Do Slow-Motion “Everydays” Make You Faster?

Joshua Johnson, Virginia Tech Softball, has a great pitching newsletter (Pitch Better Newsletter) that focuses on the biomechanics of pitching.

His January 9 issue talked about an energy flow article by Oliver et al. (2021) that measured 29 young pitchers for isometric strength and range of motion and tracked energy flow from the pelvis, trunk, upper arm, forearm and hand.

What stuck out to me was one of his interpretations…that focusing on small movements in a slow fashion (like most pitchers all over the globe do when warming up) will not generate more energy.

Instead - we need to encourage fast movements in young pitchers and focus on whole-body mechanics to help them learn how to sequence efficiently.

Think about how every pitcher on the planet warms up - 3 feet away from their catcher doing slow motion “snaps and spins”. I’ve personally never understood how this could be helpful since we don’t pitch from 3 feet, but my thoughts were just based on logic - I didn’t have anything to base it on.

And yet doing all these slow motion warmups is something pitchers have always done. But just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean it’s right, or helpful.

Be curious - explore - read - learn. It’s our jobs as pitching coaches to be as up-to-date as we can on the latest knowledge and information. We’re always challenging our pitchers to get better, we need to make sure we’re challenging ourselves.

As pitching coaches, we definitely want our pitchers throwing strikes. I’ve said it, you’ve said it - hell, every coach on the planet has told a pitcher at some point to throw more strikes.

Strikes come in different forms. I think our pitchers see them as only being “thrown” strikes. Not that they can’t be, but most pitchers have a deep fear of getting hit, which starts from a very early age when coaches tell them to avoid throwing pitches in the zone or they’ll get crushed (what 8 year old
crushes” anything?!)….

Anyway, this primal fear of getting hit starts early and sits deep within almost every pitcher, and pitching coach. Thus preventing us from really attacking the strike zone like we need to from a tactical point of view.

But strikes come in different forms and most of those forms involve the batter swinging at a pitch. Read that again, the majority of strikes come from the batter swinging at a pitch.

This is a great reminder for us and our pitchers, so let’s look at a graphic taken from a season in Major League Baseball that looks at ALL Strikes that were Swung At and the percentage of their occurrences.

Two things jump out at me right away - One is that Hits only occur 9% of the time that batters swing. And two is that foul balls account for almost 60% of all strikes.

When it comes to the 9% of the time that balls are put in play for a hit, 62% of those are singles. And it takes a lot of singles to beat you!

Share this graphic with your pitchers and see what their take-aways are, what they notice and what kind of discussion ensues.