youngin' throwing a changeup??

[bull56]

my youngest son just turned 9 yrs old, and is a very good pitcher in his league. he throws 43- 45 mph and on most days thats all he needs to be successful. BUT, some days he needs a changeup 4 or 5 times in a game. i have practiced different grips and ideas with him but the changeup never seems to slow down but maybe 3 mph or so. he has a big tryout in about a month and i know the coach is going to want him to throw a change. i was looking for help on best grips and pointers to help a 9yr old throw a good change that slows down about 10 mph. ive never thrown one and dads fastball is clocked about 55mph, so any advice would be very helpful.thx ps great website

[TG Coach]

my youngest son just turned 9 yrs old, and is a very good pitcher in his league. he throws 43- 45 mph and on most days thats all he needs to be successful. BUT, some days he needs a changeup 4 or 5 times in a game. i have practiced different grips and ideas with him but the changeup never seems to slow down but maybe 3 mph or so. he has a big tryout in about a month and i know the coach is going to want him to throw a change. i was looking for help on best grips and pointers to help a 9yr old throw a good change that slows down about 10 mph. ive never thrown one and dads fastball is clocked about 55mph, so any advice would be very helpful.thx ps great website

Teach him a circle change and a knuckle change. One is a straight change. The other breaks like a curve just from the grip with none of the potential arm problems associated with the curve. I'm concerned with the term "big tryout" connected to 9U. DO NOT let your kid pitch too much. Learn about growth plates. No one remembers the 9U heroes.

I let other parents gloat about their son's pitching prowess in 9U while my son barely pitched. The two 9U studs have had arm surgery and no longer pitch. Neither one will play high school ball due to lack of talent. My son who barely pitched at 9U was the hardest thrower on his middle school team and has been told by the varsity coach he will pitch JV as a freshman next year.

http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/pitching_grips.htm

http://http://www.asmi.org/ (http://www.asmi.org/)

[Postblank]

Teach him a circle change and a knuckle change. One is a straight change. The other breaks like a curve just from the grip with none of the potential arm problems associated with the curve. I'm concerned with the term "big tryout" connected to 9U. DO NOT let your kid pitch too much. Learn about growth plates. No one remembers the 9U heroes.

I let other parents gloat about their son's pitching prowess in 9U while my son barely pitched. The two 9U studs have had arm surgery and no longer pitch. Neither one will play high school ball due to lack of talent. My son who barely pitched at 9U was the hardest thrower on his middle school team and has been told by the varsity coach he will pitch JV as a freshman next year.

http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/pitching_grips.htm

http://http://www.asmi.org/ (http://www.asmi.org/)I played basically year round in middle school with two guys that were pitching studs during the time. They'd throw in a game until their arms starting hurting them. If they were doing well, they'd break out the secret stash of icy hot and keep pitching. They got the reps while I only pitched maybe a couple innings a week.

I'd like to see how their arms are now. I hope they can still play, because they were gifted, just taught stupidity by their run-of-the-mill baseball dads.

Also, why the hell would a coach of a 9-10 year old team be looking for kids to already be throwing off-speed pitches? I got away with strictly fastball until Babe Ruth.

[TG Coach]

Also, why the hell would a coach of a 9-10 year old team be looking for kids to already be throwing off-speed pitches? I got away with strictly fastball until Babe Ruth.

Today's travel teams are a lot different than our era's rec teams. The good teams have kids who can swing the bat from top to bottom of the order. Without an offspeed pitch there will be several kids who can mash the ball. If they're really good they have a stable of pitchers or ride a handful of arms to a pulp.

Since you mentioned BR ball, I ran a better than average 13U travel team last year (played .600+ ball). We beat a team in a tournament that went to the 13U BRWS 14-3. My son played a couple of games on the high school JV summer team. He said the top 13U travel pitchers threw just as hard as the typical 15/16U JV pitcher. They were as, or almost as big, too.

The teams are much more talented when the roster isn't constricted by boundaries.

[Postblank]

I'd imagine Babe Ruth kids can figure out someone's fastball pretty quickly. Without the proper tuitoring on how to advance beyond what I had more or less taught myself in LL (because coaches in both Babe Ruth leagues were more interested in their own sons and my dad ran out of things to teach me before LL) my pitching time in BR was cut rather short.


He said the top 13U travel pitchers threw just as hard as the typical 15/16U JV pitcher. They were as, or almost as big, too.
My last year of LL, our All-Star team faced against another team's stable of All-Stars. I noticed they were also unusually large and threw harder. A lot of eyebrows were raised as we got creamed. Certainly a very suspect group of kids to say the very least. They looked more like strung-out jockies than twelve year olds.

[TG Coach]

I'd imagine Babe Ruth kids can figure out someone's fastball pretty quickly. Without the proper tuitoring on how to advance beyond what I had more or less taught myself in LL (because coaches in both Babe Ruth leagues were more interested in their own sons and my dad ran out of things to teach me before LL) my pitching time in BR was cut rather short.


My last year of LL, our All-Star team faced against another team's stable of All-Stars. I noticed they were also unusually large and threw harder. A lot of eyebrows were raised as we got creamed. Certainly a very suspect group of kids to say the very least. They looked more like strung-out jockies than twelve year olds.

First of all the fastball is just one pitch. It's the same reason I first stated even a 9U travel pitcher needs two pitches. Who cares if BR kids can hit a fastball. All our pitchers have three pitches.

Let me take it a step further on the difference between travel and rec. This year's 14U travel team is 7-1 versus 16U A level Connie Mack teams. They would destroy a 14/15U BR team. My son is the closer on his middle school team. He's #8 on the travel staff. Five of the pitchers are six feet tall. One is 6'3". Ten are at least 5'9". They're all the correct age. It's what happens when teams can recruit rather then be restricted by boundaries.

You will see the same thing relative to 9U travel ball. That's why I recommended the change as a second pitch. Plus it's never too early to learn the change. It's just advice relative to travel. You can fight it all you like ... all the way to a mercy loss.

[Williamsburg2599]

You can also try the palmball:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmball

I've had good success with it in my few pitching appearances. On a good day it has some good side to side movement, believe it or not.

[scorekeeper]

my youngest son just turned 9 yrs old, and is a very good pitcher in his league. he throws 43- 45 mph and on most days thats all he needs to be successful. BUT, some days he needs a changeup 4 or 5 times in a game. i have practiced different grips and ideas with him but the changeup never seems to slow down but maybe 3 mph or so. he has a big tryout in about a month and i know the coach is going to want him to throw a change. i was looking for help on best grips and pointers to help a 9yr old throw a good change that slows down about 10 mph. ive never thrown one and dads fastball is clocked about 55mph, so any advice would be very helpful.thx ps great website

You’ve been sucked into the “Baseball Dogma” black hole!

That 10MPH difference is just a number that someone threw out there because it sounded good, not because there was any special thing that happened. Its not like a 10MPH difference is good, a 5 sucks, and a 15 is killers stuff! There’s a lot more to it than that.

You’re makin’ me dig out a very old SS to try to explain something. ;)

Let’s look at some examples. Assume Johan Santana’s cruising FB is 93. now assume his “A” CU is 83. At 93, the time it takes to go 60’6 is .43988. The time it takes to go that distance at 83 is .49288. The difference is .05210.

Your boy’s cruising FB is 44. at 46’ that’s .71281. You want him to show a change of 10mph down to 34. That would be .92246. The difference is .20965. Are you seeing a problem here?

What you really want, is to get the same PERCENTAGE of velocity reduction, not the SAME reduction! You can sure check my math, but it looks to me like the.05210 is a velocity reduction of a bit more than 12%. So let’s see what 12% of .71281 would be to try to get the same relative reduction.

Again, my math may be off, but it looks like a 12% reduction would be .08553. That would mean the time needs to be .79834 to be relatively the same. In order to get that time difference, the velocity only has to go down to about 39.3MPH.

That way the velocity difference would appear exactly the same from 44 to 39.3 as it would from 93 to 83. Even if my math is wrong, I think you get the idea. YOU DON”T WANT A 10MPH DIFFERENCE AT 46’!

He’s only 9 freakin’ years old, not a ML P with 20 years experience! You need to make things as easy as possible, not more complicated. If he throws his FB with his index and middle fingers “behind” the ball, just have him move his ring finger behind the ball too. Normally, the difference in a pitch thrown the 2 different ways will be at least 3MPH no matter how hard he tries to throw it.

If that’s true, and I don’t know why it shouldn’t be unless you kids is very much different than everyone else in the world, he should be able to get another 1-3MPH drop by simply moving the ball away from the fingertips toward the palm. Its called “burying” the ball.

Remember, keep it simple! 2 fingers = FB, 3 = CU, and don’t let any of the local morons try to tell you it has to be a 10MPH difference! Its bad enough that at 45MPH the ball has an arc to it, but at 35 it would start to look more like a slo-pitch SB pitch, and the only way to get it would be to slooooooow the arm waaaaay down, and all that’ll do is cause lots of trouble.

Good luck!

[bull56]

thx for the input fellas...always appreciated... NOW lets get a couple things straight here. 1st off i do not believe say 8 -10 mph slower for a changeup is a bad number at age 9. if you can honestly stand in the box from 45' and tell the difference between 42mph and 39mph, well youre a better man than me. 3 mph would time a 9yr old perfectly to smash wherever he wants. secondly, it is a so called big tryout for 3 reasons.1)my son wants to play for this team.2)they have good coaches that will teach my son how to play ball so i do not have to ride his butt anymore.3.)they have good players which means my son does not have to pitch every game he has ever played in. so my cause for this is to not to get my son pitching always, it is exactly the opposite reason...keep him from pitching every game. thx for the input on the original topic for you guys who helped with it.