What's up, Coach Dan Blewett in today's video,
let's talk about pitching machines, will talk about what you
what you should look for if you're in a buy one, how they can help
a coach or a parent, help their kid get more reps or their team get more reps.
And what are some of the features you should look for?
What are some of the limitations
and what you should maybe spend on a pitching machine?
All those sort of things.
Let's talk about that in today's video.
All right, so if you're new here, I'm coach Dan, I'm a former pro pitcher.
Check out the links in the description below.
You'll find my online courses, my new book that's coming out in a week.
We're excited about that.
And so I used to own a baseball academy and got Warbird Academy on it
for nine years, and we evolved over over time and we had some pitching
machines towards the end of our tenure there before I sold the academy.
And we used them for some, some things, not others.
And we definitely learned a lot about equipment in general.
So the first thing I want to cover and this is for players
and parents, for everyone I'll cover
like sort of purchasing decisions at the second half of this.
So if you understand that, you're just going to bounce out.
But the biggest thing I want you to understand about what
pitch and pitching machines can do and what they can't
is that there is a major difference between reaction time for hitters
and absolute speed.
So I kind of take issue with the Little League World Series
and of course, a little league World Series.
They're just doing all the stuff just because it's fun.
But when you see a pitcher, the Little League World
Series, starting 70 miles per hour from 46 feet, they flash this thing.
It's, as you know, equivalent of 96 miles per hour and people go, Wow, well,
if you took a little leaguer
and put him on a Major League Baseball field and had an actual pitcher
throwing actually 96 miles per hour at him,
he would have zero chance of making contact.
The ball would look like a blur.
It would be in the middle as the kid swung.
There is a major difference between AB
absolute speed and reaction time.
So sure, 70 miles per hour from 46 feet
is equivalent in reaction time to the three tenths of a second three.
You know, 30 500 of a second
that it takes a 95 mile per hour fastball to travel 60 feet.
Reaction times are similar, however.
Your eyes have to track the movement of the ball.
And when the ball is going 95 miles per hour versus 75
miles per hour, your eyes have to track that much, much faster.
And this is the reason a human being probably couldn't make contact
if there was a hitter
throwing or a pitcher throwing 150 miles per hour from 60 feet.
His eyes wouldn't be able to track it fast enough to figure out
where to get his barrel in space to intersect with the ball.
That's essentially what our brain does.
This, physics calculations say, has got to be
in this spot when the bat gets there or when the ball gets there.
So there's a very big difference.
And the reason I want to highlight this and talk about this is because
having a slower pitching machine and a higher reaction time.
So say you have a pitching machines or 60 miles per hour
and you put it at 40 feet, which is pretty fast.
It's like a 90 plus reaction time.
That's not going to be the same as having a pitching machine
that can actually throw 90 from 60 feet from full distance.
And so for players
who are getting into high school
and beyond, and they're going to start to see pitchers
in the eighties and mid eighties and up,
you know, occasional 90 mile per hour pitcher in high school,
you really want to help get those kids
actual reps of that actual speed rather than just always having
a 70 mile per hour pitching machine that seems to be like a cut off.
A lot of cheaper machines can do like 60 to 70.
And then they kind of take a price jump to get
where they can throw, you know, 85 or 100.
And so that jump can be worth it when you're starting to talk
about high school hitters and how you can get them
prepared to be comfortable hitting higher speeds
and give one more story in spring training.
Every year, pitchers dominate the first, like three weeks of spring training.
And the reason is hitters just their eyes have an adjusted yet.
So it's great for us pitchers.
We feel very confident because we get out there.
We're just blowing hitters away at throwing like 89
that we're not up to full speed either.
But their eyes are very far from full speed.
So we're throwing 8889. Right? Bye, guys.
We feel really good about ourselves, but they just haven't seen that speed
come out of a pitcher's hand.
It takes some time to get adapted.
And then, of course, as the season hits,
you've got hitters turning around 96 at the letters.
And like all as well, it just takes time to get that.
So as a coach, if you really want to help your hit kids hit faster pitching.
They really do need repetitions at a high
absolute speed, not just reaction time.
And now, of course, that's really tough to get outside of a game situation
because most coaches aren't going to be able to,
you know, even for me, like once in a while, I would throw like
live up to my players, and I know it's hard for me to as an old guy whose
arm is not what it once was to throw above 80.
And that's often good enough, but it's just tough and take a lot out of you,
and you can't throw 200 pitches that everyone gets their 15 swings.
So a pitching machine can really fill that gap
where players need the high speed reps and reps are important.
And again, if you're a coach and maybe you don't have a great arm
or you don't trust your own BP,
or you just can't throw hard enough to really give kids that high speed,
then pitching machines, you don't make a lot of sense.
And the other thing that makes a lot of sense for pitching
machines is getting one that throws breaking balls.
Because that's another thing unless you were a high level pitcher
or at least a pretty good pitcher back in the day, you probably can't throw
a good slider or a good curveball to your players in batting practice.
And if you can, as I just mentioned.
You're not going to be a throw 200 of them like I'm not going to go out there
and 32 on a curve balls, I'm going to need another Tommy John surgery.
So the big things with pitching machines, the big benefits
that you get from them are a lot of repetitions.
Absolute speed.
And breaking balls.
Those are the really big things
that they really help fill a gap in a coach's repertoire.
So that's something I want you to understand.
So players, if you have access to a high speed pitching machine, you use it.
If you have access to a pitching machine that'll throw you breaking balls.
Go use it.
It's a very good tool for you now for coaches
or parents, if you might be considering a pitching machine purchase .
Let's talk through some of the options.
So now I'm not going to recommend specific brands because I'm not.
I haven't been involved in a pitching machine purchase for a long time.
But here's the thing.
Pitching machines, they're they're precise instruments.
They have a lot of machining. They have to be really durable.
There's a lot of heavy steel like they're they're very well-made.
They're well-engineered.
So if you're going to buy something and you want to spend 500 bucks,
you either have to find a really old used one for that price
or you're going to get something really, really cheap.
The big thing that I learned as a baseball academy owner is that if
you really want to use something for a long term,
you have to buy something that's high quality.
We are always surprised.
We're like, Oh, this this new sled for our strength training facility,
it looks pretty durable.
It's not like the highest end kids destroyed it.
Like you get an L screen.
I don't want to spend six or $8 on L screen. That seems crazy.
They destroy it.
You have to buy really high quality stuff if kids are going to be smacking
baseballs off it, if they're going to be taking hundreds of thousands of swings.
Stuff is going to get destroyed.
So my first recommendation is spend as much money as you can
on a pitching machine.
You're going to get what you pay for.
Again, I don't know the different brands
at this moment, but the difference between a 2000 dollar machine and a 1000
dollar machine is going to be significant and it's going to be worth it.
You know, as far as like
some of the options, you might not need what a 4000 dollar machine can do.
But again, you always get what you pay for as far as durability,
when engineering
and durability is concerned, and this is definitely one of those examples.
So the big things again that I already mentioned,
you want to get as high a speed as you can afford,
and you definitely want to get a machine that can throw breaking balls
if you can afford it.
The other big things are you want to be portable
and this was our big bottleneck in our academy.
We did not want to be spending time out of our day lugging
these very be very heavy and clunky.
I mean, we had these little Aztec machines
that threw about 70 miles per hour, so we didn't even use them that much.
And when we did, it was more for setup, for softball
or for the younger kids were 70 is is fine up until age 14.
But even then, those machines were not that big and they were heavy and awkward.
Not all of our employees could move them as like had a tripod attached.
It was a terrible ordeal.
So if I was a coach trying to unpack that and take it out to the local field
or put it in a local free batting cage would be a nightmare.
So you definitely want to invest in wheels if one comes with wheels
and just portability is a really, really important thing.
Obviously, you want to have it throw real baseballs if it allows.
I know the hack attack machines do that.
Those are pretty amazing machines in general.
I do know a little bit about the hack attacks.
But a lot of machines are not configured to throw real baseballs.
The advantage
that a machine that throws real baseballs, that kids will get to see the spin,
and especially if you can throw breaking balls,
you'll see the difference in the curveball spin
versus a fastball fan or a slider spin.
If it can do it versus a fastball spin, that's important.
But most machines won't do that
because just the way the wheels are with the rubber, they just don't
chew those balls to pieces and they won't be very accurate.
So most machines are just going to use the dimpled rubber balls,
which is fine in a perfect world if you could afford it.
Go go with a machine that can throw real baseballs.
Now again, the big thing is
and this is my my number one advice is spend as much as you can afford.
Now the one good thing about pitching machines is, say you have a son
in high school or your coach and you're probably going to take this
for the next ten years.
Or maybe you take this team for the next three or four years.
Pitching machines are always in demand, and there's always a high school program
that needs a new one.
So if you spent two grand on a pitching machine today,
you're going to get $1,000 back out of it if you take care of it in three
or four years because someone will buy that machine used and be happy to pay 50%
what you paid for it.
So in a lot of ways, you can sort of consider it as an investment where
this thing is going to hold its value or use it for three or four years.
It's effective. Cost is only $250 a year.
That's not too bad.
And then I'll sell a war done and we'll all be well because again,
there are jugs machines out there
that coaches in high schools have been using for 20 years.
You might replace the wheels once in a while,
but if you take care of it again because they're well-made,
durable, well-engineered machines, they're going to last pretty long.
So don't be afraid to spend the money.
If you can see long term, they can get some.
Are you back out of it
or if it's from a, you know, if it's from your team like, hey,
tell Ron, look, look, 100 bucks a kid is going to get us
15 hundred dollars towards this machine all kick in another 500 as coach.
Whatever that gets you 2000 dollar machine, that's going to do a lot
and everyone's going to be hopefully brought in to use this thing a ton.
Get a lot of reps so it can it can be a good investment.
And again, there just might not be a good way for you
to get all those reps for kids because again, one coach, two coaches.
It's just tough to throw that much batting practice.
And most batting practice is just not going to be high speed enough
and have the quality that you're looking for.
The last thing I'll mention is that fungo capability can be nice
where you can take the machine angled up into the air
and hit some gigantic fly balls to so to your kids.
That's especially good for catchers if you don't know how to hit a high over
the top catcher pop up
now, sometimes that's more trouble than it's worth, to be quite honest.
And I always I have a video link to it below
that just I instruct you on how to hit good fly balls.
So I always, you know, as a coach, say, invest in yourself first,
buy a nice fungo bat or use a little league bat.
Those are great.
What I explain the video get a 28 inch aluminum bat off eBay for 40 bucks.
That is going to be great for hitting fly ball to your team,
and you can hit a decent catcher problem if you really just take the time
to practice. It's not that hard.
It's not that easy, but it's not that hard.
So the fungo capability can be really helpful
where one coach could just be pumping fungus into the outfield
while you're hitting ground balls to your infielders,
and it can make up again for a coach that maybe doesn't have the ability to hit
great fly balls . That's another consideration.
Some machines are configured to do that.
Other machines are not.
So that's important to you or you want that option,
then definitely consider that.
But again, I don't know that much
of all the different brands today back in the day
I used to, but today I'm a little bit outdated.
But these are the big things
spend as much as you can machines, they need to be durable.
So expensive is going to mean it's going to be better,
have more more durable, higher quality engineering and materials.
It's just you're always going to get what you pay for
and then but hopefully can get some of that value
back out when you're done with it years on the road, you can resell it.
All right.
So hopefully this video is helpful and is a little bit of an outside topic.
But I know for coaches and people who are out there buying
it can be a big purchase.
So if you've any questions loom in the comment below or leave
a comment in the comment section below, and I'll see you in the next video.