15 year old pitching analysis

I see that no one has responded, I am sorry for that.

Perhaps the answers you are seeking would be best answered by a pitching coach.

IMO, He is striding but it appears without much intent. He needs to drive forward with his legs and core, leading more with his hips. He appears to have somewhat of a short stride, which can be contributing to his lack of drive to the plate. There is a great drill that helps get the hips going, it's called the Hershiser dill and can be found on You Tube,

 

Arm action appears to be ok, I would like to see him get more hip shoulder separation by staying closed with his shoulders a bit longer. Also he can start working to get more external rotation in his throwing arm.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjV2HKpugTM

 

Take a look at Cole Hamels.  One thing that might help with the hip/shoulder separation (delaying shoulder rotation) is to keep the glove out front like Hamels and most major league pitchers do.  Your son's glove appears to swing towards his right hip which can cause the front shoulder to open early.  Keep the glove out front and let the glove and chest meet.

 

Best advice I can give you:  find a good pitching coach and develop that lefty. 

maybe some additional footage showing several or at least more pitches would help elicit more responses

Hi Mark and welcome to the site.  He has very nice athleticism, fluidity and a good natural throwing motion, particularly for a tall freshman.  There is certainly lots of potential there and the best thing you can do is settle on a good pitching instructor and be careful about taking in a wide range of conflicting opinions from us folks taking a quick peek at him on youtube.  That said, I'll go against my advice and throw out a few opinions any way

 

You will find (if you haven't already) there are more than one "correct" sets of pitching mechanics taught... drop 'n drive, tall 'n fall, short stride, long stride, etc.  Keep this in mind when matching your son with an instructor.

 

I do agree with some of the previous observations regarding hip/shoulder separation but I would point to something else as a possible cause.  Look at the 17 second mark.  His plant foot is not parallel with the mound but instead, the toes are toward 2b and heel is closer to home plate.  At leg lift, his plant knee is well outside of his plant foot.  This combination causes his back side to leak out to the left and prevents a good torqued rotation. 

Thanks everyone for the replies.  I noticed most of the same things that were mentioned, especially the hip rotation. Nice for  the verification.  I did not see the plant foot position however, good catch cabbagedad. We'll work on it and post the improvements in another video soon.
Thanks again,
Mark

Hi Mark,

 

If you haven't already seed this, check it out:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu4vLOEthM4

I'm with Turn 22 and feel the recommendation of the "Hershiser dill" would be an excellent drill for your son to work on. Note the person teaching this drill in this video is Tom House, a well know pitching coach. It was House that showed me this drill many years ago and I had my son practice this when he was 14 yrs old and it helped his pitching in more ways than one (increasing his velocity and constancy to name a couple). So, yeah, I HIGHLY recommend it.

Watching it in normal speed I'm wondering why he lifts his leg up, down, and then moves out. Then you watch it slowed down and you can see a few things.

He moves his front leg up and back, which means he's going to have to start hip rotation a bit sooner to land normally (which tends to pull the back foot off the ground before ball release). This takes away from velocity but also control (as throwing off one leg isn't as stable as a two leg base, which can also set someone up for injury)

 

This compounded with him not getting good leg drive off the mound (it looks like he's moving slow, not keeping his hips closed long enough [because of the early rotation], reaching out with his leg), all of which hurt his velocity.



So I'm comparing him against a slow motion video of Justin Verlander, which looks a little something like this:



And

 

 

Compared to:

 

So you can see Justin is doing a better job at not opening up as soon, getting good leg drive, his nose isn't out in front of the middle of his body (which happens when you lead with your foot and rush and things like that instead of driving with the front hip, getting good back leg drive, however you like to phrase it). So I would definitely work on those things.

I'd say eliminate the up, down, and go thing, but if that's too extreme or he's too uncomfortable doing that before the season starts then okay, but definitely work on staying closed a bit longer, get rid of that early rotation because of him turning his front leg a bit towards second, get him driving his front hip aggressively towards home plate. Show him those pictures so he can get a mental picture. Go over the video with him so he can see what he's doing. All of these devices can be important learning tools.

Arm action is very subpar and this player labors to throw the ball with his body as opposed to using his arm.

Looks like a traditional kid following the standard "be smooth" and "don't overthrow" advice. People who teach balance point and extension comprise velocity.

It's why this player is absolutely dead in the water with respect to throwing a baseball effectively without significant changes to arm action, tempo, rythm, and intent.

Gotta jump in on this.

 

The front leg motion I'm guessing is supposed to be down and out.  Needs to emphasize the out towards home more.

 

I will get jumped for this but he can land his stride foot slightly closed and have no issues getting his hips around. This is the only real mechanical adjustment my college coaches made.

 

Nothing I really disagree with from the other posters.

 

Slow delivery probably needs the  hips to start towards the target first. He is also 6-3, his stride looks short.

 

I would guess being a tall skinny freshman increasing for strength and flexibility should be considered.

 

Check the dates when posting. The OP was over two years ago.

Whoops. Sorry. I read a post like this somewhere a few days ago and I think it was current, I must have switched the 2