Major League Pitching Grips

We received another great question: This time about our change-up article and video.

“My son is almost 8 years old and I wonder if he could learn to throw change off speed (three fingers change up or maybe C-Change). His coach told me he is too young yet, but I think he could.

I read your article: Different Change-up Pitching Grips and I think it’s very useful and interesting. I respect a pitcher when he has powerful fastball combined with a powerful change up too.

About the article, I don’t get it too much when you said: “the only difference is you change your wrist and forearm angle on the pitch”. Could you be more specific or could you give me any details about it?”

Once fastball mechanics are sound it is important to learn how to throw an off-speed pitch correctly.  Age has nothing to do with throwing a change-up “correctly”.  Our pitching Grips 101 e-book goes into great detail about several different major league pitches that you will find useful and harmless on your throwing arm when applied with great mechanics.

Changing your wrist and forearm angle means that the circle is thrown at the glove for the change-up.  The curveball is set up like a karate chop type pitch.  With a fastball your palm is facing the catcher at release of the baseball applying only force on it.  All you do to throw other pitches is change the direction of your wrist (karate chop, circle to catcher, etc).  It’s important to note you are not changing arm slot or altering pitching mechanics to throw another pitch.  Many pitchers know this, but still unfortunately make mechanical changes when throwing other pitches.

Pitching Tip: at about 3:20 on this video you can make a change and place the middle finger closer to the ring finger and thumb so the thumb and middle finger do not have to split the ball in half.  My pitchers have found even more rotation on the ball this way and found it easier to throw the “c” or the circle toward the plate.

Here is the change-up video and article:

https://www.thepitchingacademy.com/articles/pitching-grips/different-changeup-pitching-grips/

We have also just released our Baseball DVD that has over 45 minutes of information on how to throw many major league pitching grips.