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Proteins To Promote Fast Post Pitching Recovery

Promoting fast post pitching recovery in-season will not only keep a pitcher healthier and happier but it will increase velocity in the long run. If you are a serious pitching machine and you want to make it to the next level then poor nutrition could be what is holding you back.

Pitching at your top velocity is a very intense movement that is performed on average about 75-100 pitches a game, not including practice. Most pitchers lose a lot of muscle mass or weight in-season which not only effects their recovery but their overall performance. If you can prevent losing your lean muscle mass, that you worked so hard to build up in the off-season when in-season, then you will give yourself a major edge over the competition.

I trained with Dan Miceli, who is a 14 year Major League relief pitcher, after my rotator cuff surgery. He was a big lifter and would go into spring training about 35 pounds overweight. This was all muscle mass from his off-season training. He said that the coaches would give him a hard time about his size during spring training and he would always tell them to just give him a few months and it would all be gone again. He was right! Read more

Pitching Velocity and the First Move

There is no better way to increase pitching velocity than with a simple adjustment in your first move. Your first move begins with your leg lift. There are some major misconceptions with the purpose of your leg lift that need to be addressed before we can make the simple pitching velocity first move adjustments.

Let’s first get some footage of your pitching. Shoot some video of a few pitches of you pitching so we can analyze your first move in increasing pitching velocity. Make sure that this footage is shooting from a side perspective, chest facing the camera like Trevor Bauer here. Once you get your footage onto a computer, you then need to find a video player that will give you the ability to move frame by frame, so we can analyze each frame. Read more

Proper Pronation Prevents Pitching Pain and Injury

Pitching pain and injury, along with most elbow problems come from overuse and poor mechanics. If we narrow it down to elbow pain then proper pronation is usually the determining factor. Proper pronation of the arm at release is when the thumb finishes down. Notice here in the picture of me in my last minor league season. Improper pronation at release can be the result of poor mechanics and aggressive off speed pitches.

For proper pronation to occur in the throwing arm at release the pitcher must extend the arm to release. The improper release of the throwing arm which would prevent proper pronation would be to pull the arm down to release. I find this to be a major misconception in the conventional wisdom of the game. Physics proves that during the velocity phase of the throwing arm, the pivot or elbow, must remain stationary until after release. This means the elbow must extend to release to prevent the elbow from moving down during the throw. This not only supports velocity but protects the elbow from resisting high amounts of deceleration forces. Extending the elbow to release also protects the rotator cuff during the deceleration of the arm. This will allow more of the back muscles to get involved during the deceleration phase. Read more

Welcome to the 90 MPH Club!

“Welcome to the 90MPH club,” is the catch phrase that we all would love to hear in our careers. More than likely this is your ultimate goal as a pitcher, because if you make it to the 90MPH Club, then you have put yourself in the recruiting pool for Professional Baseball. If you have ever been to a MLB tryout Camp then you will hear this phrase a lot, “Throw 90 or go home!” At most camps they are not as blunt but this is what they are thinking when they are holding that gun to your back when you throw your first pitch. Read more

3D Doppler Radar Launches 3X Pitching

This may be the first sign of the beginning of a new era for baseball. A Danish company called Trackman has planted some 3D Doppler Radar’s in Major League parks across the country and the data is revolutionary. They can scientifically produce data that shows why two 90 MPH pitchers are not the same. Why one may be seen as having a “Sneaky” fastball when the other is throwing the exact same velocity. This is because this new technology uses distance and speed to measure velocity, instead of only using speed. Therefore, someone throwing 90 mph with a release point that is 53 feet away from the hitter is throwing harder, as perceived by the hitters eye, than the pitcher with the same velocity throwing the ball 55 feet away. Trackman has determined that the average release point from the rubber for an MLB pitcher is 5.10 feet but some of the “Sneaky” fastball pitchers are reaching release point distances of 7 feet or more. The ESPN Sports Science video about Chapman, which I cover in one of my previous articles, made this same discovery but Trackman is calculating this information on the fly. Based on their data one foot past the average 5.10 feet equals about 2 mph in increase perceived velocity. Trackman feels that this 3D Doppler Radar will eventually make the radar gun, as we know it today, the thing of the past. This is because their data gives an organization a lot more scientific data to evaluate talent than the traditional radar gun. This 3D Radar can also record spin rate of all pitches. Pitchers with higher spin rates have higher strikeout percentages. Read more