Brent,

     Connor has a very common flaw that I've asked you about before, but I'd like to open it up again.  Notice how he never really firms up his landing leg.  He drifts through the pitch – his landing heel comes off the ground – and he walks forward several feet after release.  I call it walking through the pitch and I see it a lot in amateur pitchers.  I can't find a single mlb pitcher who does any of those things.  When you watch four of your favorite 3X examples – Bauer, Chapman, Lincecum, and Morrow – in all four cases, their landing heel never leaves the ground.  They firm up their front knee and their heel stays planted until they rotate completely around their hip and land with their drive leg well on the other side of their landing foot.  (i.e. Bauer, Lincecum, and Morrow finish with their drive leg on the 1b side of their landing foot – Chapman (a lefty) finishes on the 3b side.)  Lots of amateur pitchers walk toward the plate the way Connor does.  It's an obvious symptom of not firming up their front leg and it costs them a lot of velocity because they don't have anything to rotate their hips against.

     You've contended before that not firming up the leg is a power issue.  I accept that, but I have to say that I've seen lots of pitchers who never trained in their life who still firmed up their front leg.  And in the video you have of Tim Lincecum when he as about ten years old, he was firming up his front leg at that age.  I'm on board with the importance of training for 3X – but I have to think it's also a mechanical issue.

     The college pitcher I sent you a video of a couple of months ago had this issue.  We had good success in getting him to firm up the leg and it made a big difference.  But, I don't really like the way we did it.  There was nothing systematic about it – just really paying attention to it and a lot of trial and error.  I think a long enough stride that gets the foot ahead of the knee is one factor.  But, Dalton had a long stide to start with and he still wasn't firming up.

     I don't like to just tell a pitcher to do something or don't do something.  I like to find root causes and address issues that way, but I've never found a good way to address this one.  So, my question is:  Besides the power issue, do you think there are any mechanical issues behind failure to firm up the landing leg?  And what are some good ways to address the problem?  You always do such a great job of thinking these things through.  So, what do you think?