EP97 – Velo or Command for Young Players? Journaling & Yoga for Baseball Players

If a young pitcher has command but is way below average on velocity, is that at least a bit of solace? Is journaling a good, reasonable thing to ask a young player to do? And, what about yoga – is it effective for baseball players?

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EP97 – Velo or Command for Young Players? Journaling & Yoga for Baseball Players

Hey, welcome back to dear baseball gods. I’m Dan Blewett. And on today’s episode, I’m going to cover three topics. And to be perfectly honest, I’m going to kind of do away with a 92nd mindset, which was never really a thing. Um, I’m gonna continue to sort of, uh, answering questions on the third segment. But today we’re basically just going to hit three topics.

Some weeks we’ll hit two. I just want to cover short quality informative and a topical ideas. So number one today, is it better to have Vilo or command at a young age? So this is from a question I got on the web recently. Um, a parent asked me, he said, Hey, my son doesn’t throw real hard. Uh, but you know, parents have kind of remarked that it’s good, that he can throw strikes that that’s probably a better thing to do I have now.

So, you know, we’ll talk about through whether or not that is actually the case. Number two, we’ll talk about journaling and the idea I’ve seen this a kind of, I kind of roll my eyes out. I see it on the web coach is like, Hey, you know, players, if you’re not keeping a journal, then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Talk about the idea of whether young athletes should be using a journal to track their progress, track their workouts, all that stuff. Or if it’s unrealistic, lastly, we’ll talk about yoga for baseball. Um, this is something I talked about on my softball podcast. Yoga can be really important, but we’ll talk about whether it’s actually good for baseball players or not.

So let’s get started, uh, first here tonight, uh, velocity or command. So if your son is a young pitcher and he’s, you know, 12, 13, 14, and he can throw strikes, but he doesn’t have that much velocity. Is he better off? So, I mean, look, this has been a tired debate for a long time. The velocity versus command thing, which is better, obviously any sensible person knows that you need both to pitch to a high level.

And if you’re deficient in one or the other just means you have to work a little bit harder. So if you have less philosophy, you can’t pitch down the middle nearly as much, you don’t get away with as many mistakes. We all sort of, you know, intuitively know that, that doesn’t take a lot to, to get that, to figure that out.

But. One of the things that we have discussed. And if you listen to my other podcast with Bobby Stevens called the morning back, we’ve had a bunch of really good pitching coaches, uh, recently talking about command and where it comes from. And all of us are relatively United in the idea that command is something you kind of can’t teach.

You can put players in a position to, you know, have activities to develop it in the future. But. In reality, it’s like a mind body connection. That’s built over a long period of time. Some players have a better mind, body connection than others. And this body awareness, this sort of like, I know where my body is in space.

It, uh, it explains a lot about, you know, performance in golf performance in baseball. Like why can one kid. Who, uh, you know, why can one kid just always seem to find the barrel of the bat despite not having as nice of a swing as some other kid who has a really nice swing, but maybe strikes a lot more.

Those are all sorts of like hand, eye coordination and body awareness and body control and like mind, body connection sort of things. So I guess saying, Hey, my son doesn’t have a lot of lossy, but he, he can kind of pound the strike zone can kind of throw the ball where he wants it. That’s obviously better than nothing.

Right. But I’m, I’m not here to like Pat anyone on the back and say, Oh yeah, that’s great that he’s got that. I mean, the reality is if you don’t throw very hard for your level, like, especially if you’re well below average, You’re well below average. I mean, there’s not much really beyond it than that. Now you can get people out and the results speak for themselves.

So if you’re really being sincere at the 13 year level or the 15 new level or the high school varsity level, despite having below average velocity, then great, like you get hitters out that speaks for itself. So be it. But that’s not really the way most players think. Obviously, if you want to play in college or if you want to play varsity first, uh, before playing in college, like if you’re not there yet, then obviously you need both.

And if you’re way behind lagging with velocity, there’s not really like a big silver lining that I can throw strikes. I mean, it’s better than having no velocity and having no command. Like obviously we get that. But I think a lot of times parents look for solace when in reality that maybe their kids just aren’t that good.

So it’s one of these things where if that’s the case, yes, it’s good that you can throw strikes if you don’t have a lot of a loss to yet. It’s good that you have good mechanics that you’re working on. Things you can control. That’s important. However, uh, we need to kind of take things for what they’re worth.

So if you’re well below the pack and you know, there’s a bell curve, but if you’re well below the pack, as far as average velocity. So say you’re everyone in your peer group throws around 70 that’s about average. Some kids go up to 75 and you’re throwing 62. There’s not much of a silver lining. If you can throw strikes there, that’s just the unfortunate reality.

You really can’t go way below, um, the bell curve. Now, obviously there’s a huge bell curve of developmental ages too. So if you’re playing on a, some sort of massive team for your age, you know, 14 year old team, that’s just enormous. And your average, 14 year old, you’re not really behind the bell curve.

You’re just behind for that pack of wild animals that you’re playing with. So it’s important to take into context, the level you’re playing that as well, but. I mean, I think a lot of the time here that, I mean, obviously there’s more and more parents than ever who are forming teams to give their kids more opportunities to play.

You know, there’s kids that wouldn’t make, um, an average travel team for the level, but they’re still playing travel ball anyway, because they found another team that another parents started for sort of like their B or C level players. And, okay, well, if that gives them a chance to play baseball fine. But ultimately they need to do things that are going to catch them up and that’s, you know, work on their mechanics and get in the weight room and do strength training and play more baseball and practice more baseball play in the backyard is what I mean by playing more baseball.

So at the end of the day, like at some point we do need to make educated decisions about what we’re good at and our. Idea of the future. So look, if you’re significantly lagging behind the rest of the pack, baseball just might not be you, but might not be for you. And now there’s certainly big company stories here and there, but Hmm, most of the time, there’s not that big of comeback stories, uh, in sports where someone who’s just significantly despite putting in similar effort, effort, significantly behind the pack, where they catch up and become this magical player.

I mean, That’s just, unless it’s like a purely developmental age thing where you’re just tiny, tiny, tiny compared to your peers and then you grow. Um, if it’s not that, then it’s just hard to say that. Okay. There’s much of a silver lining to this, so yeah. Obviously everyone wants to have both. You always want to have velocity and command at any age, if you lack one.

Um, I’d say it’s probably better to young age to have velocity and less command. Be perfectly honest because you know, that means you’re at least ahead of the game. Um, and we can maybe develop command later, but at the same time, it’s also very difficult to develop command. So there’s really not one great one.

To have, if you don’t have both

next, I’ve seen some, uh, coaches on the web saying, Hey, you know, you should keep a journal and player, like I’ve seen the one text was I think part of a sales message, to be honest with you. Was, if you’re not journaling, then you’re not serious about baseball. It’s like, please. So there’s a lot of things that, so the one thing I wish every player would do today is just play more backyard baseball, play more with your friends, drag your mom and dad, your brother or sister, whoever will throw with you or hit fungos to you, or just go out and just like do baseball skills stuff with you.

That’s what we should be doing with more of our time as young players. So we know that kids don’t play backyard baseball as much as they used to. We’ve kind of beat that to death, especially in my other podcast recently. So with that, uh, there’s lots of stuff that we should be doing. And I think we’re inventing lots of new things that we think players should be doing to almost set up, sort of make up for stuff like that.

So, Being realistic, um, journaling and like tracking your workouts and having a log. That stuff is great. I just think a certain amount of people, like a certain percentage of people, uh, are interested in that they want to track, they want sort of their own data. Um, I know my dad tracked his running workouts for years and years and years.

And. I mean, my dad’s an engineer. He’s very fascinated with how things work and how things change over time. So that I think that fits his personality to a degree. But how many people can you think of who’ve tracked something like that over a long career of anything? Probably not that many. So I just think with all the fads, I try to act as like the gate gatekeeper in the sense of reason.

And I think there’s more and more things for kids to feel that they’re falling short of to feel guilty, that they’re not doing. And I still, I’m still one of those people who, and I think we all are where we have this list of stuff that we think we should be doing. And we fall short of it and we feel guilty and we feel like we’re not productive as other people.

In reality, we need to be pushing it all the stupid stuff off to the side and making priorities for the stuff that are really important. So if you really want to be a great play baseball player, the things that are really important. Are getting your work in. So going to the batting cage consistently hitting off the tee, having someone pitched to you, taking tons of ground balls or fly walls, getting your throwing in as a pitcher, working on your mechanics, doing drills and playing impromptu baseball, whenever you can.

So going out and play, you know, bounce a ball off the wall, play backyard baseball with someone, invite some buddies and go have batting practice, whatever it is. Those are the major priorities. And then there’s during the conditioning beyond that. So doing your arm care, uh, being a, a regular Jimmer, so not missing workouts, getting in your, you know, two, three, four workouts a week, depending on your age, those are the core things that need to be done.

And if you’re doing that, then you can feel good about yourself. Feel good about the effort that you’re putting in. And just carry on with your life. It just annoys me when people are trying to pile more stuff on the kids’ plates, when they already have the pressures of social media, they already have tons of schoolwork.

Uh, they have a complex world compared to back in the day, back in the day, you could just go outside and play. You could go play your game. You go over four and go home and not get Snapchats about it. Not get ridiculed on Instagram or from your buddies in their, in their group chat. Um, there’s just like a lot more pressures and people almost suffer these ignominious defeats today, where everything you do is like on the web.

Right. Everyone knows when you go over for weekend check game, a game changer, um, you know, you can compare that. Yourself on Instagram to someone else. Like there’s always someone who throws away faster than you hits way harder than you runs way faster than you. Right. So I don’t think kids need more things to feel guilty about that they’re not doing.

And I don’t think they also need more people to say you’re not putting in enough work. And so with this thing with journaling, I think it’s just one more thing for someone to try to sell you something. I do think it’s a valuable thing. Don’t get me wrong. I think tracking your workouts. I think it’s pretty neat to look back at like a time capsule of what you used to do.

I wish I had a journal of all my exploits throughout baseball. I think it’d be fascinating to look back on. And of course I did that with my Tommy John surgery Chronicles on YouTube, a weekly video of it. Um, and it’s really interesting to go back and look at that stuff. However, I didn’t. No, I didn’t do a journal and I know my dad’s adjust this to me.

At some point, I just didn’t do it because I was a normal kid who doesn’t want to do weird stuff like that. I mean, it’s not weird to have a journal and to track your exploits over a long baseball career, but it’s a little weird. It’s not, it’s not weird the sense that it’s strange, but it’s just not what a typical, you know, kid wants to do.

So when, if you’re one of those parents, who’s like, I’ve heard this, this sounds like a good idea. I’m going to ask my son to do it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with suggesting it or buying them a journal and saying, Hey, I bought this for you. If you want to track your workouts, it could be helpful to you.

Maybe it’s a habit. They pick up, they like great, but it just irritates me that I feel like some people are using this to pressure, uh, kids to start doing. More good habits. Like we don’t need again, pressure to have good habits. And this is one of those things that most kids are not going to do if they do it.

I think it’s a healthy, good exercise. That’s totally fine, but it’s not an essential thing to be a good baseball player. You certainly can be a serious, hardworking player without having a workout journal. Let me tell you that.

All right. And lastly, let’s talk about yoga for base. So yoga for softball. I talked about this on my other podcast and for yoga for young players. So I’d say probably 14 and under. I don’t think it’s the right training method. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense for their bodies. Women are naturally more flexible.

Young boys are naturally much more flexible. However, when kids hit high school and they start to become a man, they go through puberty, their joints tighten up quite a bit. And this is where yoga starts to really, uh, pay some dividends. So I do believe in yoga for high school and older boys who have hit like that sort of like maturity point where they’re starting to.

To get thicker. They’re starting to get more muscular. And with that their joints, they just tend to get much less flexible than young boys or their female counterparts. So with that, I’ll share my experience. I did Bikram yoga in college, uh, pretty religiously for a number of years. And I did this because I wanted to be really good at baseball and I knew.

After suffering a partial elbow, UCL tear, you know, the doctors said, Hey, you’ve got some hip flexibility issues. I think if you really did all these stretches that I gave, I gave you here. And if you really worked on your flexibility, it could make a big difference for you. Not only reducing some stress on your arm, which he had some research, um, and this was, you know, 10, 15 years ago that, you know, there were hip tightness deficiencies that.

Add stress to the arm, which I do believe those are true. Uh, I think the research is still kind of murky as if they’re really correlated with injury or not, but either way your hips transfer power. So if you have these really tight gummed up hips, it stands, you know, I think the reason that you’re not going to be at a transfer.

The way that you’re pushing down the mound through those hips very well. They’re not going to pivot. It’s going to be like having rusty seized up kind of wheels on a car versus like, well, greased, you know, with new bearings on them. So take that for what it’s worth as an anecdote. But I think having flexible hips, and obviously we can see many, many pitchers in baseball have a lot of flexibility and, and they can get their bodies into some weird positions that help them create power and all that stuff.

So. Um, especially for kids who maybe are naturally more muscular and to have hit puberty and sort of reached manhood a little bit earlier than their peers, they’re gonna have those tighter hips. They’re going to have those tighter quads and that can gum them up and them from transferring as much power and producing as much power as they could, whether on the mound or as a hitter.

So I think yoga for the right. People is a very beneficial thing. Obviously for high school athletes, they don’t want to sit and just do stupid, boring stretches. Like I did that. I did all those stupid, boring stretches, and they were, you know what you expect, they’re stupid, boring stretches, but yoga, it puts you in a class like you have to go.

So you’re there. So you’re like, all right, I’m gonna make the best of it. And you go through all the poses. It’s a lot easier to, uh, to get through mentally. It’s a lot less tedious and boring. I wouldn’t say yoga is the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s better than just sitting on the gym floor doing stretches.

Uh, so you’re inclined to get a lot better at it. And actually, you know, you’re doing yoga for 40, my 45 minute class or an hour long class. And, uh, I think there’s a lot of benefits there where if you’re trying to say, okay, I’m going to make a longterm changes to my flexibility. Um, I think getting jump-started with yoga is a really positive way to do that much more so than just like getting a sheet of workouts, uh, or a stretching workouts.

So you’re just going to do on your own time. Cause chances are you’re going to get bored with them, not do them as much and then not have the effects. So from a longterm standpoint, Yoga is probably going to have better buy it. Now it does cost something, unless you can find like a local place that’s doing free yoga or whatever, or you get it.

Look at little Jane, Jane, Fonda, workout tape, or whatever. I’m sure there’s low cost ways to do this with apps and stuff like that. But I still think going to a yoga studio is a good way to get out of house and do all that. Additionally, the mental benefits are also good. That’s why a lot of people do yoga go, they feel refreshed, right?

They have this time to mentally unwind. They’re not with their phone. It’s a very calm, serene environment. The other people, you know, yoga, people are always kind of a, you know, they’re very relaxed and there’s like a sort of spirituality thing mixed into yoga. So all that I think can only also serve to help young athletes who are very.

Sped up in their regular life. Like they’re tons and tons of screen time. They’re always in front of the camera. They’re always in front of their peers, all this other stuff. It’s a good way to unwind and find a new environment and, and get the little bit of mental clarity. And obviously most yoga classes end with a little bit of a.

And built a little bit of meditation and stuff like that. So those are all good forays into the meditation as well. So for high school athletes for college athletes, for pro athletes, and I don’t think you have to really convince pro athletes to do yoga. I think they either have already chosen to do it, or they’ve already decided that it’s not for them, that they, they know that something that’s always been on their plates essentially.

But I think it’s a really positive thing, especially during coronavirus where maybe kids are looking for a little more to do to get out of the house and feel like your son’s not one of those Gumby natural, like lanky, pretty loose, flexible kids, then take them to yoga and. You know, whoever I’m speaking to right now, if it’s a, you know, mom or dad or grandparent or an athlete themselves, go with them.

You know, I was one of the only dudes in a lot of yoga classes and it was still good for me. And it was still a really positive experience and could be a good father, son bonding, or mother, son bonding. Um, and I think that’s a positive, mental and physical space for a lot of young athletes to get into.

Well, that’s it for today’s episode of dear baseball gods. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while improving your baseball IQ. By one of my books were enrolled today in an online pitching course, sign up for any of my courses, do the links in the show notes and save 20% with code baseball gods, just for being a listener.

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