I have coached highschool aged baseball for 11 years now and haved helped with a few travel teams at younger ages. As a highschool pitcher I was clocked in the low 90's before screwing up my arm playing catcher in a intersquad game and damaging connective tissue at the clavicle and sternum juncture by trying to catch a foul tip thus effectively ending my playing days way back in the day.
Last fall I was working with two pitchers, one formerly from Wichita State and the other previously from Northern Oklahoma College. The young man from WSU had thrown in the mid 90's range and the NOC player threw in the mid 80's. The young man from NOC was a good size kid 5'11" by 220 the kid from WSU about 6'1" and 175. Based on sheer strength it appeared that the young man from NOC should have been throwing in the 90+ range. I noticed what appeared to be faster rotation in the WSU player. I reached the conclusion that the reason for the difference in velocity between the two was a direct result of the WSU player having his stride foot down before his throwing arm went into the **** phase of his delivery. The NOC player appeared to have his throwing arm allready starting into the **** phase before his stride foot was down. This also IMO began to open his hips early and probably resulted in a loss of velocity. When we went through various load drills he seemed to do them fine. Once on the hill he seemed to get away from them and revert back to doing what I described earlier. Does anyone have any methods or ideas to keep a player from rushing at this point?
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