Almost 11yo pitcher

Pitching Mechanics
#1

I’m just going to post the video without any narrative and ask anyone that sees anything we can work on to let me know. He turns 11 this month, but played as an 11 in rec and now in all-stars.

Last tournament is this weekend and then we will go into working on everything for a while.

I will say one thing. I am going to do the Hershiser Drill with him very soon and very often. I know he’s not leading with his hip.

Oh yeah, (didn’t I say I wouldn’t provide a narrative) right now he’s pitching at a much slower speed than he throws. Not in this video is a few pick off moves to third and first that were much harder than he ever throws to the plate. If you think this info is applicable.

Thanks in advance. This board has been very helpful in the past.

#2

Couple of things I see:

  1. When he lifts his leg to the post there is some body motion that leads me to believe that he isn’t staying relaxed in the post. Might want to bring the leg a little closer into the body to keep the abs and shoulders from keeping the balance. Might try and just point the left toe down, this sometimes makes all the difference.

  2. The hand break seems to be too early, this should happen as he moves toward home but seems to happen as he is still balanced at the top of the post…hersheiser drill could help this too.

  3. Glove side mechanics look good

  4. As he throws there is a difference in how he finishes pitch to pitch, some kinda look like his momentum goes back toward 2nd (at 50 seconds), others looks like his momentum continues toward home (at 28 seconds). He should end in a good athletic position, right arm ending just above the left knee (his ends up at around the waist, ready to field his position.

  5. Finally he could work on getting flatter at the end of the pitch to allow the right leg to come over more and help decelerate the arm action.

#3

For me, its extremely difficult telling a whole lot with the picture changing from pitch to pitch, and from that particular perspective. It looks like the camera was somewhere between home and 3rd. Get some video from as close to directly behind the plate and at belt level as possible. What would be perfect is a camera mounted at tee height and the middle of the plate behind a piece of plexi-glass, with a narrative of what pitch was being thrown and what location was attempting to be hit.

But using what’s available, it looks to me like his biggest problem is extremely inconsistent mechanics, but its difficult to say without knowing why he was in the stretch for every pitch, what pitches he was attempting to execute, and where he was trying to locate the pitch.

There are about a million drills that are used to correct inconsistent mechanics, but you have to work on very specific things, not try to fix too many things at the same time, and definitely not be in any kind of a rush. Faster usually works out to be slower.

I’m gonna take a wild guess and say he was never taught to play with proper basic fundies, and even now allows his fundies to get sloppy when he plays catch. Proper basic fundies to me are, step directly at the target, get the hand back into a good setup position, focus on the target, and follow through, all while maintaining balance.

You’d be surprised at how much his pitching will improve once he knows how to play catch correctly. :wink:

But don’t get too caught up in anything right now. At his age, just make sure he’s having fun and doesn’t get hurt.

Good luck!

#4

Thanks for your replies.

Sorry about the video angle, I was shooting it from the dugout at the same time as I was keeping the book.

I completely agree that he is very inconsistent. I can’t attribute that to anything other than age and he is not very strong. I think he has trouble controlling his muscles. I’m hoping to work on that this off-season. A good core workout I think would help him.

As far as the fundamentals, he’s certainly had his fair share of that. I’ve worked on his fundamentals since his beginning and he actually demonstrates correct throwing mechanics 90% of the time. Even when warming up.

I don’t know when he decided to make some changes to his mechanics when pitching, like pointing the elbow instead of a power position… but, guess that’s the mind of a kid. He always knows better. Certainly in this case, he’s proven himself wrong.

Scorekeeper, I think you’re dead on with the idea of isolating it all and working on things individually.

buwhite, I also like your suggestion of the toe point downward to help balance.

It would be so much easier to work on this stuff if it wasn’t over 100 degrees by noon every stinkin’ day down here in Mississippi.

#5

Here’s what I see for what its worth:

He actually looks pretty decent in a lot of the takes. However the one fairly consistent thing I notice is a lack of hip turn prior to release. I am going to guess he throws a lot of high and inside pitches when he misses, correct? It’s easy enough to correct this by making him feel that back foot turn over and drag as his upper body moves forward into release. With his hips blocked out he will not be able to get his chest squared to target and over his front foot and thus will leave the ball up and inside. By fixing the hips you should also see that back leg start popping up like buwhite mentioned at the end of his post. Also, make sure he doesn’t start turning his shoulders with his hips - there should be a slight time lag between hip turn and shoulder turn, but both should be fully rotated at release point.