Pitch Speed

There are two good speeds to pitch a baseball: below hitting speed and above hitting speed.

The first one to 90 wins.

I have heard BOF state this before about radar readings for kids this age and younger. Take what they and their parents think and drop about 5 mph and you are pretty close.

Just got back from 14U WWBA event and this statement could not had held more true. My son and all his teammates were exactly about 5 mph less than what I thought they were going in.

Most working low 70s and topping at 75. I would say that I saw way more kids working under 70 than over 80 and these were some of the top club/travel teams in the country.

The fastest way to increase your son's velocity is post it online.

what was that line?

all my pitchers throw 90....then we go to the bullpen.

kind of got a kick out of it.

quote:

Originally posted by nolan ryan:

The low high was 63. This was a kid who pitched against us on the last day. We were 3-0 and absolutely pounded the other pitchers. Something like 50 hits in 3 games. We could not hit this kid and lost 6-3 and had maybe 4 hits. I guess speed isn’t everything, but it’s one thing that will get you noticed.

I always call these pitchers the teams "secret weapon". On the college and pro level, for those that see 90's and up regularly, a slower pitch speed really can do damage to hitters. For the better hitters, after they see him 2 or 3 times they can do damage.
I am going to refer to a pitcher I know of in an organization that is just so accurate it's amazing, he gets people out, slower FB speed however, he doesn't get as many opportunities as others that throw harder and not as accurate. The rules do change for LHP.

This may not have anything to do with your original intent of the post. But the bottom line is that SPEED (FB) counts and there is no getting around it to say otherwise.

JMO.

Backstopdad,

Actually it is one of the HSBBW theorems.

“A pitchers actual velocity is exactly his dads velocity estimation minus 7 MPH”.

Fondly called the “ask dad and subtract 7” rule. You will be shocked how accurate it is.

Those numbers don’t surprise me too much. It was my experience (in SoCal) that the harder HS throwing freshmen are around 75-78MPH. Of course you get the wonder boys occasionally who are in the 80’s but most are 68-75MPH. Some short arm action max effort kids look like they are throwing a lot harder than they actually are and taller long arm action kids are actually faster than they look. Unfortunately radar guns are part of the recruiting equation.

Coach May has posted over the years examples of his kids coming in to HS at 80 and leaving at 82, and others coming in at 72 and leaving at 90+.

It is where you finish that matters not where you start.

Just for the record, not EVERY dad pumps up the velocity number. I never have and I'm sure that those of you making the comments have not done it. I just think, when a parent says how fast their kid is throwing, ask how they know that. Anything other than a Stalker or Jugs, I wouldn't consider accurate. If they say someone told them, forget it. I have been watching pitchers for a long time and still can't judge speed that accurately.

I just hear all the time, ask dad and subtract 7, and it bugs me for those of us who don't do that.

My kid has been throwing well over 100 since adding a cesta to his repertoire

this is a fun topic. just for comparison sake, a kid at this past week's PG 15u wwba hit 94. yes 94 mph as reported by PG. dont know how accurate he was but his team did make it to the finals. interesting enough they were run ruled in the championship game. oh well. it had to be fun watching a 15 yo throw 94. i think it said he was sitting 88-91. pretty impressive.

Its very rare for a parent to be totally honest with their son's velo early on. As the parent mature's in this process usually they start to become more honest with the comments. Sometimes they never do. If they only understood that they were hurting their kid instead of helping him I am sure they would either stop saying anything or they would err on the lower end of estimation.

When you tell someone that your kid throws upper 80's and touches 90 and then someone comes to see him and he is mid 80's touching upper 80's what happens? You didn't see what you were all hyped up to see so your let down. If you get what you expect to get you appreciate what you are seeing. In other words if the parent is honest and tells you his kid is mid 80's and touches upper 80's and he does indeed deliver that, your impressed. You were looking for something and you got what you were expecting.

Even though in both scenarios you got mid 80's touching upper 80's in one situation you were let down and in the other you were not. Some people think and this includes some HS coaches that they are helping kids get looks by hypeing kids. But when you set kids up for failure and that failure means putting them in a situation where they can not deliver what you said they could that is simply wrong.

Heck I have told coaches a kid was low 80's but could pitch. Coaches would come and say "Dang coach we got no shot at this kid. He was way better than you said he was." I would much rather err on the side of caution and pleasantly surprise someone than put a kid in a situation where he simply could not live up to expectations.

quote:

Originally posted by Coach_May:
Its very rare for a parent to be totally honest with their son's velo early on. As the parent mature's in this process usually they start to become more honest with the comments. Sometimes they never do. If they only understood that they were hurting their kid instead of helping him I am sure they would either stop saying anything or they would err on the lower end of estimation.

When you tell someone that your kid throws upper 80's and touches 90 and then someone comes to see him and he is mid 80's touching upper 80's what happens? You didn't see what you were all hyped up to see so your let down. If you get what you expect to get you appreciate what you are seeing. In other words if the parent is honest and tells you his kid is mid 80's and touches upper 80's and he does indeed deliver that, your impressed. You were looking for something and you got what you were expecting.

Even though in both scenarios you got mid 80's touching upper 80's in one situation you were let down and in the other you were not. Some people think and this includes some HS coaches that they are helping kids get looks by hypeing kids. But when you set kids up for failure and that failure means putting them in a situation where they can not deliver what you said they could that is simply wrong.

Heck I have told coaches a kid was low 80's but could pitch. Coaches would come and say "Dang coach we got no shot at this kid. He was way better than you said he was." I would much rather err on the side of caution and pleasantly surprise someone than put a kid in a situation where he simply could not live up to expectations.

Agreed. Good post, as usual coach.

quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
The fastest way to increase your son's velocity is post it online.

RJM, I am LMFAO. Too funny.

A couple of years ago my son and his teammate were invited to participate in a large event in a northern state dome. I won't name it specifically so as to not brag!

Anyway, his teammate is a pitcher. After he did some of his work he came and sat with us in the stands. His eyes were wide and he said "Dad, you won't believe it. Every guy in the dugout says they throw in the mid to upper 90s!"

Throughout the two day event, I saw one 90 show up on the scoreboard and that was it.

I've learned recently how easy it is to convince yourself how great you are simply by repeating over and over how great you are.

Put up or shut up.

quote:

Originally posted by biggerpapi:
Every guy in the dugout says they throw in the mid to upper 90s!"

Yea, somewhat related, I noticed that almost every starter in the CWS was cruising at 87-89.

I only know two scouts very well. Mr stalker and mr juggs. A lot of people don't like them for some odd reason.

quote:

Originally posted by younggun:
this is a fun topic. just for comparison sake, a kid at this past week's PG 15u wwba hit 94. yes 94 mph as reported by PG. dont know how accurate he was but his team did make it to the finals. interesting enough they were run ruled in the championship game. oh well. it had to be fun watching a 15 yo throw 94. i think it said he was sitting 88-91. pretty impressive.

I was at the game with my Jugs gun and his last pitch rang up 95 from directly behind the plate not up in the press box at Kell High School. Fun to watch this kid explode to the plate.

quote:

Originally posted by younggun:
this is a fun topic. just for comparison sake, a kid at this past week's PG 15u wwba hit 94. yes 94 mph as reported by PG. dont know how accurate he was but his team did make it to the finals. interesting enough they were run ruled in the championship game. oh well. it had to be fun watching a 15 yo throw 94. i think it said he was sitting 88-91. pretty impressive.

We had a fifteen year old hitting 90. He hit 90 anywhere between the pipes supporting the backstop. He reminded me of the movie Bull Durham where the pitcher hit the Bull warming up. When I lost track of the kid junior year he still couldn't throw strikes.

I took my kid to Canada so he could cruise well over 100. 100 kph. (100 kph = 62 mph)

My son saw his first ever 90 mph pitcher (16 year old will be a Jr next year) earlier this afternoon. He hit it exactly one time, but managed 89 multiple times and lived in the 85-87 range with a 72 mph curve ball. Like the OP described, this was at showcase on a Div One university campus with the mph on the scoreboard. My son managed his 15u team's only hit on a ten pitch at bat in the 4th. He's seen 4-5 low 80s guys this year, but never anyone this fast. It was fun to watch although his team did end up getting beat pretty soundly.

Always the doubters.

Beside the speed gun, would a video camera be useful to estimate the average speed from mound to home plate? Top speed would be a few miles added to the average speed.

I think its hard to calculate that accurately because its difficult to get the exact elapsed time from the camera. However, long toss distance is a good surrogate for the gun. There is a chart out there somewhere that compares distance thrown to ball speed at release.

.

I think here's the gadget that will provide what you're looking for. Fairly accurate, cupholders extra.



.

Leftyshortshop, with a video camera that has 30fps or more, one could analyze frame by frame where the ball is from mound to home plate. The elapsed time could be then calculated based on the frames and the speed of the video. For example, with a 30fps video camera, if it takes 15 frames for the ball to travel, the elapsed time is 0.5s. Not many people have a reaction time of 0.5s or less.

quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
We had a fifteen year old hitting 90. He hit 90 anywhere between the pipes supporting the backstop. He reminded me of the movie Bull Durham where the pitcher hit the Bull warming up. When I lost track of the kid junior year he still couldn't throw strikes.

Over the years Ive run into a few of these players....raw hard throwers.....but not pitchers....

One in particular would be trotted out when the team had a big lead, and he would proceed to blister the backstop with fastballs...walk a bunch of hitters.....and hit the rest of them....then would get pulled.....

But oh my... once in a blue moon, he would find the right release point (totally by accident) and the resulting pitch was a thing of beauty.........

problem was he never could duplicate it.......by senior year he was playing football only.....

.

"...by senior year he was playing football only."

And blistering the backfield.



.

quote:

Just for the record, not EVERY dad pumps up the velocity number. I never have and I'm sure that those of you making the comments have not done it. I just think, when a parent says how fast their kid is throwing, ask how they know that. Anything other than a Stalker or Jugs, I wouldn't consider accurate. If they say someone told them, forget it. I have been watching pitchers for a long time and still can't judge speed that accurately.

I just hear all the time, ask dad and subtract 7, and it bugs me for those of us who don't do that.

Agreed, it's real hard to judge the speed objectively and accurately. Even the Stalker or Jugs, it needs to be calibrated once a while. Last year, I was standing next to coach with a speed gun when he was timing potential pitchers for all stars. I noted to him that, hey, these two pitchers could touch ***x speed on a specific throw. His reply was along the line, you have to be careful, the gun is not always accurate, sometime it time the wrong stuff. Another experience, I was at a MLB game rooting for my home team. The pitcher threw a breaking ball, I looked up the score board and it was timed at 100mph. I told my kid next to me, look a breaking ball at 100mph. He kind of smile back at me.

quote:

Originally posted by Coach_May:
Its very rare for a parent to be totally honest with their son's velo early on. As the parent mature's in this process usually they start to become more honest with the comments. Sometimes they never do. If they only understood that they were hurting their kid instead of helping him I am sure they would either stop saying anything or they would err on the lower end of estimation.

When you tell someone that your kid throws upper 80's and touches 90 and then someone comes to see him and he is mid 80's touching upper 80's what happens? You didn't see what you were all hyped up to see so your let down. If you get what you expect to get you appreciate what you are seeing. In other words if the parent is honest and tells you his kid is mid 80's and touches upper 80's and he does indeed deliver that, your impressed. You were looking for something and you got what you were expecting.

Even though in both scenarios you got mid 80's touching upper 80's in one situation you were let down and in the other you were not. Some people think and this includes some HS coaches that they are helping kids get looks by hypeing kids. But when you set kids up for failure and that failure means putting them in a situation where they can not deliver what you said they could that is simply wrong.

Heck I have told coaches a kid was low 80's but could pitch. Coaches would come and say "Dang coach we got no shot at this kid. He was way better than you said he was." I would much rather err on the side of caution and pleasantly surprise someone than put a kid in a situation where he simply could not live up to expectations.

Coach May seems to have great insightful posts
Just today we received a call from a college coach that wanted to speak to my son. he wasn't home at the time, and I preceded to get the name and number so that he could call him back when he got home. Anyway, as we chatted a little he said that he had seen him at a showcase and while his velocity was down they still had interest. It seemed a little strange to me, maybe he was told that he threw harder by someone else. I don't know. He is a mid 80's LHP and has been cruising 83-84. That's where he is right now. Still not sure if he was trying to test me or not. I'm just glad I told him what I knew as the truth without embellishing. And then I read this post...LOL

Son's team played the 15 u version of the team that they lost to on Sunday. The 15u team threw three pitchers at them. The first was a consistent 78, the second cruised at 80/81 and the third at 81-83. My son's team's pitcher hit 73, but was around 68-69 the majority of the time. But he kept the ball low and off the center of the plate and he got a 90 pitch complete game win. Velocity is absolutely important, but so is being able to ptch.

KC Dawg, this is a consistent theme whenever velocity is brought up, like the concepts are mutually exclusive. The general idea of these posts is that kids with velocity don't have command.

Wrong. The kids at the upper echelons absolutely do have command.

If you've got plus velocity they'll teach you command. If you don't have velocity, you might as well take up bowling because you can have all the command in the world and still they won't want you.

Bum, Maybe I need to check my writing skills, but I'm pretty sure I started my last sentence "Velocity is absolutely important..." I'm not sure how you could infer that I didn't think that kids who throw hard can have control. In fact, the first thing I posted in this thread was about a 16 year old who could hit 90 and cruised 87-89 with a 72 mph curve. I don't think I said anything about his control directly, but I think it was implied that he had good control based on the fact the he threw a one hitter and his team won handily.

I have seen the importance of velocity more so than ever this year. My son has always been a successful pitcher at the lower levels. He's never been overly fast, but he's been very effective by hitting his spots, keeping the ball low and changing speeds. The 15u team that he is playing on this year is very aggressive in it's scheduling. So far they've only played 16 and 18u tournaments along with three showcases against both 15 and 16u Elite teams. While he has had some success this year, he's also been hit hard a number of times. What's more, while he used to be able to throw five innings - if not a complete game - every time he went out, now he can usually only make it through the lineup once before they figure him out.

The big reason- velocity. He can get two strikes, but struggles to get the last one. The batters just shorten their swings and foul off good pitches until he makes a mistake. It's been an eye opener for him, and made him question himself some, but then he has a great game and he gets the pitching bug all over. Luckily, he's still got some growing to do and it shouldn't be too hard to add some weight to his 120 pounds. On the bright side, he's been absolutely murdering the ball at the plate so he's made some other pitchers suffer right along with him.

So, just to reiterate what I said before, velocity is absolutely important... But so is control. On Sunday our low velocity guy had more control and made better pitches than their 3 higher velocity guys. Could he do it every time out? Absolutely not. Did he manage it that day? He certainly did.

quote:

Originally posted by KC Dawg:

He can get two strikes, but struggles to get the last one. The batters just shorten their swings and foul off good pitches until he makes a mistake.

As a fellow "soft-tosser", I will tell you that the goal should not be to make a hitter swing and miss. The goal should be to make a hitter slow his bat down. Hitting is timing, and pitching is offsetting that timing. While Bum is right that velocity is extremely important, it does not make you a good pitcher alone. At the higher levels you play (as you said with your son), the more evident it becomes that a good ole' country hard fastball is just what they're looking for.

JH, you are absolutely correct in what you say. While I said "get the third strike," I really meant get the out. He's never been a strikeout pitcher, although he would usually pull 3 or 4 a game. He was much more successful inducing ground balls.

Last year at the 14u AAA State Championship he threw 5 pitches in a row over two innings and got 5 ground ball outs. This year, against older hitters and more elite teams, he still gets a ton of grounders, but a lot of these hitters just let the good pitches go until they get a full count and then they foul it off until they get pitch they want. He pitches well, but just can't manage to get he out.

I believe that part of it is that he's stopped throwing his change up. It used to be his best pitch and he would throw it in any situation. But now it seems he's afraid the throw it very often- an 18 year old man with a beard put one off the wall in an early tournament - and his catcher never calls it. Instead, it's just a mixture of his 68-70 mph fastball and a mediocre curve. Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated.

Any young pitcher needs to learn first how to compete with his fastball. As I have said in the past, be obsessed with velocity, it is not the show but the key to the show.

Without a dominant fastball, all is for naught. Work on the fastball, you can learn how to pitch backwards later.

If you think your kid is going to the next level the opposite way, throwing junk and getting the fastball later, well, it just doesn't work that way.

Bum is 100% correct.

KC Dawg - Having a son about the same age and in about the same position, I share your frustrations. I do agree with BUM and TPM, you have to really think about what they are saying.

EX: Jr pitched for a 16U team this last weekend. Went 2 1/3 innings. First two innings were fine. Once the lineup came back around, well - he started getting shelled by the bigger kids. With increased velo he probably would have lasted a little longer.

Focus on the mechanics and find a good pitching coach - so far that has worked well for us.

quote:

Originally posted by leftyshortstop:

However, long toss distance is a good surrogate for the gun.There is a chart out there somewhere that compares distance thrown to ball speed at release.

I've never heard of this formula and would very much like to see this with my own eyes.

KC Dawg, it sounds to me like your son is figuring out "how" to pitch instead of getting up on the mound and slinging the ball. Good for him. Sounds to me like he's gonna be one heckuva pitcher one day. Facing older, more mature batters will increase that learning but nothing like a crash course to learn and be better at your craft. I liked your statement about getting the "pitching bug".

I have a small plaque on my desk that reads "I hate golf, I hate golf. NICE SHOT. I love golf! I love golf!"

YGD

Guys, I'm not disagreeing with any of you. I totally see and understand the importance of velocity. Toward that end KCDawgJr does core workouts, long tosses regularly, drinks protein shakes and works out with a pitching coach. It's not his mechanics that are in question, rather it's his size and strength. He's 5 foot 8' with a slim build and weighs 120 pounds soaking wet. At this point he is getting most of the available velocity out of his body.

To get to HIS next level, whatever that may be, he has to build some size and strength. But while he's doing that, he doesn't plan to stop pitching. And while he has a good fastball- lots of movement and actually cuts away from right handers - that alone is not enough to get elite 16, 17 and 18 year old hitters out. Baseballdad2016 I think you have it exactly right- 2 1/3 innings is the length of his effectiveness his last two starts.

But he wants to go longer. He wants to compete now. To do so, it means he's going to have to throw off speed more. He's going to have to live on the outside of the plate, keep the ball down, and throw his change up and curve for strikes. It doesn't mean that he's going to stop working on increasing his fastball velocity. Heck, he'll still throw it a lot more than the other two pitches combined. But throwing more curves or change ups in the 4 innings a week that he pitches will not have a negative impact on his baseball future...should he even have one.