Repeating Pitches

Hello Passion for Pitching Family,

I am going to break it up a bit and actually give you guys a pure pitching blog today...lol!!  I thought it would be nice to give those who may not be so wrapped up in my Law of Attraction series a little nugget of baseball info.  I will have the next blog in the series available very soon!!!

Today's blog is going to be about repeating your pitches.  Their are many kids in this world that are capable of throwing a fastball and a curveball and a change-up, etc...but do you really know what you are doing when you are throwing all your pitches?  Let me put this more specifically, do you know what you look like when you are throwing your pitches?

What I mean by when I say, do you know what you look like, is do you look the same when you are throwing all of your pitches.  As a young pitcher it does you no good to go out and practice your craft, especially your pitches, if you are not working on the right things.  I am not going to go into everything you must know about throwing your pitches but here is a quick tip.

When you go out to do your throwing program make sure each session consists of some time spent on repeating the same aggressive arm action with your off speed pitches as you would do with your fastball.  After you have thrown your long toss for the day come back in to about 70-90ft.  If you are younger then, let's say, 14 yrs old you may want to move in a bit closer then that.  Once you are at the proper distance continue moving your feet and your body aggressively.  DO NOT pitch just yet.  Make sure and move your body sideways just like you do when you want to throw a ball four hundred feet.  Now here is the trick...throw a fastball and remember the feeling of that pitch in your body.  Remember what your arm slot felt like, remember what your aggressiveness felt like, remember how you finished the pitch.  Now try a chg-up.  Did it feel the same?  If it did then great!!!  Now throw another one.  If it didn't feel the same, try another fastball.  Keep going back and forth, one or two fastballs, then one or two chg-ups.  Do this until you feel you have been able to repeat the same motion with both pitches.  Then you can move on to another pitch, curveball or slider or whatever else you throw. 

If you are not doing this drill every time you go out to throw you are wasting a lot of time.  When you get on the mound you must have the confidence to throw all your pitches the same, with the same arm speed, the same body movement and of course the same emotional/mental state.  As you get higher and higher in levels the hitters get better and better.  Their eyes and their brains have seen more and more pitches.  All these pitches are kept in their brain in a nice little library.  When they get to a game and get into that batter's box their brain remembers what each pitch looks like.  Your job as a pitcher is to hide these pitches, hide the identity of these pitches as long as possible.  If you do anything different on any of these pitches to give it away, trust me, the hitter will spot it and jump all over it.  So add this to your workout process if it is not already there and watch how much better your off speed stuff gets.  You will be amazed as the K's start adding up!!!

All for now.....happy pitching!!!!