EP98 – Year Round Throwing Do’s and Don’ts; Does Hand Size Matter in Throwing a Changeup? Plus: Pick Offs

Should pitchers throw year round in baseball? How should they plan their workload? And, does having small hands prevent a pitcher from learning a changeup? Lastly, coach Dan explains why pick off moves are underrated and under taught, and what pitchers should do about it.

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Transcript: EP98 – Year Round Throwing Do’s and Don’ts; Does Hand Size Matter in Throwing a Changeup? Plus: Pick Offs

You’re listening to the deer baseball gods podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn advanced concepts in baseball. Explain simply I’m here to guide you on your baseball journey and help you paddle through. What’s now an ocean of misinformation, guru ism, an overly technical diamond babble.

Welcome back to the dear baseball gods podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. This is episode 98 and today’s episode. We’re gonna cover number one year round throwing. What does that look like? Obviously right now it’s the fall. So hopefully you’re listening to this episode in September, October. Uh, if you’re not, it’ll still be relevant next year, but it’s a great time to talk about what you should be doing in the fall.

And should you be tapering down your throwing? Should you be taking a break? All that sort of stuff. So we’ll cover that today. We’re also going to cover a major change up myth, which is, do you have to have big hands to throw a change up effectively? I just listened to a youth baseball podcast. I heard a pitching guy.

Perpetuating this myth. So we’re going to kind of come back at him here. Uh, and lastly, let’s talk about pick offs. Pick offs are overlooked, underrated, something that needs to be practiced.

Okay. So first thing, if you’re a parent or if you’re an athlete and you are a pitcher or your son is a pitcher, Throwing and your year long throwing regimen is important. It’s important to map out your year and understand when you’re going to take breaks when you’re not what you want to do. And also sort of like, you know, maybe.

What might be unique about the way you throw the way you train value your body. Some players need more rest than others. Some players who play multiple sports have different. Um, you know, they kind of have rest built into their year. So lots of different things to cover, but. First thing to talk about.

Number one, if you’re not aware of this resource, the ESMI which the American sports medicine Institute they’ve teamed up with major league baseball, they have a website called a pitch smart and on the pitch smart website, which you can just Google this. Also put the link in the in show notes. Um, the pitch smart website gives you information about pitching injuries and injury factors.

So it. He explains all the different things that contribute to injury that they’ve found through their extensive research in the last couple of decades on, on baseball players. So if you’re not aware of that, that’s should be always your goal. Your go to there’s a lot of disinformation on the web.

There’s a lot of ways it can be muddied. Um, I’m going to muddy it, just a hair here today, but in general, I follow those rules and I think they’re all very, very sound they’re done by lots and lots of smart researchers. And so that’s definitely your, your research for now. When I say I’m going to muddy it a little bit, the only thing I’m going to push back on.

Uh, so they recommend that every player take two to three months off of throwing every year. And they’re somewhat unclear about what exactly off means. And so this is what I want to, again, I’m not saying a muddy. Yeah. But I want you to think about what all really means for a thrower. So they mean off from competitive throwing and typically the recommendation is two or three months completely off.

So like not throwing a ball at all now. I think athletes are capable. I think baseball players are capable of throwing year round if they so choose, but they are certainly not capable of competitive pitching year round. So if you’re competitively pitching in the spring and then you’re competitively pitching in the summer, and then, yeah, you’re pretty much done for the year, but you still want to like play shortstop and you want to play catch, and you’re going to play backyard baseball and, you know, go play catch with your dad a couple of days a week, whatever.

I don’t see any reason that that’s going to contribute to longterm injury. Another research has been studying that they’ve been doing research on competitive pitching and players that pitch more than a hundred years or a hundred innings combined a year, or at a much higher injury rate in players that competitively pitch year rounds.

That means they’re competitively pitching for their spring team, summer team, fall team, maybe even a winter team, if they’re in California, sexist or Arizona, how, you know, when the warm weather States. So that’s the big distinction. So I don’t think players and parents need to be afraid of picking up a ball in November, December, January, if they so choose and, you know, taking ground balls, throwing them across the infield, playing catch, you know, spinning a breaking ball at half speed while working on, you know, are working on their new change up by playing catch.

So I just think there’s, you need to know what phase you’re entering in. And there’s a good period of time, and this is probably it and the fall and winter, before you start to ramp back up where it’s fine to play, catch a lot. And again, throw your chance, throw your curve ball, do all these things, things, but in a completely noncompetitive setting, like you’re just gonna stretch it out a little bit, come back in and spin some of these, you know, off speed pitches and have a little flat ground and throw it half speed, three quarters beat and just throw.

But. Not come anywhere close to blowing it out and going full speed. So I think one of the analogies that people use is runners. A lot of people who are competitive runners are just very avid runners. They pretty much, don’t like to take time off. Like their body feels better when they stay in the routine and they’re always getting their three runs in a week or five runs in a week or whatever.

And they sort of just feel rickety when they take a week off or take two weeks off or take a month back or take a month off and then come back. And I think there is something to be said for that. I think that there is something like greasing the groove. So to speak, like weightlifters have the same thing.

Like they feel like, you know, competitive powerlifters and weightlifters. They, they squat a lot and they feel like it’s their country, you know? Continuing to squat regularly, their hips stay mobile. Like everything just like kind of stays in line. And I would say that throwing feels the same way too. It’s kind of rough coming back after a couple of months solid off.

And now I, I do think again, this needs to be taken into context. So, you know, if you’re a young player and you through. 25 competitive innings in the summer, which if you’re not a prime pitcher on your team, if you’re just like a reliever or you’re just on, on not hyper competitive team, you might only throw a 25 innings in the spring and then maybe like 20 ends in the summer, you know?

So it’s not like you’ve been overused where you should absolutely not touch a ball. You are probably fine. Again, just like keep playing catch and throw the ball across the infield. Take ground balls, just like do baseball things and don’t pitch and perfectly fine. If you’re someone like me where after my rookie season of baseball of pro ball, I threw more innings in one summer than I had in the previous three years combined in college.

And that was also partly because I was injured a lot, but I think I threw a hundred. Like 130 innings. My, my, uh, which isn’t even that many in the grand scheme of things. Like most of my, yeah, who were starters, we’ll get to one 50 or one 60. I see a lot of times, but I feel like 120 and things are 130 and things my rookie year.

And that was like 22 straight starts or something. I had never done that before. And my arm was not feeling great. And that last start. So I did take two solid months off from throwing my body was exhausted. I needed to recover. Um, and that was my, and I feel like that was the best choice for me. Like I just was like mentally and physically ready to just like, get the ball away from me.

And some of your kids are probably like that too. And if you’re a pitcher out there listening, you’ve probably been in that situation too. I know some high schoolers. You know, you play your high school season, then you go right into your summer season. Then you might have a bunch of showcases and you might rack up 75 innings in that, in that period of time, or hopefully not more, but certainly possibly more.

And so you might be like, yeah, I’m ready to just like, get off me ball, take a couple months and just not even think about throwing a baseball and that’s totally fine too. So obviously any anyone who’s been in the game for a long time is going to say, you know, Well, listen to your body, listen to the experts and do what you think is logical and reasonable.

And I think this is just the thing. Everyone needs to come back at every year and kind of audit what you’ve done for the season for the year and say, all right, we’ve, we’ve thrown a lot. How does your body feel? Little Timmy. I feel actually pretty good. Like, you know, we’ve yeah, I pitched a lot, but you know, I feel like we got a bunch of rests.

We had some vacation weeks in the middle and we had a couple like a month break between seasons and. You know, look at their workload and, and make an informed decision. And then there’s other kids where they might feel like they’re raring to go, but they really did throw too much and they really do need some time off.

So. There’s lots of things to consider. And so my overarching, um, point here is, is make logical choices. Don’t feel like you, you absolutely should not be playing competitive baseball for three seasons of the year. So if you’re playing spring ball and summer ball don’t play fall ball Falwell just sucks.

It just sucks. It just sucks. As a player, it heats your arm back up and you pitch once a week for like two, three innings and meaningless games. It’s just a waste. It’s, it’s better. If you’re a position player, if you need to get some, a bat stuff like that this year, coronavirus, I certainly understand the utility because guys pretty much missed a whole season.

So they’re making hang up some meetings, but. In general, I think it’s best to just plan to not do fall ball. And here’s my thing with fall ball. And with that, essentially, maybe like the third season of the year is that you end up just, okay. Fall ball, not a rigorous schedule, right? Maybe only a play like eight games in four weeks or eight games in eight weeks.

Like you just play a double header on the weekends or something like that. But as a pitcher, if you’re going to pitch in these, you still have to like, keep your arm in shape. You can’t just, Oh, it’s fall ball. I’m just going to pitch tunings on Sunday. So I’m just gonna play catch once during the week and then pitch my two innings.

That’s terrible for your arm. So the, the, the hazard with fall ball is a lot of people let down their guard and they think, Oh, it’s just like halftime. I’m just gonna, you know, play pickup basketball through the week and do whatever. And then just like show up to the field and play ball. If you’re going to be a, if you’re going to be coming positively, pitching in any sense in any volume you have, I have to keep your arm in shape.

And this is what I had to always implore to my guys. Like, look, if you’re going to play fall ball. Okay. But you need to still throw four or five days a week to keep your arm in shape. You can’t just, again, show up on Sunday and go through full speed for three innings and expect your arm to be all right with it.

No, as a 15 year old, your body’s kind of okay with everything, but it’s gonna definitely accumulate some wear and tear and that’s not good. So. Pitchers need to maintain shape throughout every single season that they’re in. And this is another stipulation. So as a parent, if your son wants to play fall ball and he wants to pitch, you have to say, okay, but are you going to be able to commit to throwing four or five days a week to keep your arm in shape?

Because you cannot just throw once during the week and then show up on Sunday and pitch and. This almost sounds counterintuitive, right? Like, Oh, so Dan, you’re not advocating that they through five days a week. Absolutely. And that’s, you know, play catch on Tuesday. You’re going to long toss, stretch it out a little bit on Wednesday.

You’re going to throw a bullpen on Thursday. You’re going to take off on Friday. You’re going to play catch on Saturday. Then you’re going to pitch on Sunday. That’s a normal routine. Your arm needs that amount of conditioning. And again, none of that is like hard full-speed work by any means. Those are two catch days, a bullpen day and a long toss day off.

All of those are pretty much below full speed. Not pretty much. They are, you know, bullpens days of 75% effort day, a long toss day is like a uneasy loose, but stretch it out maybe out to like 75%, 90% day, and then catches like 50 to 70%. So those things are necessary. So when you’re committing to competitive pitching, in any sense, you have to commit to keeping your arm in shape, which means.

At least four days a week of throwing and really more realistically five or six, most pitchers don’t take off more than one or two days a week. Certainly not two days a week. And usually guys will have just one day off a week. Cause again, like it’s greasing the groove, so to speak. If you’re a machine, you know, you have to have those catch days and your arm doesn’t really feel better when you have multiple off days a week.

And again, I’m just talking about. Playing catch, like just throwing the ball. So these are all factors to consider. So your year round throwing number one, again, taking time off from competitive. Pitching is critical. So again, it doesn’t mean you have to completely not throw a ball at all for three, two or three or four months, but you do have to stop competitive pitching.

So pick two seasons, make it spring and summer, and then take fall off from competitive pitching. If you want to play fall ball. Okay. Just do it as a position player only. And if you’re going to pitch, you have to keep your arm and shape. Um, second, uh, item here. Um, other sports, you know, especially if you’re below the age where you haven’t committed to just baseball yet.

Cause I do think there’s an age where you need to commit to just baseball. It’s probably 16 years old. Um, you know, if you play other sports, they’re a great way to build in. Fitness and other activities, you know, other forms of team culture and comradery and hard work and toughness, all that stuff. So for the kids to play football in the fall, wonderful for the guys that can throw the football around, around, you know, great.

That’s a, it’s a different implement. I think that’s good for your arm. You’re not throwing a full football 92 miles per hour. You know, you throw a football, it’s like a 75% effort, 90% effort. Uh, kind of throw and it’s heavier and it’s just different. And I think it’s stimulating and healthy in your free arm and just a different way.

So I think other sports are great. They build in some of that rest cause they just make you too busy with the other sport to play too much baseball or to be out there on the competitive field. Again, uh, either you have to stay hot or you have to go down again. Just, I’m going to keep beating this point out, beating it to death, and that you have, you have to keep your arm in shape.

If you’re going to play. Um, And lastly again, just think a little bit more about that. The analogy, I think there’s a lot of human movements and activities that when you do it consistently, your body says, this is good. I want to keep doing it consistently, even if it’s just a low level. So, so even though you might not be running competitive fights, Ks, you know, just going out on ice, easy, easy, easy jog is going to kind of keep your legs, you know, feeling a little bit better than taking that, that complete time off.

So. Year, round throwing. Um, you do need to plan out your year. It’s really, really important. Make sure you have some, some downtime from competitive pitching and, uh, just be sensible with it. Sit down with you once a year. If not more, again, audit what they’ve been doing. See, ask them how their body feels.

Really take a hard look at the overall volume. Yeah. Throwing and pitching for the year and just make sensible choices. For the future.

Okay. So let’s talk about a change of myth that irks me. People say that you really can’t teach a change if the kids with small hand. So I’m just going to say that look, I’ve taught change-ups to kids of all shapes and sizes of all ages and they do just fine. They just, they just do fine when you’re competent and actually good at teaching, they change up.

So this comes back to, uh, you know, there’s a. I referenced a story in pitch, calling a lot where a teammate was, who didn’t throw. It was hard as I did, didn’t have as good, a fast ball as I did. He was talking about how to pitch there’s one hitter, who was, you thought kind of what was kind of dangerous? And he said, yeah, you know, you can’t really throw this guy fast.

And to me, I was saying, yeah, you can’t, I can. This is the same. This is a similar scenario. So I heard this other guy who I’d never heard of before on another youth baseball podcast, talking about, you know, why change-ups essentially aren’t good for youth players. And one of his reasons was that they have small hands, so they just can’t throw them very well.

It’s like, yeah, you just can’t teach it apparently whoever you are. Um, but I can teach kids to throw a great change up even with a small hands. And look, the thing is this, the changeup is not this complex group, or it has to be choked deep in your hand, or you have to wrap your fingers around the ball.

Absolutely not. You have to do is get your thumb underneath it, which any human hand is capable of doing. And then you just need to put your two fingers together. Get them on top of the ball. And then your goal is to sort of pronate inward on it and get this angled tumbling sort of disco ball spin, um, which is a great new term I learned, uh, recently, and that’s a, it’s coined by one of, uh, Barton Smith’s, um, researchers over at the, uh, one of his assistants, I think, um, in the, uh, Utah state university, um, aerodynamics lab.

So. The way it, this disco ball spins is, or is exactly pretty much how I been teaching my change up. Well, my YouTube channel. So if you’re not familiar with that video and you want to learn a change up, or you want to help teach someone to change, I’ll definitely check that out. But the thing with change ups is that they used to be taught in this nebulous ambiguous way where there’s like a million different grips and you just tinker until you find one.

No one really knows why it changed up, goes slower. It just does. You know, you talked to five different pitching coaches, they through their chain of five different ways. And my goal was always to say, this is stupid. That wasn’t my goal. That’s what I was saying. I said, this is stupid. We need to find a repeatable way to teach this.

Just like we do the curve ball. You know, you have a couple of different grips. You can use a curve ball, but they’re really just finger placements. They’re not really just different grips. And we’re all trying to get the same top spin, just like clean, fast, spinning topspin to a curve ball. That’s what a curveball is.

A slider also has a pretty predefined. Sort of spin characteristics that make it a slider. And so I’m like, why is the change of not the same way in reality, especially the way the chain of has been evolving because more and more major leaguers are throwing this sort of disco ball angled, spinning tumbling change up.

That’s a little bit faster than the traditional one that has heavy sync and arm side run. It’s a pitch that all you really have to do is get your thumb on the bottom of the ball. Two fingers on top, you know, the way the exact orientation of those fingers can vary and they just have to push down on the inside of the ball.

As you’re releasing it. So it’s essentially not that different from a fastball release, except you’re getting on the inside. Like you’re, if you have a, a can of Coke in your hand right now, and you’re pouring it out, that’s pro nation and you’re just essentially pronating on the inside of the ball a little bit early, the hand size doesn’t really make a difference on that because whether your hands were bigger, small, The ball’s going to roll out of your fingers toward your tips.

And then as you prone it on the inward of it on the inside of it, that’s when you’re gonna apply the spin. So your fingers don’t really matter. Like your finger length does not matter. And I’ve taught a lot of little guys who are under five foot with small hands, you know, the size of hand you’d expect from a five foot kid and they’ve thrown changes that sink and look great for being 50 miles per hour.

I typically don’t teach change ups to kids below. That was typically 12, because at that age, like it’s just not necessary. It’s just, they’re better off just throwing fast balls and just locating and just being comfortable with pitching. They just don’t really need a second pitch. So typically it was 12 when I teach the first, uh, first change up, but I never had an issue and I never even considered it a handicapped.

And that’s some of the things that’s one of the things that I think we do in life. Where it’s when someone says, Oh, you can’t do this because of this. You’re like, Oh, okay. And you automatically make this artificial gate for yourself. Whereas I never thought as an instructor, that hand size had anything to do with teaching a change up.

So it just never even occurred to me. It was just like, all right, let’s get to work. Let’s teach you this. Change up. Never even thought that, Oh, this kid’s got his hands too small to learn this. So be careful out there. There’s certainly misinformation. And if you’ve heard that myth before that your hand size finger size matters on a change up, ignore it

on the docket today. Let’s talk about pickoffs. So pick offs are one of the most underrated things like players need to know them. It’s always a little bit shocking to me. How few players know the proper pickoffs to second base and have a good pick off to first base. I mean, these are, they’re not pivotal things in every game.

Like you’re not going to get in every game where a pickoff is going to make or break you. Right. You’re not going to pick off more than a handful of runners a year as a righty. I mean, as a, as a pro guy, a pro righty starter, you’ll pick off one or two guys a year tops, and that’s lucky if you just happen to catch him guessing, guessing, and that’s really just random.

It really just random chance. If you just pick off to first base a hundred times in the summer, you’re going to catch a guy leaning the wrong way and make a good throw, you know, once and just get lucky. That’s really all it is. Um, but. Being able to call the runners. Um, yikes. I said, hold the runners and being able to hold runners and keep them at second base.

Don’t let them steal third base with one out. Don’t let them steal second base with no one out where they can just then manufacture runs that’s important stuff. And also just having the ability to make good fakes and to figure out when a guy’s bunting. And those are more of like the second base pick off moves.

So my overarching point here today is just that. People don’t practice pickoffs they just really don’t. And it’s something that you learn it in practice and you do it and it’s boring and it’s tedious. And you know, you have to do in games, a lot of pitchers don’t like picking debases I didn’t particularly like it.

And so you end up just getting like this bare minimum dose, like it’s like your algebra class that you, you took it in seventh grade or eighth grade, and then you just never wanted to. And so then you never even thought about algebra again, like you didn’t have to take more algebra, so you didn’t, and that’s kind of how pick offs are, but I’d like people to rethink this.

And I urge all the kids that I work with to like, look just, just spend five minutes a week, like during your. Put your catch play when you’re playing catch with your buddies before practice or before a game, just spend four. Pickoffs just four throws, make them pick off. So, you know, face the other direction.

Do two spin moves, do one inside move and do a couple, a pickoffs to first base. Like just do it as part of your team semi-regularly or go out when you’re playing catch with your dad and just turn away from him and then just act like you’re pitching, you know, the other direction. And then act like your pick into first and he becomes first base.

Uh, just add this to your routine. It doesn’t have, have to be a huge, like, don’t make it, you know, 50 go, let’s go do 50 pickoffs at the park. Like that’s boring. No one wants to do that, but just add it to part of your teen. So especially when I worked with lefty pitchers, this was something I always did with lefties and I wasn’t even a lefty, but I’m like, look, we’re going to teach you a good hang move and a good snap throw the younger you are, the more inappropriate the snap throw is, but.

It’s something to learn, to get comfortable with the snap throws and one where you step off rapidly and you throw like a, and like sh uh, you throw like a sidearm throw to first base. It’s a very, all one motion throw on. Most kids don’t ever learn it because it’s more of like a, uh, college pro kinda move, but there’s no reason.

And a 12 year old can’t have that move. He just has to practice it. And he doesn’t have as much arm strength to kind of snap throw that ball over there. But my point is that. For my lefties, I just beat it into their brains that you have to have a good pick off move. It’s just, it’s a shame and it’s a waste.

If you’re a lefty without a good pick off move, it’s purely effort. It’s purely just showing up and doing the move regularly. And for the two lefties on my 15 U team who practice their moves like semi religiously, like they’re going to do five or six pickoffs. Every time we play catch as a team, they picked off like, Eight guys, each, each for the summer, like one kid picked off three runners in the same game.

And, uh, I don’t think we got an out on that game. Um, that’s besides the point, but I mean, these are 15 year old kids with dirty legitimately good pick off moves. And it wasn’t because they were special. It wasn’t because they were talented. It was because. They showed up. And that was part of their workout as part of their throwing routine.

And they worked on it, you know, and they gave each other feedback on, you know, how deceptive they were. And so even if you’re a righty, this is something that could be part of your routine, where, you know, you, you go through your mechanics, you go through your drills, you come back in, you spring your curve ball, you spend your change up.

You know, your partner gets down, you throw a couple fast balls at each knee. And then you turn away and you do to first base pickoff moves to them. Then you turn even farther. You do two spin moves, act like acting like your partner’s second baseman, and then you do one inside move and do the same thing there.

So again, this is a critical component of being good pitcher and it takes nothing more than just a little bit of effort and to have a move that’s significantly better than your peers. Means you will get more runners than them because your move will be abnormally good. And it will surprise runners. Like they’ll be used to the average crappy pig off move, but then you mosey long and boom, you’re just like very quick and fast and you make more accurate throws in your peers because you make more throws and practice.

It’s a very underrated thing. So I’m going to stop there. I hope you enjoyed the show today and please go do some pick off moves.

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