what's up i'm coach Dan Blewett in today's video we're going to talk about some
curveball myths we're going to talk about the grip the release the spin
some knuckle curve stuff that i felt like i settled pretty well in my previous video on
the knuckle curve but i want to clarify a couple comments and show some examples here
so first i've got a couple different videos loaded so if you can't tell i've got a couple pictures
pretty heavily zoomed in and slowed down so let's start here so first thing to note and i think we
need to define this term because this is what gets confusing is one of the common things um that's
mentioned when throwing a curveball is getting on top of it so what does that term mean right
because i would tell pitchers to eat on top of it i told myself to get on top of my curveball
it's a common term i think what a lot of people think it means is that your wrist is sort of bent
like this at release that you're physically above the horizontal plane of the of the earth right
like you're you're like this now in reality if you look here on on screen what you'll see is that
this pitcher um he's essentially on top of it i would say a little bit he's probably
a little more of the side i think it's up for debate um his middle finger and index finger
wrapping around to an extent but i think there's a couple interesting things here to note number one
his arm is like dead straight so all the way through the wrist it's this it's not this
bent thing so even though i tell pitchers and i will continue to tell them this to think about
getting their middle knuckle you know their their your pinky finger towards the front of the ball
because it's a good mental cue to try to get them to focus on spinning it better instead of flying
out and a lot of players they throw the little league curve where they spin it sideways and
that's no good so i think mentally thinking hey get to the front of the ball get to the top of the
ball is a positive thing i don't care if it's not exactly what happens real life i care if that's
that produces the outcome that we want essentially so but here you can tell plain as day there is no
bend in the wrist when you throw the ball so that's a myth we can debunk right now
and you'll see this with two other pictures they both are straight wrist pretty much all the way
straight through release so that's so that leaves us with what can actually help us get to the
top of the ball the only thing left if it's not bending the wrist to get above it is curling the
fingers so then if i have my karate chopped arm right here this is as far as i can get to the ball
or i can get at the top of the ball so essentially what you see with again with this guy here
is that i don't know is that the top of the ball if you look at his arm here on if we follow the
plane of his arm so he's not obviously throwing at a 12 you know six arm angle so if we follow
the plane of his arm is he on top of it i think it's up for debate i'm not going to say either if
that's exactly what we've always meant by saying get on top of the curveball your fingers need to
be on top of the crib ball i don't know if that's the exact thing that we all meant and my coaches
meant and other players meant when they said get on top of the curveball i don't know because most
of the finger is on the side of the ball as you can tell and as it releases i'll play this here
you know it's it's not really clear how much to the front his fingers actually are really it seems
like the fingers just kind of they write the ball a little bit as he comes through but it's mostly
the wrist and the hands and the fingers are mostly to the side with the fingers snaking in front
as far as they can so let's go to another example this one's from the front
um and this is adam wainwright so i'm sorry this is another one from the rear the last one's from
the front so adam wayne right here you'll see the same thing as he comes through you'll see his
middle finger is right here and this was not slow motion footage so it's about as good as it can get
so you can see the c-shape of his fingers you can see again his arm is dead straight he sticks his
finger up his pointer finger his index finger he's always known for that so you can see his index
fingers coming off the ball so now it's pretty much just the middle finger and thumb are still in
contact and you can already see the ball starting to slip out and get that glassy white 12 6 spin
so again i think the takeaways here that are interesting i mean you see this like it's almost
like a karate chop right his arm is much more straight than i think we would realize and again
i know all of us even at slow speed you can kind of get inside the ball a little more like this
and you know mentally you can really think about oh i'm going to get my fingers to the top and of
course as your arm's coming through your fingers are more to the top of the ball and then as your
arm writes itself and gets straight this they kind of get into their position like you can see here
so but again i don't know if this is what everyone has always meant all these years
about getting on top of the ball because if you look at you know compared to the ground
he's certainly not on top of the ball right we know that we can tell that right now
if we draw a horizontal line to the earth there's a lot of white on the top and there's not a lot
of fingertip on top so he's definitely not doing this right we can again move past that there the
other thing you can tell here is that his fingers are oriented sideways so we'll get back to this
in a second with the knuckle curve but the idea that pitchers hold their fingers here and i had a
teammate tell me this and he was he was dumb um he was telling me that he was doing this at release
to spin the ball well your fingers are sideways sir and the ball is going to go forward sir so how
are those two things going to make sense they just don't and again this is the other thing that's
really interesting about pitching and throwing in general is it it's the fastest human movement
you see how fast his arm is going through here it's a blur and you're going to tell me you're
going to perfectly time up a little uh to make the ball go faster or just to spin it better
it's not reality it just isn't a lot of players will say they do a certain thing when really they
just think they do that and this happens with sprinters it happens with all sorts of people
slow motion has debunked a lot of what people think that they've done their whole careers it's
funny and interesting and sometimes shocking and sad so here's a front view
and let's see how the arm comes through here so again you can see the middle finger was
kind of on top i mean again it's not on top from the sense of like vertical to the
to the earth is it kind of on top relative to his arm angle
sure um but really again his arm is mostly to the side his fingers are snaking across
and around the ball as far as they can but again this idea that you get your fingers to the top
that's not really what happens right so let's keep going forward here and we'll loop this back
but you know the video i mean it shows what we're trying to sorry it's not playing here you
know it shows what we're trying to accomplish and again it shows that the idea that a knuckle curve
could have this flicking component it just it's baffling to me that's that people think that
that makes sense i mean again your arm is moving thousands of degrees per second at this point
and pretty much all of your joints are rigid right your forearm is rigid your your elbow
you're at the wrist you're rigid everything is essentially as moving as a unit at this point
there's nothing doing any crazy things there's no extensions like everything's like holding
on tight at this point because it's so fast your joints are stabilizing at that speed so the idea
that your your fingers are then going to go and knuckle curve the ball no so let's go back here
so as he comes through and again this is another interesting thing about high speed is there's no
major joint action changes where the fingers were or essentially where they are at release the whole
hand and arm is moving more as a unit at this point again with stabilized joints and you can see
he comes through he spins the ball and really it's just kind of falling out of his hand and his arm
as a unit is spinning it at that point and there's really doesn't seem to be and again you could
maybe have a different interpretation than i do but do you see a major like
individual contribution from a finger at this point not really in my view it's just at this
point everything's going so fast that the whole arm is what's essentially spinning the ball and
the fingers are along for the ride and the ball is long for the ride after that so as
you go through you can see there he's inspiring imparting the spin then his forearm turns over
right it pronates naturally which that happens on every throw curveball slider fastball whatever
and then it goes through so again if we were to stop it at release you'd see that his fingertips
are facing sideways to where the ball is going to travel the ball is coming out
this way and the fingers are facing sideways so again at this point if you're to flick
it would be turning the ball this way when the ball is supposed to be going this way
hence why that that like idea that knuckle curve pitchers are adding spin by doing that
they just don't have an understanding of what they're actually doing at full speed
this is what my teammate was saying and we've got slow motion video took the phone right there in
the bullpen and we're like no you're definitely not doing what you said you did i know you
believe that but here's video evidence that pretty much shows it so again your fingers
are sideways the wall is coming out forward that's where the spin direction comes from the knuckles
they're not going to make a difference so anyway i hope this video helped obviously curveballs and
high speed stuff it's becoming more prevalent than ever you can see this on you know mlb game of the
week they write they slow down some pictures and it's awesome you can share that footage
but at the same time there's still a lot of myths out there about how kids throw different
breaking balls what you should be focusing on and again it's not always that you should be teaching
the exact thing like i don't tell kids to get on the side of the ball and wrap your fingers around
it because that's a stupid thing to say to someone who's trying to learn something i do tell them to
try to get their fingers to the front of the ball because it helps produce the result that i want so
this video the point this was not to convince you to teach people exactly what's happening because
i don't do that i don't find that to be effective i find to be effective to say think about getting
your fingernail forward and your middle finger pointed towards your catcher even though that's
not what's actually going to happen it does still have the effect of helping them get their hand
the proper position to spin the ball correctly so it's like this has to be some weird takeaway where
it's like oh now i need to teach things different you don't have to necessarily results if you're a
coach teaching players to throw curveballs results are what matter so you're going to learn different
cues and different ways of teaching it to get the result that you want the spin that you want
as far as understanding what actually happens that can have other important implications
and it's i think it's just fun interesting just to see what what's happening like i was going back
and back with barton smith who's a aerodynamic engineer in uh utah and we were talking about
what cutters do and it was like still very unclear how cutters worked and he helped me
understand a little bit more the gyro component and some of those components to it it's a really
the aerodynamics we're still learning stuff about the aerodynamics of pitching so
anyway thanks for listening i'm coach Dan Blewett be sure to subscribe to the channel below share
this video if you found it interesting and check out my books my courses all that stuff
that's also in the description thanks a lot thanks for watching i'll see the next one you