“Hard thrower. Better than average fastball but lacks overall control.”

That’s obviously not gonna play. Wait...what’s the kids name again?

Simultaneously, in a million bullpens thrown by a million kids they are expected to have a level of motor control and pitching ability that

The Poster Boy For Control

did not have WHEN HE WAS EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD!

Talked about this a fair amount during last week’s @DrivelineBB DrivelinePLUS webinar, when someone asked about when we have Academy kids working on command vs velocity.

We’re *always* working on command. We just don’t want to sacrifice a massive amount of velocity to get it.

Other than specific high output training (pulldowns - when we are actively trying to get kids to focus 99.9% of their intention to output) we always want to be intentional with our throwing. Plyos, magic 5oz baseballs, long toss etc. It all matters. Everything matters.

The difference is we need kids to to learn how to sprint by sprinting. The task of pitching *requires output* paired with control. So we train with that intention. And train kids in consideration that...they’re kids.

Pitching isn’t powerlifting. But it isn’t snooker either.

And to extend the analogy (possibly outside of the boundaries of my knowledge) some kids are going to eventually be short distance runners. Some are going to be better at longer distances.

But all of them are going to be really good at running