The Toughest Pitching Location To Pitch To... And How You Can Get It There!

You may want to print this one off and keep it in your "baseball bag of tricks."

I want to take a closer look at a difficult location for pitchers to pitch to... and I want to give you a few solutions on how to get it there so you can be more successful on the bump.

The toughest spot any baseball pitcher's got to pitch to is a fastball on the low, outside corner of the strike zone. That spot forces a pitcher to make a pitch across his body and across the heart of the plate.

With that being the case, the same pitching mechanics that may work for a fastball middle to middle-in just won't work. The body's timing mechanism during the pitching delivery has got to adjust.

You see, to get outside part of the plate with that fastball, a pitcher's got to get his upper body turned a little more quickly than that pitch middle to middle-in. That way (because the trunk is rotated more) the actual release point of the pitch itself can be slightly farther out in front of the body -- which makes it easier to hit the outside corner of the plate.

A lot of pitchers I work with, who have trouble making that pitch, tend to rotate slowly and drag their hand. Now a lot of pitchers I work with don't rotate their trunk properly as it is, but the mechanical flaw is more prominent on pitches to the outside part of the plate where the trunk needs to rotate quicker.

If you want to pitch to the outside part of the plate, you really have to get your trunk rotated.

So look: when throwing practice bullpens, work on getting that trunk rotated more quickly on fastballs to the outside part of the plate. I guarantee you'll be pleased with the better strike-results.

One final thought...

As you practice this, you may become frustrated that you're not able to get the timing down on the first couple of sessions you work on it.

That's OK and certainly part of the learning process.

However, if you're making a pitch to the outside part of the plate and miss, you should be missing outside -- not middle or middle-in (this goes for game situations, too!). Middle and middle-in means your trunk isn't getting around.

Yours in baseball,

Steven Ellis
The Complete Pitcher, Inc.
www.thecompletepitcher.com