EP85 What Is Diamondbabble? First-pitch tactics and Should Pitchers Throw Two Breaking Balls?

Diamondbabble: when baseball coaches describe things in overly complicated ways. Why is the game overflowing with it? In this episode, Dan reads examples of diamondbabble from Twitter and explains the road forward. And, what should a pitcher be thinking on the first pitch of an at-bat? Lastly, should pitchers throw two different breaking balls? Or should they stick to one?

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EP85 Dear Baseball Gods Transcript: Diamondbabble, First-pitch tactics; Pitchers Throwing Two Breaking Balls

You’re listening to the dear 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 wisdom, an overly technical diamond babble.

All right. I’m Dan Blewett. And in today’s talk, we’re going to discuss diamond babble. So this is a, a, a phrase or, or not a phrase is a term that I’ve coined. because they’re becoming increasingly frustrated with the biomechanical junk terminology used to describe baseball actions. That’s really just popularized, by gurus and people who don’t really understand what they’re talking about.

And so they hide behind this fancy language. To describe things that you could, honestly, if you took the time and the care and you understood it well enough, you could describe anything in baseball to a 10 year old. This is really a sticking point for me. And a lot of my peers that I respect because.

When you are a coach, it’s your job not to make yourself look as smart as possible. What it’s your job to help other people learn and grow. And when you’re using terminology that talks above them, it just shows a disrespect, a lack of respect for their intelligence. And it also, I think, exposes what is really just a lack of depth of knowledge on your own part, because if you can’t simplify something, then you don’t understand it well enough.

Anything can be boiled down into, into layman terminology. Or, using analogies, all this other stuff to help people understand. So let me give you some examples of diamond babble. I’m gonna read some real tweets from our fabulous world of Twitter. Okay. This is referring to catching slow motion extension to flection mapping.

There’s tremendous value in going fast and allowing the body to self-organize slowing it down. Also has a role in high level motor pattern development. Okay. Do you have any idea what he was referring to? He was basically referring to a catcher, like turning his wrist and hand over and learning to kind of catch through the ball.

That’s how we explained it. Flection or extension to flection mapping. That’s where we are in 2020 describing catcher actions behind the plate. It’s it’s baffling. Alright. Here’s another one. Catcher throwing patterns are important to look at as they can easily slip into compensation patterns. Here’s a guy who was going from elbow fluction to extension and was dealing with some anterior shoulder discomfort due to the humeral head being pushed forward at lay back.

So this requires you. As a coach or a player or a parent who wants to learn, it requires you to know what a compensation pattern is. What is the compensation pattern, elbow flection, which is just the angle of bend in your elbow. two extension, which is you straightening your elbow, to anterior shoulder discomfort.

Anterior is the front of your shoulder and the humeral head, which is the ball of your, your upper arm. Is your humerus. And then being pushed forward into lay back your arm, lays back, and external rotation, external rotation. Is your arm going back into that gross position you see when you throw so again, here’s the guy who was going from elbow flection to extension.

It was dealing with some anterior shoulder comfort. he could have said here’s a guy who was a, you know, going from. I don’t even know what he’s actually getting at. Cause this one doesn’t have a video with it. but you know, he’s had some pain in the front of his shoulder, but he had to use the word interior.

here’s another one. the task constraints band, and one hop in parenthesis assist in more efficient glove path as well as elbow extension after the catch. Fascinating, really learned a lot there. here’s one about hitting for context. The barrel doesn’t need to be delivered with this type of release pattern.

Ooh. Do you have to release pattern? Isn’t hidden. Cause I don’t. this is just one release technique. You can also deliver the, deliver the head in a couple other ways. The principle though, is that it should be releasing proximal to distal. In quotation marks, or in parentheses into out, which is good.

He was trying to summarize, I appreciate that. Gaining speed, different hitters create this as a three part tweet, different hitters create different degrees of separation, but they shouldn’t be disconnected. The goal of separation is to pull out fascial Slack from the spiral, sling and gain cross body connection, not create disconnection and drag the barrel, like a truck, pulling a trailer for context.

Because this is good. We do need context for context, the barrel doesn’t need to be delivered with this type of release pattern. I mean, I think that’s obviously at this point, this is just one release technique. actually, so that was the first tweet I went backward there. I apologize. here’s another one, Ben really feeling the concept of no release medicine ball work lately.

The impulse it creates on the body to generate stability and rapidly distribute. Tension is something I think has a lot of value in instituting medicine ball work into a program. Fascinating. So I’m going to read one more. This is like the max. This is like the Mac daddy. Oh, good, good Lord. A consideration for pelvic recoil.

This is a guy talking about hitting a consideration for pelvic recoil. semi-colon. I do love the use of semi colons by the way I use them in my writing, but I don’t have Twitter is really the place for it. Although I do use them in Twitter. So I guess I can’t really hate here. It consideration for pelvic recoil.

Pelvis is pulled into the lead femur via adductor Magnus, and the acetabulum rotates internally on the femoral head via anterior glute fibers, the ER fibers of the glute med undergo stretch. Add high velocity to the biomechanics and reflex occurs. I mean out there in audio land, there’s no way you have any idea what that tweet meant.

There’s like no context through which you could figure out what this guy’s talking about. Even with the accompanying photos or videos or gifts, it’s just diamond babble. It’s just nonsense. It’s just junk terminology. And so what I really respect about a lot of the people that. Mentored me in the strength conditioning industry and I’ll list a couple.

Nick Tuenello, was one of my mentors. I interned for him. He’s a world renowned, personal trainer, strength, coach writer. He does seminars all over the world and he gives people really good, actionable, like time-tested. Logical fitness advice. And it was something that I always use in all my strength programs.

Mike Reinold, I never worked for him. I never interned under him, but, I worked as an editor on his elite baseball performance website. He had asked me to speak at one of his seminars and he is just a guy who just gives, gives, gives to other. People who are trying to make a name for themselves in the industry.

He, someone that really lifts people up and he is one of the smartest guys, his hands in all sorts of research. I mean, he is one of like the leading baseball researchers and he makes everything clear, layman and simple. And, one of my others is Alan Nathan. He is the, essentially like the, the big name in the baseball physics.

So he’s at POB guy on Twitter and. I mean, he’s a world renowned, like in creating the BB core standard and creating know different densities for baseballs and measuring, seems all the changes in the baseball and in bats, all these bat certifications, Alan’s been part of panels, helping to understand and like certify the physics essentially for all this stuff.

So, I mean, incredibly smart when it comes to the spin, the physics, the flight of baseballs, I mean, he’s been a physics professor for 40 years. He’s a, I guess he’s retired now, but he’s still a professor of Meredith. And if you go to listen to one of his talks, cause I’ve spoken at saber seminar, he’s spoke, he’s been at Sabre seminars since its inception.

He helps organize it. You listen to one of his physics of baseball talks. Every single person in the audience can understand every word he says and they leave thinking, wow, I just learned a lot about physics today. I was here to learn about baseball. I want to know more about it, but I don’t have a background in physics and I could understand everything.

Dr. Nathan said, and so. There are lots of people out there like them in many industries who work really hard to help other people understand, knowing that I’m never gonna, you know, grab a physics book and try to, you know, do my own equations and really dive into physics. I’m just not, I’ve got other priorities, but I do want to learn.

And there’s a lot of people like that. And you shouldn’t have to have a biomechanics degree to understand pitching parents. You have so much, you have so much on your plate, driving your kids around, you know, Raising your kids going to work. Like you have so much on your plate. You’re the busiest people ever.

You don’t have time to just be trying to solve these equational tweets to figure out if your son can swing a bat or not, or if your daughter can swing a bat or not. So it’s really, it’s a sad trend and that’s part of this podcast. And it’s part of my brand in general is explaining things simply because there is nothing in baseball.

And this is why my first book was called pitching. Isn’t complicated. There is nothing in baseball that is so complex. Whether it’s a movement, whether it’s, it doesn’t matter what it is. There’s nothing in baseball. That’s so complex that you could not simplify it and teach it to a 10 year old. There’s just, there’s not one thing you can use.

Other words, you can find ways to make people understand and help them along if you try. But this is a really disturbing trend in baseball, where people are trying to separate themselves from the crowd they’re trying to stand out. And when you don’t have a really robust playing background or you don’t have something to hang your hat on, That’s when I think people, their insecurity comes out and then they try to make stuff sounds, sound complicated.

They try to reinvent the wheel. They try to, you know, make a name for themselves using this complex terminology. Cause if they just make it simple, when they don’t really have the, on the field experience or the really deep coaching experience, then they don’t feel like they have anything. Which I understand, but, it’s, it’s a great, like I said, it’s a growing problem and, you should demand more from coaches.

So if you’re out there on the web and you’re reading through and earnestly, honestly, trying to learn, and they’re just passing this junk off. Throw the hashtag in there. Hey, this is diamond babble. You don’t actually have to do that, but ask them, Hey, what did this tweet mean? I would genuinely like to learn, but I don’t understand the language you’re using.

People need to do better as coaches explain this stuff and you deserve better as parents, players and coaches.

All right in today’s 92nd mindset. We are going to go over first pitch strikes for pitchers. So your first pitch mindset is really important. And this is what I want you to. This is the thing I’m going to impress the most on you today. When you’re faced with an O account brand new bat, your number one thing you should do as a pitcher, or you should be thinking about, especially if you have a little bit of giddy up on your fast ball.

So say you throw a little bit harder than average. This is especially true. Your first pitch should be aggressive in the middle part of the plate. And here’s why, so, number one, you’re not going to have scouting reports and younger levels of baseball. You’re not going to have video. You might have game changer.

And some of the basic stuff I can tell you. But in general, you’re not going to know much about these players and you’re not going to know much about what they can do or what their swing looks like. Their bat speed, all that stuff until he back it’s under way. So the first pitch, I think everyone knows, and you’ve been harped on it.

Getting ahead is extremely important, which it absolutely is getting two Oh one is one of the best things you can do as a pitcher. It allows you to then start to go. Away from the molded plate. Cause you have more margin for error now because falling back, you know, missing with a ball, doesn’t hurt you as much as if you’re one out.

If you’re one and you miss now, you’re two. Oh, now you’re in deep trouble of having to catch up in the count where a guy might take you deep. So the important thing here is we want to be aggressive to get into buying the account, but the other tertiary benefit here or the secondary benefit, I don’t know why I keep using the word tertiary so much.

The secondary benefit of going down the middle is that you get to figure out what their bat speed is, especially if you throw fastball. So I threw harder than average, and I had some, some sort of like spin stuff and some giddyup on my fastball. I would challenge guys on the first pitch because I knew if I did that, I get ahead.

If they swung some presented at the time they’d be out, right. They put the ball in play and just fly out or pop out or grounded on the first pitch. And if they did swing and they didn’t put the ball in play, I was going to figure out where their bat speed was, because if I throw it right down the middle.

Hard and they’re laid on it. It gives me a lot of info. Now I can say, okay, if he can’t catch up down the middle, I can go in and he’s going to have zero chance of catching up. Right. Or if he smokes it foul, I could say, okay, well he’s definitely got the bat speed to catch up. you know, maybe it’s time to be a little more careful or go to an offsuit pitch or something, or maybe he was ambushing.

But you should. The mindset thing I want to leave you with today is take the first pitch of the bat is a fact finding mission. It’s extremely rare that you’re going to get taken deep or a hit a hitter’s really gonna be ready to smash one on the first pitch. You’re going to have a little more room for error hitters, like to see the back kind of underway and be a little more comfortable.

So take the first pitch is a fact finding mission. Make it your mission to get ahead, compete in the middle of the strike zone. Throw it hard. And this is obviously you can throw off speed stuff on the first pitch. Sometimes I’m not saying that it’s always fast, cause it’s certainly not. But when you’re going to throw a fast ball or it’s like a non-pressure situation, second inning, you know, like nothing’s going right now, bases are empty.

It makes a lot of sense to try to get hit with the fastball. And if you do that, don’t be too fine compete over the middle, knowing that you’re going to get strikes, you’re going to get first pitch outs. They’re going to be enticed to swing. And when they do swing, you’re going to get a lot of Intel, a lot of info on what they can do with the bat, how fast their hands are, how fast their bat speed is.

And from there now you have a little bit of an idea that you can start to map out your pitch sequencing for the rest of the bat.

Alright, now it’s time for our listener Q and a portion of the show questions from the pious pious means to be devoutly faithful. And if you’re devout to the game of baseball, then you’re exactly the kind of person I want to hear from. If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, please email a voice recording to hello@danblewett.com.

All right. So today’s question comes from Morgan. Hey Dan, this is Morgan from Orlando, Florida. My question is how many pitches should I have in my pitch repertoire? Should I focus on having two breaking balls or should I just focus on having one? Thanks. Very much answering my question. Alright, thanks, Morgan.

Appreciate the question. And this is a good one that I really like answering. So basically the answer is every pitcher should aspire to have three really high quality pitches. Before he goes on to a fourth, and this is what you see in most pro players. Most guys enter college baseball with a fast ball, a pretty good second pitch and a very mediocre third bitch.

That’s typically how it is then if they’re good enough to go into pro ball, they’ll have a fast ball with enough velocity, which usually means low nineties or better. And then a good second pitch, which either means their primary breaking ball or their change up. And then a third pitch that’s kind of okay.

Still hopefully budding into another outfit, but most pitchers, even in the big leagues only have like one outpitch, maybe two, if they’re lucky and that’s exceptional. So we want basically most relievers in the big leagues have two outages, which is their fastball, mid, upper nineties, and one secondary pitch.

Usually a slider curve ball breaking ball. So, my roundabout point here is that you’re not going to need two breaking balls. And here’s part of the reason why number one, you definitely need a change up at pretty much every level of baseball, whether they’re a starter reliever, as you go, that’s something that’s going to get the opposite handed guy out.

So if you only have two breaking balls, they’re both going to break into opposite handed. better. So if you’re righty and you have two breaking balls, both those breaking balls are gonna break in the lefties. You want something that’ll fade away from lefties of your righty or away from righties. If you’re a lefty, secondly, why are you going to have two breaking balls?

How do you know which one to use? And when that’s a really good question, they all need to have a specific purpose. So for most pitchers below the big leagues, There’s not a really good reason to use one breaking ball or another, like, why would you throw a slider to this guy instead of a curve ball, if your curveball’s good, or why would you, you know, vice versa, every pitch that’s in your repertoire is a tool.

So this is kind of like having to power drills. It’s like, why do you need to Bauer drills? If you have one really good power drill it’ll drive screws, you know, it’ll drill holes. It’ll do all these different things and lasts a really long time. You don’t really need to carry two around. And that’s often the case.

If you have a dynamite slider, Why do you need to add a curve ball? What, what situation is the curve ball better than a slider when you have a really good slider? And the answer is that it’s, it’s, it just isn’t most of the time. Typically, when you see guys add a second breaking ball, there’s someone like Cole Hamels, who he made millions and millions of dollars on fast ball.

Really good. Changeup really great curve ball. Right. And then later in his career, his velocity started declined slightly. He started adding a slider because he’s like, okay, this is a very purposeful pitch that I can help it. You know, I can bury. A lefty with where I can maybe bury it on the hands of a writing.

It was a very purposeful pitch. It’s like getting a very specialty specialized tool that you’re only gonna use once in a while. So that’s typically how the secondary breaking ball gets added in. So most times where the young pitchers with amateur pitchers and they have two breaking balls, both of them were pretty mediocre.

And, and usually that’s the cover up because they don’t have a change up. But if you have a really good fast one, you can command it and you have a good change up. You only need one breaking ball. That’s really the reality. And you just want to devote as much time, especially when you’re young to building up all three of those pitches, to where all through your excellent and could potentially be strike out pitches.

before adding that fourth. And again, that fourth is really where the second breaking ball is in a comment.

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 through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code baseball gods, just for being a listener.

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