In this video, we're going to talk about how to throw a fastball.
Four seam grips two seam grips,
how to not make the ball accidentally cut, how to get a little bit
to sink and run three fingers versus two adults versus kids.
All this different stuff. So stick around.
We're going to cover everything about the fastball.
All right.
So if you're new here, I'm Coach Dan Blewett and I'm a former pro pitcher.
And the description links
you'll find my three baseball books, including my new one, Clean Your Cleats.
You'll find my online courses for pitching, for mental training,
all this other stuff.
And if you haven't yet,
definitely subscribe to my channel because I have lots of baseball videos
for both beginners, advanced players, coaches, parents, all that good stuff.
So in today's video, we're going to cover the fastball
and there's a lot of things
you probably don't know about the fastball that I'll cover today.
I'm going to do chapters in this video.
So if you look at the description, you'll find that there's timestamps
where you can jump around if you want to jump to different spots.
But let's first start with finger placement.
All right, so basically we've got our seams, right?
So sideways horseshoe fingers over the top,
that's going to make a four seam grip.
This can be either directions, a horseshoe this way or horseshoe this way.
Basically, players find that they have a personal preference,
like I find this way to be very weird and uncomfortable.
I've been gripping a ball this way my whole life for no good reason.
It's just the way that feels most comfortable in my hand.
So it's up to you.
But across the horseshoe with your fingertips about in the center,
your finger pads in the center of the seam.
Something like that.
Because we want to have grip whereas the ball releases and rolls up a little bit.
We're still in contact with the seam, which gives us grip
compared to the slippery leather of the baseball.
So you always want to have your finger pads just over top of the seam.
Now, two seam grips,
you can go with the seams like this
or you can go across the seams like that.
Either one is still a two seam grip.
So we call it a two seam grip because as it flies, it basically goes
one two one two, four seam grip is the opposite.
So one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
And a big thing for fastballs is that we want to have the cleanest spin we can.
And that what we mean by that is
there's a term called spin efficiency.
It's how well the ball spins on the axis that it's rotating
so far to drill a hole through this baseball and it's going this way.
I want my fastball to spin exactly through that hole that I drilled through it.
Right.
That's going to give us the best sort of carry and resistance against gravity.
And so it looks like it has sort of like a hop at the end,
because what I don't want to do is accidentally
impart a little bit of side spin on to my fastball.
That's a bad thing because now it's got sloppier
like a mixture of a little bit of sides been mixed in.
So it's basically
I have like a little bit of gyro spin as it flies towards the plate.
We don't want to accidentally put side spin on the ball
as we're throwing our fastball.
We want to put all of our force directly into the center of it,
whether we're throwing or especially when we're throwing a four-seam
when we're throwing a two-seam.
The rules are a little bit different because we're going to try
to get slightly on the inside of the ball and it's going to have this sort of like
either a one seam orientation or the two seam orientation.
And basically that's going to help us give us a little arm side
run to that pitch
because the two seamer, the goal is that as a little bit of arm side run,
I have a full video about the two seamer and the sinker all linked to below.
So I won't get too in depth of that.
But when you're throwing a fastball, you need to understand the difference
- four seamers are your fastest, most truest flying pitch.
And they're going to hopefully resist gravity,
although they speed up a little bit and stay up in the air too.
Seamers are going to have a little bit of arm side run
and a little bit of sink to them.
So there's a different use case for four seamers versus two seam fastballs.
Now let's cover finger placement and how many fingers.
So if you're a young pitcher, it's totally fine or a young player in general.
It's totally fine to use three fingers
regardless of whether it's three fingers or two fingers.
Obviously two is the way you want to do a long term.
When your hands are big enough, your thumb is going to be on the bottom
and these two fingers are going to be tucked down to the side.
That's a standard fastball grip as it releases.
None of those fingers are going to be on the ball.
So it doesn't really matter that much,
but they're just there to help guide it on its path towards the plate.
So as you release, you're going to end up here eventually anyway.
So don't worry too much about the place and but you don't want to have your hands
on the side by any means.
You don't have your thumb on the bottom.
So it can kind of be guided and rolled out that way.
So again, for young players, three fingers is fine, two fingers for everyone.
Else, the big thing is you don't want to have your fingers fork too much.
If your fingers are fork very wide, you run the risk of them
acting independently and putting spin down the side of the ball.
That's a No-No.
So if you're starting out, you want to make sure that both fingers
are pretty close together, no more than one finger width.
And they can certainly be touching if you want to, whatever's comfortable for you.
But when they're within one finger width gap
now that can act as a mega finger and push all their strength
through the center of the baseball when that's what you want.
That's our goal is that we don't have these two fingers fighting each other
and putting spin on the descending edge.
And this is a good time to talk about putting accidental cut
on the baseball, which happens a lot, a lot more than people realize.
And this is something I was constantly trying to fix
when working with young pitchers.
So let's talk about accidentally cutting your fastball.
So if I hold my my grip like this
and this is a pretty standard like fine for seam grip when the ball releases off
my fingers, my middle finger is longer than my index finger.
So if this is the last one in contact with the baseball,
you can see that this finger is not in the center of the ball.
So this can, for some pitchers, cause them to tilt the ball sideways
and give a gyro spin as it goes this way and cause it to cut the ball.
So accidentally cutting the ball can be a big problem because
you expect it to go round the outside corner and then it goes
it just juts off a couple inches.
And you didn't mean to do that.
This actually happened to me my second year in pro ball
and I was throwing pitches that would have been called strikes
that would have it in the strike zone that were just sort of meandering
outside of the zone.
Sometimes they were cutting kind of sharply
and it was a good result of a hitter swung,
but other times they were just cutting out of the zone.
And it was actually really difficult to figure out
why was that pitch that was going to be a strike now a ball,
what's going on, that pitch, I want that to track straight
to where I was throwing it.
So if this problem happens to you, this was what you need to do.
Again, talking about the middle finger being the last one on the ball.
Yes. This is not in the dead center of the ball.
So what you can do
and this is what I did to solve my problem is I turned the ball slightly.
So I'm a righty.
So I turn it slightly clockwise.
And so now you can see my grip is more offset
to it's not exactly like a traditional four seamer, right?
It's angled slightly.
So what this
does is as I release the ball, you can see I'm now in this dead
center with my middle finger because instead of here to here,
I'm now here to here, and I'm dead in the center of it.
And it feels a little different because I'm right on the top of the sphere
where I baseballs are sphere.
So if you're on the descending edge, it's going to feel different.
Then if you're in the dead center of that sphere,
so if you have this problem or you're accidentally cutting the ball,
move your fingers, turn the ball slightly this way,
and you'll have that sort of offset four seamer
and that will stop the cutting in almost all situations.
All right.
And my last tip here is not about grip, but it's about finishing your fastball.
So great pitchers, all high level pitchers are great finishers.
You don't really get your like get your money's worth, so to speak,
throwing early.
You get it whipping the ball late.
So to get the best spin
in the best life on all of your pitches, not just your fastball,
you have to really pull down hard at the end.
You have to really extend through the end
and act like you're trying to throw that ball through a brick wall.
I don't mean that you overthrow it because you don't, but you really get
that every last little bit of the baseball the way it comes off your fingertips,
that's how you really get that explosive fastball.
All right.
So that's it for this tutorial on how to throw a fastball.
Obviously, the fastball is the simplest pitch, right?
You just get the ball, get the grip and you throw it.
But as you learn in this video, hopefully
there's a lot more to it than that and there's some little nuances
that can make the big difference between getting some accidental cut,
getting a little bit of sloppy, slight sides been mixed in
or just not having the command of the pitch that you want.
So hopefully you found this video helpful.
Definitely subscribe the channel.
If you're new here, check out my books and online course in the description.
Leave a comment if you have any questions, and I'll see you in the next video.