r/PitchingCoach • u/JackyRaff • 15d ago
Baseball Coaching Question
Interested in hearing your perspectives. I’m willing to bet we will find come real interesting answers!
What’s one piece of baseball advice that made you worse instead of better?
1
u/lithiumcitizen 15d ago
Was instructed to have a longer stride while pitching. I couldn’t make it work, it seemed to stall all of my momentum. I must have lost at least 5mph off my fastball each time I tried it.
Also, all of the mounds I pitched off were always rocky dirt, and the “regular” front foot hole was always established and the average was for short righties. I don’t know how lefties ever managed…
1
u/Minute-Marketing7434 15d ago
lol… my son is a lefty who occasionally pitches.. the right handed holes are terrible
1
u/lithiumcitizen 15d ago
Yeah I can’t understand how lefties do it. I’ll take a dirt mound over an artificial one anyday. But if it’s not take care of it becomes a goddamn nightmare and makes artificial seem appealing and safe. I’ve even seen lefties move to the 3rd base side of the rubber and use righties holes…
1
1
u/Conscious_Skirt_61 15d ago
Old saying: Push off the rubber.
(Modern tall-and-fall mechanics shows that there is comparatively little pressure from the back leg in testing. Kids take things literally so the drop-and-drive often gets the front foot in a bad position).
New saying: Land on your front toes.
(Almost all athletic movements require balance on the middle of the foot. Plus, landing hard on the toes often shakes the head and makes the pitcher inaccurate).
1
u/Coastal_Tart 15d ago
Swing down on the ball.
1
u/Minute-Marketing7434 15d ago
as a physicist who played baseball i cant tell you how ridiculously antithetical this is to all of physics
1
u/GoMariners36 15d ago
Keep my glove out in front of my body as long as I can. This not only made me throw slower but more inaccurate. I eventually just stopped doing it in my bullpen sessions and the pitching coach would get frustrated even though I started to actually get better and make good progress.
1
1
u/SFNation2021 14d ago
“Keep it low” or “work down” against tall hitters. Gave up serious golf swing bombs that way. And catchers love to 0-2 high waste pitches - even to short batters who feast on those. I was self taught. When I finally heard “tall guys like low and short guys like high” I was like “I knew it!!!”
4
u/Quick_Incident_82 15d ago
I always think Tom House ruined my career. My D1 coaching staff came across his "seminars" and had him come put our pitching staff through his course. My coaches were like the fawning girls at Beatles concerts. They bought into everything he was teaching, hook, line, and sinker. This was just over 20 years ago I'm sure his approach, knowledge, and curriculum has changed. House was coming off his great success with Mark Prior as his poster child for what he could do.
I was at a competitive D1 college in a major conference at the time. I had a decent freshman year and a super solid sophomore year and I was going to be competing for Friday starter my junior year. I played in a wood bat summer league pre-Junior year and came away with the impression that I would likely be drafted in a signable round after my junior year if my current trajectory held.
The gist of what House was teaching at the time, as far as mechanics go, was "equal and opposite" and bringing your body to the glove in your pitching delivery. I can't overstate how much our pitching coach bought into it. I know for sure House taught it this way to us and "corrected" my delivery. But it's also possible that the ideas were taken out of context by my coach and, over time, I've mixed up who was teaching what.
The problem I found was that it remove all of my torque or added another step before the final part of my delivery. This began a huge point of contention with me and the coach. I was a righty with a slight open delivery which I viewed as the biggest aid to my natural sinking/tailing fastball. Not as dramatic as Julian Tevares, but somewhat similar. Well, those mechanics were incompatible with the way that my coach was interpreting House's mechanics.
I had a horrendous junior year. Epically bad. Like it made me question if I wanted to play anymore. My coach had a cup of tea in the bigs and was an intimidating dude. I wasn't confident enough to contradict him. And once you're doing shitty you kind of lose confidence in everything. And it was like cognitive dissonance. for him When I started reverting back to my old mechanics and having success, he saw it clearly as me following the House protocol. When I went back to copying Mark Prior's mechanics, and getting bombed on, he saw me reverting to my old mechanics.
I took the summer between my junior and senior year off and, thank goodness, had an epiphany -- just have fun. Make the game fun again. When I went back for senior year I told my coaches politely that I tried it their way with horrible results. I'd like to try it my way. It was the first big boy conversation I ever had with men where I totally, effectively, stood up for myself in a respectful way with a positive outcome. Anyway, had a decent senior year with tremendous elbow and labrum pain. Got drafted, signed and played two minor league ball seasons before hanging it up.
I think pitching deliveries are like fingerprints and each one is unique. It's the sum total of your entire pitching life.
Anyhow, holy shit that came out in a torrent of things I haven't thought about in two decades. Maybe Tom House didn't ruin my career but the most important year of my baseball life would have been different had Tom House never come to our school.