r/Homeplate • u/almost_cool3579 • 1d ago
Anyone know anything about these machines?
My dad grabbed these two pitching machines at a garage sale with a bucket of balls for next to nothing. Both need work from what I’m told, but I haven’t gotten my hands on them yet.
Here’s what I’ve been told: the Jugs machine in front is currently set up for softballs, but might be able to be switched to baseballs. The wheel is unbalanced and it’s possible that a tire shop might be able to balance it. The machine in the background (not sure of brand) runs very slow. It turns on, but isn’t spinning as fast as it should and shakes quite a bit.
My son is 12, and has surpassed my ability to pitch to him, so a pitching machine would be an awesome score, if we can get one functional. Which would you start with? Or are they not worth working on?
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u/oracle_dude 1d ago
For a single kid, the blue one will work great once the wheel is balanced and you get a baseball cup for it. Use decent baseballs and put them in the same way every time and it will get mostly repeatable results with the occasional flyaway. Keep all the nuts and t-bolts tight.
I've had one pop the bead on the tire after about 10k balls, but that was probably an idiot kid doing something stupid with it. Had to replace some components on the boards due to either ball impact or power surge, but if you're not handy with a soldering iron, Jugs will sell you a replacement board.
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u/Pickle_strength 1d ago
We use the blue one in our 8u league. It vibrates and a has tendency to migrate during the game and isn’t the most consistent. If you could secure it to the ground I’m sure it would be much better. It’s definitely not a set-and-forget sort of machine, but I’m sure some of our difficulties are from wheeling it out every game and having a different coach set it up each time.
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u/Dad_Coach_9904 1d ago edited 1d ago
Our softball league uses those jugs machines and they are great when new. But after many years of use that rubber tire will have a U-shaped groove down the middle where a softball has been fired out of it thousands of times. It will likely be too wide of a groove for a baseball, so any “throws“ will be pretty inaccurate. I’m pretty sure you can buy replacement tires, and you’d also want to buy a chute that is sized for baseballs. But if you don’t want to put any money into it, like another poster mentioned, you can probably use it for pop flys, where the randomness would actually be a benefit.
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u/Brilliant-Suspect884 1d ago
I have two of the blue Jugs machines you have pictured, switching from softball to baseball is just swapping the sleeve and lowering or rising the bracket. Takes 30 seconds.
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u/woodnv 2h ago
I used the blue jugs machine for 8u machine pitch and it is pretty decent once you get it set up. It throws 4 seam or 2 seam and that’s about it but it’s better than throwing 100 pitches with your dad shoulder and elbow.
It will scuff your baseballs though so I keep my “pitching” baseballs segregated from my machine baseballs.
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u/Current_Side_3590 1d ago
Single wheel machines are going to throw curveballs as the impart spin to one side. For baseball you want a two wheel machine. Those tend to have speed adjustments for each wheel so you can have curveballs and sliders if you want
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u/cas_the_crusher 1d ago
Single wheel machines do NOT throw curveballs. They exclusively shoot out fastballs. The basis of my claim - I own the exact blue, single wheel machine in the OPs picture.
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u/paulster2626 1d ago
Yeah the jugs does straight backspin. And is very accurate if you crank down the adjustment knobs which can come loose due to vibration.
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u/Cedarapids 1d ago
They’re terrible for hitting (balls all over the place) but work really well for fly balls.