What's up guys? Coach Madden, YouGoProBaseball.com, and in today's video
we're gonna talk about how to stop missing your spots as a pitcher and how
to start commanding the baseball with ease and I got a question from Lobo
Serie and he asks I don't know if this is due to flying open or staying to
closed but my son's pitching he's a right-handed pitcher are hard and pretty
straight but always end up inside as if hitting right-handed batter I told him
to aim at the catcher's outside shoulder instead of the myth he connects right
down the middle of the plate any idea what's going on
thanks for all your awesome videos yeah I've got a few ideas and I want to share
that with you here in this video thank you so much for your question but before
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so the very first thing that you have to do and I think you've done a good job
with this already is identify the issue now you've got it narrowed down to what
you think it is whether it be either - opened or him - closed off is why he's
missing arms side as a righty to right-handed batters right so you did a
great job there but typically without seeing your son through I've never seen
your son son throw so I can't tell you for sure but typically it's usually
because guys are opening up I'm gonna tell you why so you can pay attention to
this to see if this is the issue when guys right-handed pitchers tend to open
up their energy starts to pull this way liek this way right there open the trunk
pitching straight to you and I fly open this way my energy is leaking this way
so all of the excess energy is going to come out this way meaning I'm gonna
leave my arm behind and the ball is gonna fly out arm side let me explain it
to you this way this the way I like to think of it because it's easier to
understand this way if I had a flagpole and I'm running this way with the flag
and the pole the flag is gonna be going this way even though my Energy's going
this way right same thing with pitching if I'm going this way with the flagpole
the flag is going to be flying out that way
right so my arm and the balls gonna be going this way I'm going to release it a
little earlier I'm typically gonna be arm side and up in the zone with a
little bit of run as a right-handed pitcher which is the problem that you
are having so that makes me think that it may be opening up too much so the
second thing you want to think about is how do we fix this issue right so
typically if we're flying open and we're and we're leaving this behind we want to
get a little bit more linear because we're very rotational right for yanking
out this way and the arms going this way we're very rotational right so we want
to think get a little more linear at the at the end at the finish of the delivery
so instead of yanking out maybe we tell the player to think about coming down
one term or cue that I used to like to use as a coach and even for myself when
I was pitching was thinking about bringing the chest to the glove instead
of the glove to the chest you here bring the glove to the chest a lot but when I
would like to think about it would be bring the chest to the glove that helped
me get a little bit more linear at the end of the delivery so I can kind of get
that last pull down and get more straight on line as opposed to being
very rotational and flying out this happens a lot by the way so don't get
discouraged with your pitcher because it's gonna happen but the quicker the
pitcher can learn how to make these small adjustments and his delivery the
better he's gonna the quicker he's gonna get back on track right so we need as
coaches we need to teach them the tools they need to make quick adjustments in
the game because we can sit there and yell from the dugout all day long hey
you know get more linear and at the end but if he doesn't know what that means
and he doesn't know what it feels like to make it happen we can yell all day
long nothing's gonna happen we got to give him the tools to understand how to
feel his body and make those quick adjustments so when he's out there he
can make him quick the third thing is we got to stay consistent so once we find
the fix once the player has the fix we got to make sure he's staying consistent
with it and as the pitcher the pitcher needs to be as consistent as possible
because if he has a repeatable delivery the more repeatable the more consistent
he can be in his delivery the more consistent and repeatable he's going to
be in the strike zone meaning if he is one pitch getting a little bit more
linear the next pitch he's very rotational he's gonna have huge
differences in out comes at the plate right so focusing on
consistency within the delivery is going to be huge for the pitcher seeing
success and having better command with the baseball in the pitching zone number
four is to set your sights and you actually talked about this in your
question so you're right on track sending your sights is a great technique
to use for guys that have issues with this for example you said instead of
throwing to the catcher's mitt you want to throw to his right shoulder or
looking at him the left side his left shoulder from your perspective the
pitchers perspective I used to do this all the time pitching especially on my
breaking balls I would know how much that balls gonna move and I would set my
sights accordingly so if I was throwing a slider my slider moved about this much
at this angle so instead of throwing it to the catcher's love I may throw it at
the hitters hands and try to break it to the catcher's glove so that's a great
technique that you can use with your player if that's helping him and it's
working for him keep that up setting your sights is a great way to you know
understand the movement of your balls set it up and have good success whatever
is working keep it if it's not working get rid of it but that's a great
technique that I used to use as well and I think if it's working you should stick
with it number five is to believe in the pitch
right you have to have full belief in your pitch before you go to throw it if
you're second guessing it or you've been missing arm side and you are in your
head going man I hope I don't miss arm side right here guess what you're
probably gonna miss arm side right there so you have to have the full belief in
your pitch if the catcher calls fastball outside and you're worried about
throwing it inside and hitting the batter good luck you have to overcome
that you have to overcome that with positive self-talk you have to overcome
that with just understanding and having the confidence behind your pitches
meaning it's it's it's riding that line between not caring and not caring about
the little stuff meaning it's good to care right you want to care you want to
have passion about the game and care about the outcome but if you care about
the little things like missing inside or even hitting the batter you know you
can't worry about those little things you just have to go out there with full
confidence in that pitch I don't know about you guys but there's been some
times in micro where the catcher would give up you know
say fastball inside and I will go I'd second-guess it and then I go okay
whatever I'll throw it anyway and usually you end up missing the spot or
hitting the guy or the guy getting a hit off of you because you don't have full
belief in that pitch you have to have full belief and full confidence in your
pitches when you throw them if you want to have success with them that's just a
fundamental that I've learned over the years you have to believe in it you have
to believe you're the man up there if you're worried about that guy beating
you that he can beat you you're giving him the chance already in your mind to
beat you you can't do that you have to go out there even if he can beat you
maybe he's a great hitter and chances are he is gonna be do you can't think
that way you have to say I'm the man I'm throwing this pitch where I want to hit
it if you can sucker number six is to throw bullpens in your head and what do
I mean by that it's just visualize it as pitchers we can't go out there and throw
hundreds and hundreds of pitches to work on our command and our accuracy right we
just can't do it our arms will fall off hitters can get out there and take a
bunch of swings we can't do that as pitchers unfortunately but what we can
do is we can throw bullpens in our head meaning all I want you to do is whether
you're laying down in bed at night before you go to bed or before practice
or before a game just sitting there just close your eyes and imagine a catcher
there and feel yourself going through you're pitching delivery make it very
visceral this whole just means that you can feel it in your body while you're
thinking about it okay so try to make it very realistic and when you're doing
that imagine yourself throwing those pitches and hitting the spot perfectly
every single time you throw it okay throw 20 or 30 pitches in your head just
sitting there you don't even have to go through the moat you don't have to even
be standing up just sit there close your eyes lay down if you want to close your
eyes visualize it but hit the catcher's spot every single time move them around
imagine yourself being dominant on the pitcher's mound and just hitting every
spot that that guy calls okay what's gonna happen you're gonna feel more
confident you've already had success in your mind before you even get out there
to the field also there was a study done in Australia that showed that imagining
this can actually help they did it with darts it was it with baseball but hear
me out here the guy who was a right-handed thrower
they made him throw darts lefty so he threw darts they measured the distance
away from the bullpen and then for one month all he was allowed to do was
imagine throwing darts Lefty and hitting the bull's eye five minutes a day he did
that for one month came back threw darts again left-handed he wasn't allowed to
touch a dart the whole time just visualize threw darts again and he was
twice as close to the bull's eye this time out of all the darts and he hit the
bull's eye a couple times left-handed so to me that shows that this is a valuable
valuable technique and if we could just sit there for five minutes a day whether
we're before we go to bed or before the game or before practice five minutes a
day throw a perfect bullpen we're gonna be better pitchers be able to command
the baseball a lot better the seventh thing is to get stronger for better
balance and consistency right if we can be strong and balanced moving down the
mound and we're not falling all over the place we're strong within our delivery
we move well down the mound guess what we're gonna be able to be more
consistent I talked about consistency earlier in this video but this is how we
become more consistent we get stronger so we do workouts we do a lot of ab
stuff we do a lot of hips and core stuff we do a lot of stability stuff because
we want to be balanced and strong moving down the mountain if we're flying
everywhere and we're off-balance and we're on our knees weak our front leg is
weak which is a huge issue I see with a lot of pitchers the front leg if that's
happening we cannot be consistent so we first have to be strong to be consistent
we have to be balanced to be consistent so work on becoming a strong pitcher
start working out if you haven't already even if you're younger you could do some
bodyweight stuff if you're older get in the gym be strong be balanced to be
consistent and last but not least number eight you've got to practice that
full-speed right because I see what happens when I see guys working on their
accuracy or their command in pitching they tend to slow down they want to slow
down to be more accurate they feel like when they go too fast it's harder to
control and it is but if you slow down every time you're working on it you're
never going to get good at being accurate while you're pitching fast and
we don't want that we want be accurate and fast we want to have
pitching command and pitching velocity we want to have both the best pitchers
in the game they do both right I know I hear arguments all the time
talking about well you have to be accurate with your pitches forget about
velocity and you know you you know velocity is the main thing that's what
the scouts look for we need to increase our velocity guess what it's both you
have to do both if you want to be a great pitcher you have to do both so to
work on your accuracy work on it at full speed don't slow down to try to become
more accurate stay it your quit your fast speed your your game like speed
when you're working on it but then work on all those other things that I talked
about being strong to be consistent you know visualize and work on all those
things while pitching fast to get better at your pitching accuracy or your
pitching command does that make sense I hope you guys liked that video thank you
so much drop down in the comments below let me know what you're working on this
season pitching wise and if you got any videos that you want me to make about
pitching pitching accuracy pitching velocity pitching drills whatever it is
if you got any pitching questions drop them down there and I'd be happy to
answer them for you until next time I'll see you in the next
video