was watching the ball and saying, "Hey"
basically the spin of a cutter is,
I'm throwing a four-seamer, but I've tilted it.
So now it's got four-seam spin at a slight angle.
You just sort of like tilting the ball
at the last second, so it's traveling straight
at the camera, but it's spinning slightly off of the camera.
And that's such a hard thing to do because it requires
very, very precise feel and you have to throw
really, really, hard to get it to take
this really jagged turn at the end.
When I see young players throwing cutters,
it's just not the right thing to do.
You need to learn fastball command first.
You really need to master your changeup first,
and the changeup after that, and then you need to master
a good breaking ball after that.
The cutter just doesn't have a good place in youth baseball
and people are like "Oh well if it moves,
"it's better than not moving."
No, learn to locate your fastball first.
Most college pitchers have mediocre control.
Even D1 players, they have mediocre control.
They go into pro ball, they struggle because now
hitters have so much more plate discipline.
Young pitchers should be working on their velocity,
their mechanics, their command, not in that order.
It should be command, mechanics, velocity,
but then also their changeup, which is gonna serve
them well for their entire career
and then when they're 14, 15, one breaking ball
or the other, curveball, or slider.
And then, the cutter is like a fourth pitch
for almost everyone and then
if it becomes incredibly special 'cause you throw 96
and you can throw a cutter that way,
then it might become your second pitch.
But for almost everyone, a cutter is a fourth pitch
if you're a starter and then maybe
if it's super duper special, you might throw it
as a late innings closer in the pro ball or the big leagues.
It's really a rare pitch and it's not something
I recommend young players throw,
but the way you throw it is this.
Here's your four-seam grip, right?
All you're gonna do is, bam, turn it very, very slightly.
Or, if you like to hold the fastball the other way,
you're gonna get your four-seam grip the same way
and then, bam turn it like that.
And then still the same thing, your goal is that
it comes off your fingers just slightly off-center
where you can tilt the ball, again
instead of it spinning like this towards the camera,
it's spinning just slightly off center,
but with still with a really fast backspin in that direction
and then it's gonna go (imitates breaking noise)
and it's gonna take this really oh crap, late, sharp break
that a hitter's brain can't really process very well.
So it's a really effective pitch when you're good at it,
but here's the thing, when you don't spin it right
and I learned this the hard way learning it in games,
it just is like a slow fastball.
So if you throw 92, 94 which was what I did
when I was throwing my cutter,
I would throw my cutter 88 to 90,
which was really hard, which was good,
but if I didn't get it to cut, guess what?
I just threw an 89 mile per hour fastball
that just didn't move at all, it was just straight
and that gets you hurt pretty fast.
It's really hard to feel it, it's really hard
to get that very precise spin on the ball.
It takes a lot of dexterity
and that fine motor control that you learn
and develop over years, and years, and years
which is another reason youth pitchers
shouldn't be throwing it.
They don't have that dexterity
and they should be spending their time and effort
doing other things, command, changeup, then breaking ball
rather than worrying about it.
So anyway, I hope this video on pitch grips
for baseball was helpful.
Obviously we went through slider grips, curveball grips,
changeup grips, sinker grips, and cutter grips
and it's really, really important that you can figure out
and tinker through a grip that's gonna work for you,
but then also understand that the process of learning
any great secondary pitch is not so much the grip.
It's the learning process, getting feedback
from your partner, tinkering to try to find
which one you can spin better, understanding which pitch
is gonna be best for your arm slot, your arm angle,
all that stuff, your mechanics 'cause some young pitchers
can throw a really junky, crappy curveball
but they can throw a really good slider.
And so the goal is to try and figure out
with your pitching coach and your friends and your peers
which pitch do I throw better?
And then kind of say, "Okay, it seems like I can spin
"a curveball better than a slider, so I'm gonna devote
"my time to my curveball and scrap the slider."
Or, maybe vice versa 'cause again,
depending on who you are as a pitcher,
you want to try to find the best fit for you
and not just throw a curveball 'cause everyone throws
a curveball, or not just throw a slider
because you know, your favorite major leaguer
throws a nasty slider.
Try to find the one that you're really good at
so there will be this trial period
when you learn your first breaking ball
that, "All right, I'm gonna throw both for a little while
"and see what I've got."
And then get some feedback from coaches that I trust
and then go, "Okay, coach says he thinks I can really throw
"a good slider and my curveball maybe doesn't have
"as much potential, so let's try that for awhile
"and see how it goes."
And then you can always revisit and see what works.
That's was at least my process as a pitching coach
trying to help each individual player
be as good as they could be, okay?
If you enjoyed this video, subscribe, share with a friend,
share it with your team, and we'll see you here
in the next one.
Thanks, bye.