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Throwing a baseball overhand is hard on the arm/shoulder/elbow regardless of the pitches you thow. It is generally recommended for youth pitchers to stick with FB's, CU's and CB's. Stay away from Sliders and Fork/Split finger balls until you get in college or beyond. Work on your mechanics, strength and conditioning and developing a good fastball first as this is key to the next level. 

Originally Posted by JaxJacobRoberts:

my fastball now sits around 80 and tops at 85 would you think that thats a good basis to get started with a fork or do you recommend working on my fastball a little more?

 

Not that a good forkball isn’t a great pitch, but why is it that you believe it’s the most logical pitch for you to add to your repertoire than some other pitch, or that perhaps you should work on some other pitch you already throw to make it top level?  

Read his post Stats. He asked if it was safe, not if it was good, it's not advisable for youth pitchers.

 

His fastball is below average and his FB will likely not get good HS hitters out. Work on the FB. What happens with many younger pitchers is that they develop a pitch that gets younger more inexperienced hitters out and stay with it instead of working on what they should be to get higher level hitters out. My advice is to can the fork ball. Go to drivelinebaseball.com and look around at what his kids are doing. You don't see him teaching kids forkballs. They are working on getting bigger, stronger, mechanics and developing their FB's. That's what you should be doing JJR. 

Originally Posted by BOF:

Read his post Stats. He asked if it was safe, not if it was good, it's not advisable for youth pitchers.

 

His fastball is below average and his FB will likely not get good HS hitters out. Work on the FB. What happens with many younger pitchers is that they develop a pitch that gets younger more inexperienced hitters out and stay with it instead of working on what they should be to get higher level hitters out. My advice is to can the fork ball. Go to drivelinebaseball.com and look around at what his kids are doing. You don't see him teaching kids forkballs. They are working on getting bigger, stronger, mechanics and developing their FB's. That's what you should be doing JJR. 

 

?????

 

The OP was asking about how “safe” it was to throw. I was responding to his 2nd and 3rd posts where it sure seemed obvious to me that he was already throwing it and seemed pleased with it. I wasn’t judging him in relation to all the other pitchers in the world, but trying to get at what he was really trying to find out.

 

I don’t like to judge the way you did because I’ve never seen him throw the thing. A lot of people confuse a true Elroy Face forkball with a change or a splitter. So it may be that what he’s throwing is more “dangerous” than other pitches, but I don’t think anything is to be gained by forcing pitchers to be clones.

 

Do you get paid by drivelinebaseball to shill for them?

Sounds like a true forkball.  Let me ask you this ... Does the pitch get batters out because of the downward movement or the speed of the ball?  I'm sure it's both but if the speed is what is getting the batters out, you can try moving your fingers a little bit higher (still apart but on the top half of the ball instead of cutting the ball in half) and most importantly, put your thumb on the side of the ball instead of underneath.  Doing both often will give you the same type of movement and slow down the ball as well.  If you get a lot of batters out because of sharp downward movement then there really isn't much incentive to stop throwing it the way you are. In that case, it becomes an out pitch that you bring out when needed.

Be careful and best of luck!

 

www.BaseballByTheYard.com

 

 

Last edited by meachrm

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