A Handful of pitchers

TCB1 - I am definitely not a pitching expert but have coachef for 7 years. The first guy is what I called a "flinger". His arm comes around, rather than straight at you. He is a sore shoulder waiting to happen.

 Second guy is better needs to stride a little more and speed up is mechanics just a little. He's got a hitch in his wind up.

The last guy has nice mechanices, but also needs to lengthen the stride. He seems to be pretty solid.Just my thoughts.

What I noticed on the First pitcher is that his right hand/arm go VERY high behind his body.  So when he is in the "T" position, or power position with his glove arm starting to bend in a little, his right arm is way out and the ball is above his head.

Then I noticed he seems to shor-arm on his follow through.  From the front side camera his head stays in line, but there is no tilt to the back ala Lincecum...not sure if that is a big deal or not.

The second guy looks pretty good from the side (noticed the stutter though)..from the front, he is throwing incredibly across his body.

Third guy looks pretty good to me.

TCB1 - The second guy looks horrible, send him to me.  Tryouts are this sat. 

All kidding aside, the first guy needs some work.  He is finishing too tall, or not following through rather.  At a glance he seems to be a thrower, he understands the pitching motions, etc. but may have never worked much with it, or no one has worked with him much.  Looks like an athletic young man that with some work, could be a pitcher. 

Second guy - Looks good with the exception of his stride.  It is not only short, but in the front view you will notice he is also striding towards 3rd base side almost falling off the ramp at times.  That can be corrected, but may affect location until he gets a feel for it. 

Third guy  - Looks fine, i think he knows his stride is short and he was trying not to stride off of the front of the ramp.  Notice (in side view) be backs up trying to give himself more ramp to work with.  He also adjusts his shoes so he doesn’t slip.  Again, I’ll bet he is fine off of a mound that he trusts he won’t bust his @ss on. 

So do these guys throw strikes? 

They look like a typical group of HS pitchers to me. They all have good things they do and all have flaws. Its really difficult to tell a whole lot until it’s a game situation.

Something I questioned immediately was, is that really a far test of their mechanics? The reason I say that is, they’re throwing off an artificial mound without the benefit of being able to PUSH off anything. Personally, I believe pitchers should step and pull the back foot through, the way they were all doing, but chances are when those same pitcher get on a mound with a rubber and a hole in front of it, they’ll be changing what they do.

First pitcher you can tell he's stepping across the midline (or across his body), he's blocking his hips a bit so he's not getting the full rotational benefit he'd have if that was fixed. This is also causing him to fall off to his right a bit (can see it a lot, but especially around 1:41), so that energy that could be going forward is being wasted (meaning less velocity etc...).

Also it appears that he's getting his throwing arm up a bit too soon before his front foot is landing... that's a timing issue that's costing in velocity and may give him some arm troubles in the future. I think this is more of a symptom than the cause which is it looks like he's reaching out with his foot instead of just driving his body towards the plate, which is in essence slowing him a bit - which means his arm is getting to its cocked position too soon. If you pause the video at 2:19 it basically shows this perfectly.

Also, with the slow leading with the foot instead of driving his body, he's not getting a good bracing action with his front leg and he winds up throwing off one leg here (can hurt velocity and accuracy as it's not a stable of a base than two legs).

Now moving on to the second pitcher, I'm not a fan of him moving so slow at the start, but he does move pretty quickly out of it and gets decent trunk flexion. The only problem is again, he's landing way across his body

As you can see, he winds up blocking his body off, and in order to compensate for him going so far across, has him moving towards first-base side. So again, instead of these forces going towards home plate, it's being wasted. Just look at the picture though, you'd think he'd be more set up to throw into the first-base side dugout rather than at the catcher. You don't get as stable, velocity and accuracy both diminish from what it could be.

Third dude looks to have some early hip rotation (can be seen clearly from 10:13-10:15) and not enough drive (he's taller than the other two but getting to about the same landing spot maybe less? Could be really tight, may need some flexibility stuff, or he may need a hot poker to his ass to get him to move a bit quicker [although on that mound he'd probably overshoot it so you're limited by the equipment you have) means this kid is all arming this thing + because he's not getting that whole drive into it means no flat back finish. Flat back finish allows for a little bit of velocity but it also allows the arm a greater arc of deceleration to disperse forces, which in theory should result in lower injuries.

Those are my thoughts. Best of luck!

Thanks for the input, everyone.

First pitcher:  Think I want to try to get his stride a little longer and try to keep his rotation more delayed.  I'd also like to get his front shoulder up and the back sholder and arm down; basically, get them more level.

Second pitcher:  get his leg lift and drive to the plate sped up and IN LINE.

Third pitcher:  Lengthen stride, but I like his mechanics otherwise....

Any thoughts on how to reinforce some of these things?  Will get them on a line to try to get the throwing straight and not off line....will work some towel drills to try to get their stride out.  How to keep the back arm LOWER?

here's my 2 cents (way overpriced):

1st guy: I just would like to see him get more out of his load, as he turns he just looks like he isn't getting stored energy into his shoulders and butt, so he can release that energy at foot-plant and arm swing.

Also, i'm distracted by what he's got going on with his glove hand... it's flopping, not tucking.  I like to show Phil Hughes on this mechanic, because he has little wasted motion and his glove hand is tucked and powerful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKy_jzWODcY  (I used to have some other good ones of Hughes, but did not find them 2nite)

#2- stepping across body like the other guys have mentioned.

#3 - I'm not so sure I'd mess with his stride length... I think he will throw strikes for you...

just my normal ramblings... glad to see you got 'em going ... have a great spring.