There are many young pitchers at the Little League and high school levels who still believe that pitching success is about how many different pitches you can throw. There are coaches at these levels who do not understand that keeping it simple is always the best strategy for mastering pitching.
If you watch Major League Baseball, you will hear a lot about what pitches are being thrown, such as a slider, a cutter, or a splitter. These are pitches that are best left to be learned much later in a pitcher’s career, college age being the soonest.
Prior to college age, a slider and cutter can be very stressful on a growing pitcher. Yet, there are pitching instructors who are actually teaching Little League pitchers to throw a cutter and, sometimes, even a slider. Both pitches are very stressful on the elbow. Most youth and high school pitchers do not have the hand size to throw a split-finger fastball, which is also considered stressful on the elbow.
The slider may be the most stressful pitch to throw at any level and may be more responsible for Tommy John elbow surgery than any single pitch because the elbow ligament on the inside of the elbow is more susceptible to the stress and strain.
No Sliders Should Be Taught Until After High School
The slider is a pitch that I would not recommend to any pitcher until they reach college age. Prior to college, the breaking ball of choice should always be a curveball because it is less stressful, but is more difficult to master than a slider. However, up until today, we were seeing more and more sliders and, yet, I believe the advent of the curveball has returned to pro baseball. The reason being that fewer hitters have seen many good curveballs coming up, because the focus has been on the other three pitches at the college level, and because curveballs are less stressful.
At the youth level, prior to high school, pitchers need to learn how to throw and command their fastball first, and then learn how to change speeds with a changeup, not a curveball. Those two pitches can easily carry any pitcher into high school because command of the strike zone and changing speeds is the real key to pitching success at any level.
The third pitch in any youth pitchers arsenal should be a two-seam fastball for movement, and for a slight reduction in speed from the four-seam fastball.
Good Fastball Command Equates to More Pitches in the Arsenal
What most youth coaches and parents do not understand is that command of the fastball is like having several pitches in one because hitters react differently to pitches in different areas of the strike zone. So, a four-seam fastball can be four or five different pitches depending on where it is thrown.
Then, if you are that youth pitcher with a changeup, which is less stressful than throwing a curveball, and more easily thrown for consistent strikes, now you have a pitcher who can make hitters very uncomfortable.
Once a pitcher reaches high school, he can begin to work with developing rotation on his curveball, and work on throwing it sparingly in games. But, even at the Major League level, most pitching coaches would prefer that a pitcher’s breaking ball be his third best pitch after the fastball and changeup.
The bottom line to pitching success it to command the fastball first and then learn how to change speeds. Pitches such as sliders and cutters are too stressful on the elbow, and should not be thrown until after high school.
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