Pitching around the stride leg

General Pitching Topics
#1

Watched Jered Weaver pitch a couple of nights ago and noticed that his stride is not in a straight line directly to the plate. As a RHP he strides to the 3B side of the imaginary center line directly to the plate. There’s an appearance of pitching around the stride leg.

My son was mimicking this while watching the game and thought it might be something he wanted to try. So today he threw to me and I see it being a permanent change. Velocity seemed to be up a bit. Obviously the front shoulder stayed closed. Will need to make adjustments throwing the slider as he was a bit inconsistent with it ending up well off the plate at times. Other than that it seemed to work well with his 3/4 delivery.

I’ve never seen this taught. Any idea why it is so important to stride directly to the plate. I mean I’ve seen videos where they draw lines in the dirt and really stress staying along this line. At the same time it seems like maybe the biggest problem young pitchers face is the front shoulder opening prematurely.

Any thoughts?

#2

I think you will get some advice from Zita on the “crossfire” technique. Might want to search crossfire in this forum and you will find a lot of info on it from her.

#3

Rermember that Weaver is a pro which means he has had lots of practice doing what he does. It also means he is an elite athlete with the capability to make the things he does work for him.

Striding to the throwing arm side often results in a posture change during the delivery at the point the shoulders try to square up to the target. This can cause problems for youth pitchers.

Striding to the throwing arm side can also block off hip rotation preventing the pitcher from achieving maximum hip and shoulder separation.

What you need to consider is that the adjustment your son made could certainly be improving some defficiency he had previously and that you should attempt to identify what that defficiency was and decide if there is a better fix than the adjustment he made.

#4

What Jered Weaver is doing—and what a lot of pitchers, like Indians reliever Joe Smith, are doing—is indeed the crossfire. This is a beautiful and absolutely lethal move that works only with the sidearm delivery, and yes, it can result in increased velocity…not to mention more gray hairs for batters who keep striking out trying to hit pitches thrown that way. As a natural sidearmer in my playing days, I picked up on that move, and later on my wise and wonderful pitching coach helped me refine it. I had fallen so in love with it that I wound up using it most of the time, and one day when he was helping me with my circle change he said to me, “I know you’re going to crossfire it. You use that move with everything you throw.” 8) :slight_smile: :baseballpitcher:

#5

Eventually I hope to get some video for him to look at. Not so much to analyze deficiencies that he may now be masking, but to approach this as maximizing what appears to be a permanent change.