What's up? I'm Coach Dan Blewett. I'm a former pro pitcher.
In today's video, we're going to talk about what does short arming mean?
This is something I get emailed to me quite a lot.
I get it in the YouTube comments.
I get it every year from parents
saying it looks like my kid is short-arming the ball. What do I do?
So let's talk about what short arming is, what it's not,
and what you should do about it.
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So today, what is short pharming mean?
Let's jump right into a number one. This is the most vague.
Confusing means something different to everyone you meet kind of term.
So to some people, short arming just means that
you don't have a long arm action like this where you have this long arm circle.
To some people, short arming means it looks weird.
It looks like he's too short in his arm swing.
We call this your arm swing.
So some people short arming means his arm
to arm swing is unnaturally looking short.
Now you see more and more pitchers of the big league level
with very shortened arm actions.
They're sort of just saying, hey, I don't really need all this length.
I'm just going to sort of drop it and pull it.
And here's what I would say to that.
Really, the biggest thing that they found in like pitching research
and all this other stuff
is the timing of different body parts at different points in the delivery.
So when you go up here, the big thing is when you land with this heel,
we want our arm to be slightly above parallel with the ground.
We don't want it to be in this position when our heel just touches down.
We don't want to be down here.
We want to be somewhere above parallel in this area here.
Now, I'm not sure that your body cares if you go all the way around the world
and then get there or if it essentially just stayed there and got there.
I'm not sure your body cares.
And I don't know that
anyone has an answer to whether it actually matters yet. We don't know.
I do know that throughout history, pitchers and outfielders
have had longer arm actions because they have more time in the air
from their leg kick or from their their outfield stride footwork,
their kroloff, the pros step, whichever you want to call it,
the two different ones.
Infielders have a shorter arm action because their feet are on the ground
very quick and they have to get rid of the ball quicker.
But pitchers don't have a time frame and outfielders do,
but they can't go so fast as to be here well before their foot lands.
So the arm the big point here is that the arm action.
And how long the arm action is, is
usually dictated by how long the stride foot is in the air.
So if you're going to be in the air for a longer time like a pitcher,
your arm can do more stuff and still be on time.
If you're going really quick as an infielder, it doesn't have time
and it makes no sense for you to be already feet down and then go.
You would never see someone do that.
So arm arm length as short
arming is a misnomer, and I don't think that's something to worry about.
So as a parent, if your kid throws well,
they throw hard, they have good command, whatever,
but they just look like their arm action is shorter than other kids.
I don't think this is a cause for concern.
It just might be the way they do it.
There are two notable examples from from the past Danys Baez.
He pitched for the Orioles, a number of other teams, the Indians.
He would just essentially go boom.
And he threw ninety five back when ninety five was really, really fast.
Like not as many players threw that hard,
was it back in like the late 90s or early 2000s, I think.
But Danys Baez would like stick the ball up and it looked unnatural and strange.
But he was, I think, pretty healthy and was a major league pitcher
for a long time.
The other one was Jason Motte, who is a converted catcher.
So naturally he was used to his whole life being here.
So when he pitched, he was kind of like double tap to my ear.
And then ninety nine miles per hour.
So when you look at these guys, you're like, well,
is there anything wrong with that?
Like Jason Moss throwing ninety eight and pitching and getting hitters out?
Is the short arming a problem?
Obviously, the answer is no.
And then you see also pitchers that have the longer arm swing get hurt
at seemingly no difference of a rate than pitchers that have shorter arm action.
So it's not clear that there's a difference
in the length of the arm action.
So, again, if they throw a well
and they're effective, I wouldn't worry about the length of their arm spoiling.
But again, that's only one way of talking about short arming.
So let's go into the other ways
that people talk about, quote unquote, short arming.
Now, the other common way to talk about short,
I mean, there's two more I want to cover is pushing the ball.
So when we talk about short arming, a lot of parents are referring
to their kid pushes the ball where their elbow leads in front.
And this is bad.
This means if your kid throws like this
where their common elbow leading and getting below shoulder line.
So when you release the ball,
it should be a smooth line from your hand to your shoulders.
And if it's not, if it's like this,
you see any dip in the elbow, that means they're pushing the ball.
And that's a major problem.
And they're not going to throw hard enough
to play high level baseball if that doesn't get fixed.
So if you call that short arming,
which some people do, again, this is a very vague term
and it means different things to different people.
If that's what you call short arming, then, yes,
you need to fix this if your kid has an elbow lead in. Right.
And you see a bend in his elbow.
Then they need to fix that. That's a mechanical issue.
It's beyond the scope of this video, Ecover.
It's a multifactorial thing to fix that.
Not just like get your elbow up. That doesn't help anybody.
It's kind of about the way they pull their shoulder blades back, about the way
they take the ball, either glove about how their front side moves,
about the synchronicity of their body, which body parts go before other parts.
It's a complex issue why some players
push the ball, which can be, quote unquote, called short arming.
But that one is a bad one if that's the one you're talking about.
As far as short arming, that's when you definitely do want to get help fixing.
And then the last one that I'd say people call short arming is when they have a
a short incomplete follow through.
And I'm not going throw the ball camera here, but it seems like
when they throw like that and they might stop here
or they might ease off right before.
And you'll see this from the side, too, where a pitcher is like
and they stop that.
They call short arming, essentially a shortened follow through
instead of the long,
powerful follow through where you really get all the way through the ball.
That one is also bad. That one also needs to be fixed.
That one's usually just a mental thing where they're a little bit nervous
about throwing it as hard as they can.
Maybe they're afraid they can't command it
or they're just sort of maybe more timid kid.
And they all just like kind of letting it eat and really just getting after it.
That one's just a little more of a mental thing than a physical thing,
but that one can.
Again, that's what some people call short arming
this stop fall through this sort of like
ginger, like, I don't want to hit anything and hurt anybody.
Kind of follow through.
So if that's what you mean about that's what you call short arming,
then yes, that one is a problem and you do want to work on fixing it.
So hopefully today's video was helpful.
Short arming in baseball is one of those terms that it means
a different thing to different people.
And there isn't really one set definition.
Again, a couple of them can be problematic.
Other ones, it kind of
depends like the first one I talked about as far as having a shortened arm action.
So it's up to you to kind of figure out
which of these three you fall into and which ones concern you
if your kid has it and something needs to be fixed
or if it's just maybe the natural way they throw.
And it's not necessarily a problem.
So, again, I would I would encourage you to watch Major League Baseball players
on slow motion video. There's tons of it on YouTube.
Watch games and see what they do versus what you do.
You don't want to always pair it
or mimic another player because everyone's body moves differently.
But a lot of times when something glaring does stick out, like the way my son
throws looks very different than the way other kids throw,
then there probably is something to call due attention to someone,
to see a local pitching coach, whatever , and try to get to the bottom of it.
But again, not all of it is cause for alarm.
And not all of it is bad.
Sometimes differences are just differences and don't really have a positive
or negative value. OK.
Thanks for watching. Again, I'm coach Dan Blewett.
If you need more help on pitching.
Check out my online courses, my books, other videos in the description below.
Subscribe to my channel and I'll see you next time.