Just saw this article referenced at DiscussFastpitch.com. The article is on a site focused on fastpitch pitching called PitchSoftball.com, and represents the observations of Gerald Warner, a pitching instructor from Colorado.

For those of you whose 14 year old daughters DON’T throw 65 mph with eight pitches (as the daughters of most people on eTeamz’s boards seem to do), don’t despair. According to the site, while the average pitch speed at a particular age varies by region, Coach Warner puts an average 14U pitch speed at 50. A 13 year old will pitch between 40 and 50, he says.

That’s pretty consistent with what I’ve seen too. There are always exceptions on both ends, but the speeds listed here are more the norms. Incidentally, an average HS pitcher is listed at 53-57 mph.

As people point out in the DiscussFastpitch post, keep in mind that speed is only one element of a successful pitcher. You need enough speed to be respectable, but you don’t have to be overpowering to be successful. Movement, location, and intelligence/pitch selection are also important – perhaps even moreso, especially at the upper levels.

Check out the article. It’s a quick read, but a good one.

You would think this would be self-evident but apparently it’s not, so I bring it up here.

There are two things that make a pitch move — the direction of the spin and the speed of the spin. You need to have both in order for the ball to do what it’s supposed to do.

Still, I am amazed at how many times I will watch a pitcher throw a “curve ball” or a “drop ball” or whatever and see that it’s not spinning in the right direction. The Magnus Effect dictates that air rushing around a spinning ball will go across the sides at different rates, creating a difference in air pressure. When the difference gets to be enough, the ball moves.

So, as shown in the illustration here, if you want the ball to drop sharply, it has to be spinning 12 to 6. No other spin will create that same effect. For a right handed pitcher to throw a curve ball, the ball has to be spinning 3 to 9 (from the pitcher’s perspective), or darned close to that.

So when you’re working with a pitcher, that’s the first thing to check on a movement pitch — the direction of the spin. Because if you don’t have that, none of the rest of it matters. You can do all the other mechanics perfectly, but if you’re not releasing the ball in a way that imparts the proper spin you’re wasting your time.

Keep in mind that a drop ball is not a ball that angles downward. It is a ball that comes in fairly flat, or maybe with a slight downward angle, and then drops suddenly — the old “falling off a table” description. A curve ball has to be more than a pitch that moves from throwing hand side to glove side. It has to be traveling in one direction, then suddenly change directions. If it doesn’t, it’s not a true curve ball.

The speed of the spin is the other factor. Once you have the direction correct, you need to make sure it’s spinning fast enough to move. The faster the spin, the more the ball will move because the bigger the pressure differential will be on the ball. Balls that spin in the right direction, but tumble more than spin, won’t move. You don’t need a lot of forward speed on the pitch to get it to move either. Even a 40-45 mph pitch can move if it’s spinning fast enough.

Once you have the spin direction and spin speed, then it’s time to worry about locating the pitch. Up until that point you’re wasting your time. Focus on good spin and the rest will fall into place. And if you have a pitch that isn’t moving sharply, check the spin. You may have some work to do.

I know it seems like I’m obsessed with the change this week. And perhaps I am. But it’s an important pitch and worth focusing on.

Sometimes a pitcher can have trouble getting her hand turned around in time to throw the backhand change. If that happens, try telling her to make sure she brings her thumb to her thigh as she brings the ball through the bottom of the circle. This cue is specific, and helps assure that her hand is coming knuckles first through the release zone.

Tonight was the first time I’ve used the cue, and it worked in the situation where it was needed. It may not work for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a try. The challenge for any coach is to find a way to communicate what the player needs to do in a way that makes sense to her. Thumb to the thigh is part of the rhyme often used for overhand throwing — thumb to the thigh, raise it to the sky, wave bye-bye. Now I know it works for pitching too!

Have you ever watched a pitcher who generally has a good changeup suddenly start struggling to throw it well? The pitch comes in too fast, or it goes high, or it rolls in — or sometimes all of the above. The pitcher will work diligently to correct it, but it just seems to get worse.

Often there is a simple cure, but one that doesn’t make sense on the surface. What I’ve found works is to tell the pitcher to just throw the heck out of her changeup.

Here’s why it works. The changeup depends on a certain timing. It’s built to look like a fast pitch but come in slower. If the pitcher throws it incorrectly once for whatever reason, often her correction will be to try to slow her arm down a little in order to take off speed. But in doing so, she throws off the timing of her arm with the rest of her body. That leads to another bad changeup and more “corrections” until she’s not throwing the pitch she’s been trained to throw.

Instead of going slower, the pitcher needs to go faster. She needs to trust in the pitch and just let the mechanics work for her. If she has a good change, driving into it and throwing it hard will get her where she needs to be when she releases the ball. Again assuming she has the pitch to begin with.

This idea seems to work no matter what type of change the pitcher is throwing. Have her be confident, and just throw the dang thing. It’s amazing what our bodies can do when we get our brains out of the way.

There’s a of talk in the pitching world about the need to get good leg drive in order to get good speed. But I’ve always found the books and videos to be a little lacking on the “how” end of things. They will offer drills and such, which work if the pitcher naturally uses her legs correctly in those drills. But what if she doesn’t?

By that I mean what if she doesn’t use both legs together? Some will push hard off the back side, but won’t necessarily use the front leg efficiently. Others will drive out hard with the front leg, but will allow the back side to lag.

Tonight I was facing the latter with a girl named Justine. Her mom is a reader of this blog so I’m sure she won’t mind her being named, at least by first name. Justine was using her front leg to pull, but the back leg was late, and she was not only not throwing as hard as she should, she was also ending up in a forward leaning position. We tried a couple of different things to give her the feel of her legs working together, but it was still a struggle. Then I came upon an idea.

She is right handed, so I had her stand on her right leg, with her left leg slightly up — in what is often called the “stork” position. I then had her move her front knee forward slowly, to see how far she could get it before she lost her balance and wouldn’t be able to push off the back leg. She was surprised to see that she couldn’t get it all that far out. We did it a few times, and I had her push off before she hit the point of no return. Then we went back to pitching full out, with a noticeable jump in speed.

The key to this is the two legs have to work together. If the front leg gets too far away from the back leg it is impossible to get a good drive off the back leg. You need to push off the back foot as the front knee is going forward, not after it’s already as far as it can extend. Doing that moves the whole body together as a unit, which is more powerful than going one piece at a time.

So thanks to Justine I have yet another new drill to bring to my students. I love new stuff!

There is more than one way to throw any given pitch. Different coaches teach things different ways, so once agan I will say that what I write here is not the be-all and end-all of this pitch. But it is what I’ve found to be most effective.

One of the more challenging pitches to throw is the screwball. The challenge comes in the spin. It is difficult to get the 3:00 to 9:00 (or thereabouts) spin using regular pitching techniques (read: wrist snap) because the wrist doesn’t really move in that fashion.

Some coaches will teach a kind of reverse twisting motion with the fingers to get spin on the ball. The trouble is, it kind of works against the natural motion of the wrist, so pitchers tend to lose some speed. And more often than not they either throw with the opposite spin (more like a curve ball) or with a bullet spin — especially if the wrist snaps up as they try to turn the ball.

I’ve found a technique that seems to work better, or at least more naturally. Rather than trying to turn the ball, I teach my students to lock the wrist and allow the ball to peel off the first finger.

To make it happen, let the arm wander a little away from the body at the top of the circle, so it’s angling toward the center of the body on the downswing. As this happens, the palm of the hand faces away from the body. The effect is like a karate chop. At the bottom of the circle, as the elbow gets to a point between the bellybutton and back hip, and with the hand still facing away and the fingers pointing at the ground, allow the ball to peel off the first finger. You can give it a little finger pressure at release to help. Follow through up and around, just like you would on any other method of throwing the screwball.

A screwball thrown properly with this technique will angle in slightly, then break as it reaches the hitter. (As opposed to many “screwballs” I’ve seen that simply angle in.)

Thaat’s the big change. Like the common technique for screwballs you still need to stride out to your glove side, not a lot but a few inches to allow the ball to start around the center of the plate. Keeping the body open is essential — if you close too much you’ll wind up with more of bullet spin than a screwball. And again, no wrist snap. Let the whip of the arm and the position of the hand do the work.

If you’ve been having trouble getting good break with the screwball, give this a try. It’s not always easy to break habits, but if you can pull it off you’ll have one excellent pitch.

The popular view of pitching in our sport is that it’s critical to have a dominant pitcher — one who can strike out 10-15 hitters per game, every game.

While I agree that it certainly helps cover up other ills, and often makes coaches look better than they really are, not every pitcher is capable of such singular heroics. But the truth is, they don’t have to be. A pitcher’s job isn’t to strike everybody out. It’s to prevent the other team from hitting the ball well, so your fielders can help get the outs. Strikeouts are merely a bonus.

Don’t believe me? I just saw the stats on the Gold Medal game. Cat Osterman had nine strikeouts in five innings of work, while Monica Abbott had four in two innings. That’s a total of 13 strikeouts. In the seven innings she pitched, Yukiko Ueno for Team Japan had four strikeouts total. Her team won 3-1.

Mike Candrea is always saying that softball is an individual sport played in a team setting. That team part is the part a lot of people forget about. If you can play strong defense and scratch out a few runs you can win a lot of ballgames even if your pitcher isn’t throwing bullets by batters. Setting up hitters by changing speeds and moving the ball around can keep them off-balance enough to induce weak ground balls and simple pop-ups that turn into outs.

To a lot of people, a perfect inning for a pitcher is nine pitches, all strikes. To me, it’s three pitches/three outs. If you can do that you won’t have great personal stats. But you’ll take the heart out of the other team and rack up the most important stat — a lot of Ws.

So take heart all you undersized or less than gifted pitchers. You can still be effective. You just need to do your part and help the team. After all, they don’t hand out trophies for strikeouts.

Anytime there’s a discussion of fastpitch pitching v. baseball pitching, sooner or later the phrase “natural pitching motion” will come up. There is a belief that softball pitchers can pitch every day, all day, because it is natural, whereas a baseball pitching motion is not.

The fact is, there’s nothing really “natural” about fastpitch mechanics. They do tend to work somewhat better with the construction of the shoulder, perhaps, but that’s a long way from natural.

I think it was my friend Coach Rich who pointed out the proof to me. Watch a kid pick up a rock and throw it. He/she throws it overhand. Watch a National Geographic special and see how the indigneous population in non-industrialized countries throw rocks at game they’re trying to get for dinner. They throw overhand. If you’re trying to knock over  pyramid of milk bottles at a carnival, you’ll throw overhand. Even fastpitch pitchers will likely throw overhand.

The truth is, it’s a lot more natural to throw overhand than underhand. I’ve spoken to baseball pitching coaches who are just fascinated by the fastpitch pitching motion. These experts on pitching baseballs can’t figure out how anybody can throw a ball with the kind of speed and accuracy fastpitch pitchers do. Especially female ones. They understand the overhand throw, but the underhand motion is completely foreign to  them.

There is also a belief that because the fastpitch motion (when properly executed) works better with the shoulder than an overhand pitch that it is stress-free. Or nearly so. That’s not true either. As evidence, I offer these photos (courtesy of Mike Zupec) of my own daughter pitching in a recent game:



Notice the muscles in her upper arm, forearm, hand and shoulders. Hardly looks like her body is not under stress. Actually, we all think it’s kind of gross, but it certainly illustrates the kind of strain the arm and shoulder have to endure when a pitcher is putting forth maximum effort. Understand she is not a “power pitcher” either. She’s small and light, more of a finesse pitcher who needs to hit corners, change speeds, and move the ball in order to succeed. Her speed comes from mechanics and effort, not raw strength like some.

The fastpitch motion is not stress-free, nor is it “natural.” One more reason why conditioning and rest are so critical to a pitcher’s long-term success. And why pitchers should shut down for a little while when their season is over.