A high school pitcher is one of the top recruited athletes for the collegiate and professional level.  There are two main objectives to teach young players on how to get to that level of being recruited.  One is how to train his body and arm to throw harder and reduce the risk of injury.  The second objective is teaching them how to actually pitch, meaning what pitch to throw in certain situations or “setting hitters up.”  These objectives will never be achieved without the ground work of having good mechanics.  Good mechanics allows pitchers to: throw harder, reduce injury, have good command of all pitches, and most importantly build confidence.

At We Drop Bombs Baseball, that is our main goal.  Build a foundation of good mechanics so that they can have confidence going into the game.  This way they can perform well and reach those objectives referred to earlier. Not every pitcher throws the same way, we understand that.  Some things are universal no matter what a pitchers mechanics are.  One being weight transfer.  Every pitcher has to establish good weight transfer to throw as hard as they are capable of, have good control, and reduce stress off his arm.  One thing that I have heard over the years is the conflict of teaching “the drop and drive technique.”  Every pitcher at the professional level uses the “drop and drive technique.”  It just depends on the athlete, some pitchers do it more and some do it less.  That is all determined on the pitcher’s height, weight, flexibility, arm slot and overall athletic ability.  The main mechanical objective that is different for each pitcher is the stride.  The length of stride is determined by those same characteristics that varies from athlete to athlete.

So overall, building a good foundation of mechanics is what takes a young pitcher to the next level.  We establish good mechanics first.  After this is accomplished confidences builds, which allows us to work on actually pitching, not just throwing.  Which require pitchers to locate his pitches, learn the proper way to throw off-speed, and learn what pitch to throw depending on the situation.  Our main goal is to establish the physical and mental portion together.  This allows pitchers to throw as hard as they are capable of while reducing the risk of injury, and how to actually perform well in the game.

*Below is in my opinion, the best pitcher in the Major Leagues through the 2015 season (Clayton Kershaw), who happens to have some of the best mechanics in the game.  He has yet to have any major arm injuries and averages over 200 innings a season.  The three pictures show his weight transfer.