Pitching and college camps

IMHO...the shutdown period is sacred. Camps can be for pitchers also, but ask yourself this...

Do you want junior to show up in front of a bunch of prospective coaches while he's trying to shake the rust off? If you are interested in attending camps, and that's a subject onto itself, I would suggest the summer and early fall camps where Junior is in his routine.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Generally speaking the camps are primarily for pitchers. However, that doesn't change CPLZ's good advice.

Great point CPLZ!!!

With showcases going into November, college camps in December and baseball training for many high schools starting in January, when is a kid supposed to rest his arm? This thread brought up the thought. My son has access to great pitching training into January (a milb'er) when his high school coach expects him to start throwing.

Mine took fall ball season off and played football. Throwing the football kept his arm in good shape and he is now ready to start throwing again.

He is definitely shutdown for now especially with his junior year coming up. He wants to be in top shape for that important year but there must be a lot of kids that don't shutdown. He has responded to some of these invites that he would be visiting the campus sometime before spring, mostly without a response.

quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
With showcases going into November, college camps in December and baseball training for many high schools starting in January, when is a kid supposed to rest his arm?

Good question, this is where good planning needs to be done.
IMO, junior HS season, senior summer and possibly senior fall should be priority, everything else for pitchers IMO can have devastating results later on.

Regarding resting the arm for pitchers. With some research you could find out how the best pitchers in baseball went about this on their way to the top.

I tend to agree with the rest theory, but I haven't found any real proof as to what is best. All kinds of approaches have proven to fail and have proven to succeed.

Most Latin pitchers throw year around with very little rest as amateurs. There are and have been a lot of great Latin pitchers.

Checking our files on Zach Greinke while he was a junior and senior in HS... He not only pitched, but played in almost every game at 3B or SS. He pitched in the spring (HS), Summer (Travel Ball), Fall (Jupiter) and Winter (PG World Showcase) both of his last two years in HS. He even caught at the last World Showcase he attended. At that event, he popped a 1.85 at 83 mph velocity. Threw 90 across the infield and threw 94 from the mound, all in the middle of the winter. Then he pitched in HS, was drafted in the first round, and signed for something like $2.5 million in Marietta Georgia while playing in a summer WWBA tournament. A couple years later he was in the Big Leagues. This year at age 25 he enjoyed his best season and I hope he wins the Cy Young Award.

I only bring this up because it (Pitching/playing year around) didn't seem to slow him down. All people are different, maybe Greinke wouldn't have been as good as he is had he taken the mandatory rest period. Don't know, we only know how things turned out the way he went about it.

I would say that things turned out pretty well.

I have always been an advocate for rest periods for pitchers, and we have always shut my son down in the fall/winter. However I have found that the real recruiting period for HS players are the summers though fall of their Jr and Sr years. Because of this we have had to adjust my son’s throwing schedule for this year. (and next year) (He is a 2011) It is not ideal, but that is just the way it is and you have to adjust because this is the only period that college coaches are really able to focus on recruiting.

So for this year we shut him down in August for about 5-6 weeks and got him throwing again for the fall scout ball and other fall tournaments. He will continue to throw through the rest of the winter, abet at a lower level until HS season starts. Even though he will be the number 1 pitcher on his HS team his HS coach will ramp him up slowly and frankly his big work load won’t come until league games get going much later in the season so it should all work out.

BUM and some others here have had their sons throw all year with no problems so it is done as PG mentioned. Again I personally prefer the rest, but for my son at least we will just do this for his Jr and rising Sr years.

The other thing I have discovered in this process is that although HS baseball is important, performing well outside of HS during the recruiting periods are much more important than how you do in HS. A perfect example of this would be that it is much more important to make the Area Code team than anything he can do in HS. It is the same with the big tournaments and showcases. As TPM said you have to lay this all out in advance and plan accordingly.

I like hearing all the different thought processes on keeping arms in shape and injury free. I think the younger the player, the more important it is to have an extended rest period. For us, AAU basketball and HS football has filled in nicely. Patiot Son is a freshman and looking forward to a change before starting HS baseball. Last spring he started with a light Babe Ruth schedule (not much pitching) in April and played thru July. July through this past weekend has been with his CDP. HS Basketball will go until mid Feb. He will still workout and hit until HS baseball starts. Lots of activity, just very little throwing.

PG,
I referred that junior and senior years as being the most important, and I do beleive you confirmed that with Grienke's HS experience.
IMO, that is the most important time in the recruiting and draft process. These days we hear about pitchers doing more before that time, camps, showcases, tournies, when IMO not necessary, I am talking about pitching.
There is plenty more to come after the HS experience when it counts more, so I always suggest watch those younger years before it really counts.
Short shut down periods can work, but one has to know how to manage them, shutting down for two weeks doesn't mean you pick up the ball and pitch after 2 weeks rest, but I think that's understood by most of us but I'll bet that there are many who do not follow that, because they don't know or understand.

Management is the key and this can begin when a player shows promise as a pitcher by end of freshman or sophmore year in HS.

The reason I asked about resting is my son is considered a pitcher for the first time heading into his junior year. Starting in 8th grade he hasn't thrown from November into January. Before that baseball ended in August.

Until now he was a position player who pitched in relief. He relieved from thirteen to sixteen years old including high school last year. There wasn't an intent to showcase him as a pitcher. Now he's grown, his velocity and movement has improved a lot and offseason training with a pitching instructor is important this year.

I told him to talk to the pitching coach and his high school coach about not smoking his arm in the off season.

TPM,

I can honestly say... I've been involved with baseball for some 50 years and I really don't know what the right approach is. I've seen both ways succeed and I've seen both ways fail. I've also seen pitchers miss their entire junior season to injury, but they were already well known prospects and things worked out well for them.

You might know what the key is... but I do not, for sure! There are MLB organizations that have differing views. But I do know most people are in favor of some down time and I guess I am too.

I do know that if I'm in the medical profession I will always recommend "more" than enough down time. That's where you get into that risk and reward thing IMO.

I think that one of the keys if you do decide on down time is the manner in which you return to throwing. I also think the subject of this may have changed a bit.

Right now I am in a down time. I just needed a break form baseball mentally and to just be a Senior and enjoy it. I shut down after Jupiter and that was after pitching since January. I just needed a mind rest! I'll pick it up again in December when the fish quit biting.

I don't know what the key is, but you made a good point, no one wants to be a junior and have a major injury, though it may work for some, it only makes the process a bit more difficult for most.
To get to the OP's question, the camps are for everyone, but everyone has to decide what is best for them.
There's a lot more going on these days then when son was in HS, I admit, so I think it is important to have a plan, which includes the right places to be seen, not always every program that extends an invite to their camp.
FWIW, one good showing at the top WWBA tourney is worth a dozen camp showcases.

Every player is different. I encouraged my son to take some time off from throwing every year around Dec to early Jan for about 6 weeks. He hated it. The first time he shut down for 6 weeks he complained of arm soreness for the first time when he started throwing again. He worked out during this time and did alot of core work and bands. But he said his arm didnt feel right when he started throwing agian. The next year when he shut down the same thing happened. Finally I just let him do what he felt he needed to do. He would take about two weeks off from throwing after that. He has always said the more he throws the better his arm feels. He does not shut down anymore he long tosses year round. His arm has gotten stronger every year and continues to get stronger now.

I have coached kids that needed and wanted to shut down. I have coached kids that never did , loved to throw year round and never had an arm issue. I think it comes down to what the player feels best doing and how their own arm reacts.

Coach,
Do you think pitchers should continue pitching year round?
Shut down to me doesn't necessarily mean stop tossing, just pitching.
There are plenty of HS pitchers, I would imagine, who will continue to play different positions.

No I do not believe that guys should pitch year round. The HS season starts here in Feb and you better be in pitching shape when the season starts because you only get a couple of weeks and the games begin. That means you have to be throwing pens and preparing to pitch in Jan. The HS season ends in late May for most and early June for others. Then its off to the summer season and then the fall season which wraps up in early Nov. That leaves a couple of weeks in Nov and Dec to shut down from pitching.

The problem is there are camps , pitcher catcher showcase events etc during Dec and Jan. Players that are still trying to get on someones radar have to continue to throw in order to be in pitching shape for these events. And then before you know it its time to get ready for the HS season. At some point and time you have to decide when you are going to take a break from pitching and rest the arm from the pitching. You have to have a plan and you have to understand you can not do everything you may want to do.

Also guys get worn down during the year. Some throw alot of innings in HS and then go straight to the showcase team where they are trying to impress. Then straight out of the summer showcase season into the fall showcase season and top level events where they are tyring to impress. Sometimes you see guys in the summer and they are a shell of what they were in the spring. And if not in the summer by the fall they simply fall off.

And of course what are they doing during the week in between the weekend peformances? What are they doing when they take a break? Have a game plan and schedule your season. You have to have a game plan in my opinion. And you have to train properly and prepare properly. No one wants to turn down opportunities to compete and be seen. And it can be a tough decision at times to decide when to pass and when to rest etc. So put a plan down on paper and stick to it. And to me the most important thing is when you do shut down from pitching that does not mean you sit on your a__ you work at the things that will make you a better player while your resting your arm from the actual pitching.

I am by no means an expert, but I will say this. If you are going to pitch in the fall at the showcases, be in pitching shape to do it. This fall is really the first time my son had taken extended periods of time off from pitching and we did it sporadically.

We finished summer ball at the end of July. He took the whole month of August off, then took two weeks to prepare for a PG Showcase in mid-September. Summer team doesn't do much in the fall, so we thought we were pretty much done with pitching. Two weeks later, got a call from a team to pitch for them in Ft. Myers WWBA. Thought it would be a good opportunity, so took the next week and a half to prepare for that. Then started Sunday workouts with summer team. His arm got a little sore during a practice, so we took the week off and then he pitched 3 innings the next week. Wound up with an elbow issue. Currently taking a month off and doing some PT.

Like I said, this was the most time he has ever taken off from pitching and I believe that the start/stop issue effected his elbow. He only pitched a total of 11 2/3 innings all fall, but I think the problem was he was really not in "pitching shape" when he did it.

So, I guess my point is, I would not go out and do these things half-hearted. If you are going to do showcases and camps in the fall and winter, stay in pitching shape. If you take time off, make sure you work back into pitching shape same as getting ready for HS season. Especially as velocity increases. Son is just a sophmore, so hopefully his elbow issue will be resolved for HS season and will be ready for next summer and fall. But, I will tell you this, we will do things differently next fall to be ready and in "pitching shape" for next falls showcases and tournaments.

My son is doing a few pitching camps in December, then winter workouts start in January. He is not shutting down, just slowing down -- still doing long toss regularly and a bull pen about once a week.

Great Discussion here, and I am with PG and Coach May when they say that there is no 100% right answer for every Pitcher. Each guy is different.

That said, we have been taking our training and advice from Tom House and all the collaborative research of the NPA, AMSI, the Titleist Performance Institute, and now the RDRBI (USC). Coach House says that the research is supporting that the BEST answer is for Pitchers to shut down from Pitching for 4-6 weeks at a time, at least twice a year. This should be a time of Active Rest -- a time for training and conditioning, but not for throwing.

Every kid is different, but in our experience, the Active Rest periods definitely help. When my guy has had good Active Rest periods (at least 30 days) he has been at his best, and most consistnet.

My guy is a big, thick kid, who is not a "max effort" Pitcher. This year, he began throwing with HS training in Dec of last year, and played right through to the end of July. We planned for him to shut down from Aug 1 to Sept 15.

The big goal of the Fall was for him to get to Jupiter in October. In order to make that happen, he had to come back active in mid-August so he could compete for the team he ultimately went with (he was off for roughly 2-3 weeks). By the time he got to Jupiter, he was visibly tired. At best, he was about 70% of himself. Tired, but not hurting.

No complaints mind you. We knew what we were doing. We knew we risked him being a little worn down ... and he would not have missed the opportunity to compete in Jupiter for the world. This year, the goal was to get there. Next year, he will be sure to have his late summer rest period.

He shut down as soon a Jupiter ended, and will not start throwing again in earnest until the first of the year. No holiday camps this year, as he is a Junior, and we want to make sure he is rested before starting the Junior Campaign.

For what it's worth.

Really good topic and discussion. We struggled with this all the way through HS. As many point out, it is different for each player. You have to know your player.

When we tried shutting down in the fall I still found my son out throwing. He told me "I just can't stop". "It does not feel right without throwing". We did take the edge off and stopped pitching for up to 3 or 4 wks at a time. Some time management as TPM referred to, I guess.

We did the fall and winter camps. These proved very successful for my son. But as mentioned by others, you MUST be ready to pitch when you go to the camp(s). We preferred the winter camps because they were less crowded. Summer camps have a ton of kids in attendance. I remember watching my son break a 3-2 count curve ball for a called strike with ambient temperature around freezing. The coach liked watching that as much as I did. We went freshman, sophomore and junior years. This resulted in early offers in junior year from his top choices for schools. He did not have to worry about camps from summer before and through senior year.

While many things count in the recruiting process, camp attendance is number one in my book.

I like the idea of a short shutdown period in August that seems to make sense. You can then be ready for the big tournaments and showcases in Oct and Nov. I guess it also depends on were you are in the recruiting process. As my son is a junior, we were planning for him to be ready for next summer/fall.

It would be nice to have a decision by November next year and not have to worry about the winter camps/showcases but that got me wondering if it was a good idea to pass them up this year.His HS gets started in Jan with pitching workouts and if he went to Fl(Dec/Jan) he would have to be throwing through December leaving no or little time off to do strength training etc.

I agree, this is a great thread for pitchers who are thinking about college. I did not understand it until this year, and we (sort of) planned accordingly. (Son is a Jr) Now that I have experienced it, I believe you need to focus on these events MORE than HS ball. I would do the USA 16U again, and the Area Code tryouts are a must. If you don’t make the Area Code team then shut down and if you do keep throwing until they are over with. Shut down after this, which seems weird but makes sense when college coaches are doing much of their recruiting at the WWB early fall tournaments and Arizona Fall Classic tournaments. (at least out here on the west coast)

BTW PG the Tucson tournament is going to be HUGE in the future and dovetails nicely with the Az Fall Classic tournament.

A couple of his target schools wanted to see him this winter so we will do two winter camps and he will continue to throw up until the HS season start. Not real heavy maybe 3x / week LT and one bullpen.

I am going to stress to his HS coach to really take it easy on him in the early season. Get in short but high quality outings, 40 pitches max early on and a 90 pitch count drop-dead later in league. He and my son are not going to like it, but when you add in the extra load from the fall events you have to take it from somewhere else.

We will do this for only 1 or maybe 2 years. After the recruiting is done then back to his 3 month shut down. I would also not do any of this for a Fr/Soph again, no point in spending the money and putting the additional stress on their body.

BOF's comments made me think of something I (and others) have posted in other places.

The NPA (and others) recommend that a youth Pitcher have a maximum cumulative Pitch count of Age x 100 per year (16 years x 100 = 1,600 Competitive Pitches). This includes the pitches thrown in pre-season scrimmages, HS ball, Summer ball, showcases, etc.

50 pitches per outting, equals 32 appearances
70 pitches per outting, equals 23 appearances

Think about this as you put together your player's competitive & showcase schedule.