What's up! Coach Dan Blewett here, in today's pitching video we're going to cover three common
reasons that young players tend to struggle throwing strikes so if your young pitcher
and your strike throwing is kind of inconsistent if you walk a lot
of batters every time you go out or if it's kind of like a great game one day
and then you have kind of poor control the next then this video is going to be for you
all right so if you're new to my channel i'm coach Dan Blewett i'm a former pro pitcher
former baseball academy owner the author of two pitching books all my resources are in the link
description below so if you want to check out more of what i have to offer definitely stick
around after you subscribe and check out the links in this video so in today's we're going to cover
three common reasons young pitchers struggle to throw strikes so the first one let me go right
into it is too much extra movement in the delivery so sure we don't want to be robots and we don't
need to be super slow and methodical but with a lot of young pitchers the more extra movement
they have and the faster they have it the faster they make that movement the tougher it is for them
to always get back to that consistent spot where their fingers are going to release the ball we
want to be in this tiny little window and when there's lots of extraneous movement it becomes
very difficult for young athletes who don't have great body control in general to get back again
to that tiny little arm slot window so what i recommend for young pitchers is have a delivery
that is athletic and semi-quick but also not overly complicated so when i teach footwork it's a
short step it's a short step the head's not moving that much the leg kick can come up quickly and it
can go up high if they want to but it shouldn't be too high and it shouldn't be too fast and it
shouldn't be too much movement from the arms arm should tend to be around the center of the body
and they'll move gently with the legs and the rest of the body but again too much extra movement is
always a problem for young pitchers because again it drags them into inconsistency trying
to get that consistent little release window for every single pitch all right the second reason
a lot of young pitchers tend to struggle throwing strikes is because they don't have a good hip lead
they don't have good uphill shoulders so what that means is when you have the slope of a downhill
mound which this mount is not heavily slow but it does have a slope you have to actually go uphill
with your shoulders and your hips to counteract that downhill mound and that's when you're going
to land either level or slightly above level and you see almost every big leaguer does this
when you land with low angled shoulders and i talk about there's a good mount on my my
youtube channel here when you have any downhill angle to your shoulders you can't use your
front side anymore you essentially can't pull yourself up over top to get behind the baseball
so what happens when pitchers are inconsistent and kind of weak with the way they go down the
mound with their hip is they have this slightly angled down shoulders and then to produce power
their body now has to spin because my front side is already spent i have to pull to get power from
my core instead of crunching my chest towards my target which makes me a lot more accurate
so what happens is pitchers tend to be here one time here another time and their arm slot gets
very complicated the little window in which they release each pitch tends to vary a lot more when
they're inconsistent with the hip and the uphill shoulders aspect of going down the mound the
last aspect for today of pitchers who struggle to throw strikes is an inconsistent chest direction
so when i would catch bullpens when i would catch my pitchers when we do a lesson together
i would always notice where their chest would move as they landed so once their strike foot hits the
ground and they start to rotate i would always want to see the first movement was essentially
the chest pushing towards their target towards me when i saw the first movement of a lot of
extra rotation i knew they were going to be more inconsistent get around their breaking balls their
hand was going to fly out more to the side instead of moving more towards the plate this is not this
really dramatic thing it's a very subtle thing that again when you've caught and played catch
with thousands of pitchers you're just gonna see this slight difference so again it's not like this
to this it's the difference between this and that it's a very subtle difference but all pitchers
should be cued to essentially think about pushing their chest and their chin towards their target
they're they're gonna rotate naturally anyway so we don't have to coach over rotation we just need
to say hey when you land think about taking the center of your chest and your chin a little bit
more towards the catcher's mitt that's going to get the rest of the body online rather than
getting this extra rotation which tends to make the arm slot vary a lot more which then in turn
makes it more difficult to throw strikes so if you're doing drills a great thing to do with this
is get a two to three or four pound weight in the glove hand and when you're landing pull that glove
on that glove that glove weight in and of course you're not really going to move to you're just not
going to move towards your body as much as your chest is going to move towards your glove arm
but that helps teach you to be compact instead of dragging everything out and around your body
all right so again i hope today's video helped throwing strikes is obviously a huge part of
being a good pitcher even if you throw 100 miles per hour if you can't consistently throw strikes
you're not going to make it in the big leagues so you've got to learn to throw
strikes when you're young and it's got to be a skill that you hone over time and just remember
pitchers are not robots this is something i see often with a lot of parents they make the mistake
thing that their kids just need better mechanics to throw more strikes and that isn't really true
mechanics are always better better better mechanics are of course always better but
just because your son or you have great repeatable mechanics doesn't mean you'll be a strike thrower
there are lots of mental components that i don't want you to discount that are part of being a good
pitcher you'll see pretty much at all levels of college and pro baseball pitchers all have pretty
good mechanics that's how they throw so hard if you throw in the mid 80s or above you're one
of the world's you know best throwers of objects whether it's a baseball or anything else you pick
up any ball and throw it really really hard so your mechanics are pretty darn good at that point
and you've got to remember the difference between a major leaguer who walks two two batters for
nine innings and another major leaguer who walks four and a half uh batters for nine innings is
probably not really mechanical it's something mentally it's their connection with their own
mind and their body and the catcher's mitt so it's a really complex thing throwing strikes
so don't think it's only about mechanics but obviously you should do everything in your power
to improve your mechanics to make them more repeatable because that's going to make other
things a lot easier all right thanks again for watching again i'm coach Dan Blewett if
you need more pitching help definitely check out my books my online pitching courses and all the
other resources in the description of this video thanks for watching and i'll see you next time
you