Spinning a Pitch - How to teach?

[NewbieBBDad]

How do you guys teach a kid to properly spin the ball? Say a basic four-seam fastball? Shouldn't the spin from a 12-6 overhand be vertical? A 3/4 arm pitch be 45 degrees, sidearm be horizontal, etc?

I finally noticed my son's 4 seamer was almost spinning perpendicular to the path of the pitch. i.e. a corkscrew to the batter. And that is usually when he is really really inconsistent. So there's no movement whatsoever.

Isn't a 4 seamer basically wrist motion straight up and down? My son must be doing something very very weird.

So what do you do to correct this. The only thing I can think of atm was to draw a dark black line around a baseball so if he throws a 4 seamer it's easy to spot.

He's getting a little better now that he can see the spin on the ball but is there anything else I can get him to do?

P.S. He's submarining sidearm now so we're hoping his 4-5 o'clock arm slot four seamer will be basically be a sinker. Thanks all!

[LAball]

Paint a line down the middle of the all. Have him hold it as a 2 seam with the fingers parrallel and right on top of the seams. Your painted line should be right between the fingers. But the most important part is not your index of middle finger. its the thumb, do not place the thumb pad flat on the ball,, the side of the thumb is on the ball, my son even likes the have a little bend on the thumb joint which gives him a 12-6 spin. to change it to a 1-7 spin, my son will need to straight the thumb a little. Throw the ball and make sure the spin is correct. You might need to do the wrist flick drill and help with this.

[NewbieBBDad]

Thanks for the tip about the thumb position, never considered that too much. Got the balls painted so we've been working it a little.

I've noticed now he can spin the ball and get a solid stripe to it is rotating but it seems the stripe is spinning in the wrong axis. Here's the thing, on his submarine 4:30 o'clock throw I would expect to see the solid strip coming at me at a 45 degree angle straight on. Instead, the ball seems to be rotating a bit to the left, i.e. I don't see the stripe head on.

Isn't that weird? How can he throw the right spin but have it off axis???

[laflippin]

It can be useful to consider the spin axis of the ball independently of the spin direction.

It can also be useful to categorize pitch types by the orientation of the palm at release point. Thus, standard 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs are both released with the index and middle fingers directly behind the ball, with the plane of the palm facing the target. That's one of the reasons FBs are fast: They are launched with maximal leverage applied by the forearm, wrist, and hand. If a pitcher throws with fastball mechanics, excepting that his forearm, wrist, and hand are approximately half-supinated (think of full supination as the forearm-wrist-palm orientation when making a karate chop) then he will get football-like spiral on the ball, i.e., a slider. The gyroball is actually a special case of the slider--when the spin axis of the ball is pointed in exactly the same direction as the ball's flight. (However, the spin-derived Magnus force on gyroballs is zero, so they do not have the beneficial lateral movement of sliders.) Sliders have football-spiral spin, but the spin axis is at an angle to the direction of flight. These pitches have useful movement--breaking slightly down and slightly away from the pitcher's throwing arm. If a pitcher releases the ball with full supination, with an over-hand arm-slot, the ball rolls forward over the top edge of his index finger and he will get "topspin" on the ball. That causes the ball to drop quite a bit more rapidly than gravity alone can do.

Thus, an over-the-top pitcher, a Sandy Koufax or a Trevor Hoffman, will throw a fastball that has backspin with a horizontal spin axis. The backspin and the direction of the spin axis of a "6-to-12 FB" conspire to cause these fastballs to be pretty straight and to resist the gravitational force somewhat. (They don't overcome gravity and actually rise, but they can appear to rise against a hitter's normal expectations). Sandy Koufax's curve, which was one of the best, also had a horizontal spin axis but with topspin giving it a sharp downward break.

A pure side-arm pitcher throwing a fastball will get backspin on the ball with a vertical spin axis. So, a sidearmed RHP's fastball will bear in on a right-handed hitter. Conversely, a sidearmed LHP's fastball (think Randy Johnson) will bear in on a left-handed hitter.

A true submariner, releasing the ball palm forward with fingers directly behind the ball, will get a fastball with topspin. Submariner's usually don't get the same FB velocities that overhand pitchers get, but the sharp topspin-derived downward break on their fastball can be extremely effective. If you want to see some great video of submariners at work, and the movement they get, check out shuuto150's YouTube channel and browse around for his clips of Japanese submariners at work. They are more common in Japan than here, and some of them have very filthy stuff.

[NewbieBBDad]

Good stuff. The more I think about it I think my son is throwing his 4 seamer with his wrist at an off angle to the direction of the throw. Can't think of another way to explain it.

So picture the flight path of a 4 seamer. My intuition tells me the stripe should be on the same flight path. Instead, the stripe is off to the left or right. So he must be throwing in one direction but the wrist release is off angle to the flight path.

The big question is, is this bad? Are we not getting movement because of this? Sorry, weird questions to ask but having that stripe really helps see what is going on.

[laflippin]

I'm not sure I fully understand your observations from use of a marked ball.

If the stripe you mentioned goes around the equator of the ball, and a fastball is thrown with it in such a way that the spin axis is perpendicular to the striped equator, then the stripe should look like a solid line on the face of the spinning ball, and the angle of this solid line should closely reflect the pitcher's arm angle.

So, imagine Sandy Koufax throwing a fastball with a striped ball. The spin axis would be horizontal to the plane of the ground, and the stripe would look like a vertical line on the face of the ball.

A 3/4 guy throwing the same ball for a fastball would get a spin axis that is somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees to the plane of the ground and the line (stripe) through the middle of the ball would be at the same angle as his arm at release point.

A sidearmer throwing the same ball for a fastball would get a spin axis that is vertical to the plane of the ground and the line in the middle of the spinning ball would look the same as his arm-angle: Horizontal to the plane of the ground.

If you use a striped ball for throwing a slider, the visual will look very confusing unless the ball is gripped in just the right way to make the stripe pass through both poles of the spin axis. So, you need to be able to "walk through" the slider release, make an estimate of where you think the spin axis will be, and then adjust the orientation of the stripe to make it visualize properly. Many catchers and hitters talk about the "red dot" or "red circle" they can detect on the face of some sliders. This is just a consequence of the spinning seams being aligned with the spin axis in such a way as to create the "slider pattern". I don't generally agree with much of the stuff in John Bagonzi's book, The Act of Pitching, but he definitely got the slider pattern correct and he gives a nice discussion of these visuals. Baldwin, Nathan, and somebody else also published a nice SABR paper that really gets into the physics of the slider and the reasons for the visual patterns on various sliders.

Anyway, if you orient the stripe properly in your grip and throw a slider you will see a very dark spot, about the size of a coin, somewhere on the face of the ball. If this dark spot is exactly in the middle of the ball--that's actually a gyroball and it won't show any special lateral movement. If the spot is off-center, that's a slider and it will show some nice down and away movement.

[NewbieBBDad]

laflipping, I understand what you are saying and I agree that is what I should observe.

But that is not how my son is throwing. Imagine that Koufax fastball coming at you and imagine not seeing the stripe from 12 to 6 o'clock. You do see a solid stripe so the ball is spinning but the stripe is off to the left. (From an eagle eye's view, imagine the stripe is running from 1 to 7 o'clock.)

So I can only guess that he's snapping the wrist at an off-angle to the flight path in order to get such a weird off-axis spin. Gonna also hope that's a cause of his inconsistency... :D

[NewbieBBDad]

Quick question, on a four seam fastball, do you snap the wrist down to get spin? Do you leave the wrist relaxed and just push with the fingers? Basically besides the grip what is the hand/wrist and fingers doing exactly???

Thanks again all.