Tom House

11:20 is where he plugs his online training system. Is that what you meant to highlight?

Also, looks like he has Parkinson's syndrome, which is very sad.

@SpeedDemon posted:

11:20 is where he plugs his online training system. Is that what you meant to highlight?

Also, looks like he has Parkinson's syndrome, which is very sad.

Actually he talks about that before then. It's where Eisen ask about his son throwing a curve.

His training system? The one that lets a parent use their phone to record their player, upload it to the cloud, and gain access to some of the same metrics professional athletes are paying 10's of thousands of dollars for. What person in their right mind would be interested in that?

@SomeBaseballDad posted:

His training system? The one that lets a parent use their phone to record their player, upload it to the cloud, and gain access to some of the same metrics professional athletes are paying 10's of thousands of dollars for. What person in their right mind would be interested in that?

Why the hostile attitude?

I just asked a question.

jeez

@SpeedDemon posted:

11:20 is where he plugs his online training system. Is that what you meant to highlight?

Also, looks like he has Parkinson's syndrome, which is very sad.

I believe the Parkinson's is a big reason for the creation of the Mustard app. My son's pitching coach is a House guy. He said that House wanted to be able to have some type of way he could still contribute to development of pitchers if his condition started to deteriorate and he was not able to coach anymore. I think that is pretty cool that he was thinking that far ahead about his contribution to coaching.

@ARCEKU21 posted:

I believe the Parkinson's is a big reason for the creation of the Mustard app. My son's pitching coach is a House guy. He said that House wanted to be able to have some type of way he could still contribute to development of pitchers if his condition started to deteriorate and he was not able to coach anymore. I think that is pretty cool that he was thinking that far ahead about his contribution to coaching.

Oh that is great. What a great man.

I won’t pretend to know Tom, but I’ve talked to him on a couple occasions and I think he’s a hell of a nice person.

I credit him with starting my son down the right path for nutrition, eliminating all soft drinks and understanding the importance of arm care, warm-up, and tactics for recovery. He inspired my son with a passion to understand the dynamics and technical aspects of what continues to be his job.

Trev started meeting with Tom as a HS junior and attended his seminars when he was in the Houston area. Everything his said about his future velocity capability off the mound happened. Tom seems to elicit some passionate opinions in both directions, but he was nothing but great for my son’s baseball life.

Here's vid of Trev with Tom as juco freshman:

I also don’t know Tom House. But I do follow him on Twitter and try to read all his content. I don’t agree with everything he says, but overall I think his information is excellent. He makes information available for free for his love of the game - not for profit. He is setting an example that I would like to see more people take.

Jack Murphy Stadium 1997, we had 14 Area Code teams in San Diego and for our 1st day the Padres offered the use of Jack Murphy Stadium for our 3 hour clinic. Tom House indicated he would organize the "pitching clinic" in the Left field area for 140 AC pitchers. The final report was the clinic was outstanding!

Our hitting clinics, fielding, and base running were placed at other parts of the Stadium. What no one knew was the conversation that I had with Reggie Waller the Padres Scouting Director at 8 am.

"Bob", Reggie said, everything is set for the clinic 10 am to 1 PM, however at noon the players need to depart the field. Why, I remarked to Reggie?

The Navy Seals have to "fly over". I said to "Reggie tell no one".

At noon, a flare was fired and from the sky were 30 black parachutes floating to the Stadium outfield.

"true story" Tom House & 300 scouts remember.

BOB

I can't imagine a thread going more off the rails than this one has. The reason I posted was because Eisen asked about his son throwing a curve, and House saying that's OK.

@SomeBaseballDad posted:

I can't imagine a thread going more off the rails than this one has. The reason I posted was because Eisen asked about his son throwing a curve, and House saying that's OK.

Why don't you post the correct time stamp for the content you want people to read instead of insulting everyone?

Not our fault that you weren't able to get your point across.

For the first half of his summer following his freshman year in college, my son served as an instructor-intern at Tom's camps in San Diego. The invitation had come after he'd attended one of Tom's camps the summer before that.

I credit Tom for sparking my son's passion for continuous learning about the art and science of pitching; along with a corresponding desire to pass everything he knows along to those who would benefit from it.

@SpeedDemon posted:

Why don't you post the correct time stamp for the content you want people to read instead of insulting everyone?

Not our fault that you weren't able to get your point across.

So you feel personally insulted because I thought this thread went off the rails. I mean I don't really care that it did, I try not to concern my self with first world problems.

As for the time stamp, didn't think I had to be exact. This being a baseball forum I thought the talk of kids and curve balls would grab everyone's attention. My bad I guess.

@Prepster posted:

For the first half of his summer following his freshman year in college, my son served as an instructor-intern at Tom's camps in San Diego. The invitation had come after he'd attended one of Tom's camps the summer before that.

I credit Tom for sparking my son's passion for continuous learning about the art and science of pitching; along with a corresponding desire to pass everything he knows along to those who would benefit from it.

I love this post. Pitching IS a combination of art and science and great coaches know this. However, a lot of instructors only focus on the science. Especially those that never played the game at a high level. And even within the science component of pitching there is often disagreement about the best way to physically perform the kinetic movements that are involved with delivering a pitch. And there are new ways to measure spin and movement being introduced every day it seems. There is much focus on science that the art part tends to be ignored by a lot of so called experts. And as we all should have learned by now, science is not pure. It is often manipulated to push a narrative.  But pitching is a very creative endeavor and the art is every bit as important. The best instructors spend a lot of time on it. But I don’t know how you can teach art if you aren’t an artist yourself. Or used to be. That’s why I love what Tom House is doing. He is uniquely qualified to publish content about pitching and much of his information is free. It’s no coincidence that Tom House has had a big influence on son of Prepster. Successful young coaches are always influenced by old guys that have been around the game forever. It’s part of the the beauty and timeless nature of the game.

To bring this to SBD's point, is it science or art that can tell us whether pitching curveballs at a young age is bad or not?  House (at 6:50 on the video) says a curveball thrown properly is ok.  The way he talks, he seems to be basing that on science.

@SomeBaseballDad posted:

So you feel personally insulted because I thought this thread went off the rails. I mean I don't really care that it did, I try not to concern my self with first world problems.

As for the time stamp, didn't think I had to be exact. This being a baseball forum I thought the talk of kids and curve balls would grab everyone's attention. My bad I guess.

LOL. 11:20 is pretty exact.

Why would you write that if you weren't trying to lead people to a specific location?

Why not just post the correct time stamp?

@anotherparent posted:

To bring this to SBD's point, is it science or art that can tell us whether pitching curveballs at a young age is bad or not?  House (at 6:50 on the video) says a curveball thrown properly is ok.  The way he talks, he seems to be basing that on science.

House is correct that a curve ball thrown properly is okay to teach. Taught properly, the breaking ball is a fastball thrown with a different grip and a different hand position at release of the ball. That’s all there is to it. The arm action is exactly the same. Problems arise for young pitchers when they aren’t taught good throwing mechanics at the very beginning. Those problems compound if they are also not taught the proper way to throw breaking balls. The inevitable arm injury that follows is always blamed on throwing breaking balls too soon. But there is often more to it than that.

I agree with the above post.

Not all pitchers throw curveballs. Some rely on sliders. For some it's one or the other, for some its both (but not often) and depends on the pitcher being a righty or lefty,  velocity, arm side run, etc.

My husband would not allow son to throw a breaking ball when he played youth BB. Rather, he encouraged  development of his FB, change up and 2 seam FB.

@TPM posted:

I agree with the above post.

Not all pitchers throw curveballs. Some rely on sliders. For some it's one or the other, for some its both (but not often) and depends on the pitcher being a righty or lefty,  velocity, arm side run, etc.

My husband would not allow son to throw a breaking ball when he played youth BB. Rather, he encouraged  development of his FB, change up and 2 seam FB.

I had the same policy as your husband when I coached youth baseball 20 years ago.

I've had more than one person, in the youth baseball industry (travel programs), tell us as  parents that them teaching our kids a curve-ball is safe as long as you teach it right,  then go off and show you a cutter or slider during the demonstration or call it a "karate chop" curve.  They just know if they can teach a kid to throw a pitch that does something, they'll win more games because most youth don't know how to hit it no matter how bad it is.  The first time I heard that was at 11u.

The only issue as far as potential harm is probably based on the kids over manipulating the pitch for the right spin direction by forcing their arm to remain in supination through the follow through and not allow the forearm and wrist to pronate as would happen naturally after release of the ball.  The old pulling down the window shade analogy gone wrong comes to mind.   I'm also betting the youth arm issue is really, if a kid has a curve, he's probably considered a pitcher first,  position player second,  and is over used.

I prefer it not be taught for one major reason, I wouldn't want my son thinking he's "all that" throwing a looping gravity ball that kids dive out of the way of, and the umpire calls a strike cause it lands somewhere near the catchers glove.  I'd rather have him learn to locate and change speeds and manipulate the fastball with finger pressure.   At the youth 14 and under level I really consider a curve a trick pitch and not conducive to developing a pitcher.

I do get a little amusement from seeing a kid's face when he throws that to someone who knows how to hit it,  you can just see the wheels spinning, "but, but, nobody can hit my curve"

OH, Tom House,  I used to like his contributions, but I ended up blocking him from my twitter feed because of sheer volume and the click bait-ie nature of his tweets over the past year.

I don't know if I buy the whole "youth curveball" caused my kid to have TJ at 14..... Is there real evidence that the motion for CBs are more stressful than FBs??

It just always sounded like a parental cop out to me. From my experience, it's much more likely little Johnny threw at least 20 to 40 pitches on Saturday, then turned around and threw an additional 80 to 100 pitches on Sunday (by the way, all these pitches were at MAX effort). He did this almost every weekend over a 40 to 60 game season at the ages of 8, 9, 10, 11,  12, 13, 14, then pop goes his elbow. And by the way as a former youth travel ball dad/coach by default, that scenario is on the very minimal side of things. Heck the most I've seen is a little over 200 pitches in a weekend. That kid threw 140ish against us in the championship game (he had closed every game that weekend).

My belief is that the combination of overuse and % of max effort pitches thrown is much more correlated to youth arm injuries then the age at which CBs are first thrown. May I'm wrong, but if a major league pitcher doesn't do it, what on earth makes you think a 10 year can?

There have been studies on elbow stresses by pitch.  And I see people reading the wrong things in them.  By most accounts a fastball puts more stress on the elbow than curveballs do. (Now keep reading).  But the arm has the ability at different degrees to protect itself through pronation.  Improperly thrown curveballs can severely reduce the amount of pronation as as the forearm and wrist can stay in supination longer, the pull down a window shade analogy.  But what is the net of the combination of stress amount to pronation one versus the orher pitch?  There has not been to my knowledge a credible study done on the combination of fastball and amount of pronation  vs. curveball and amount of pronation to measure the net effect of stress on the elbow.   So is there an answer, in my estimation, no not yet.   But you can help prevent potential injury by understanding that   a curve is thrown very much like a fastball just with a different forearm orientation and no wrist snap, so that the arm and wrist can go directly into pronation once the ball is released, don’t forcibly keep the arm locked in supination to manipulate spin.

ps.  I am not suggesting pronation reduces the stress only that it protects against the effects of it.  that is what i believe is missing in the studies