Help with the Drop

[Rick Pauly]

Shaker1
She has a lot of the attributes required for a good drop. Her spin axis is 12/6 based on the tape on the ball I am seeing. She appears to have a fairly high release point and she is throwing a decent release angle.....two other attributes that are important are speed and spin rate......do you have either of those measures?

Her ball is definitely dropping nicely, but my eye test suggests that she is not throwing it very fast.....so in that case, gravity has a lot of time to pull the ball down. If this pitch were 60 mph and dropping like it is in this clip then she would have a phenomenal drop.....if it is 50 mph then most of the drop is due to gravity.
Is spin rate important....yes, but on a dropball it is not nearly as important as her release angle/release point.
As she picks up speed don't be disappointed if the ball doesn't drop as much......again, it is a function of speed/time for gravity to pull it down. With the attributes she is currently displaying her dropball will break later/sharper as she picks up speed.....all good things.

 

[shaker1]

Shaker1
She has a lot of the attributes required for a good drop. Her spin axis is 12/6 based on the tape on the ball I am seeing. She appears to have a fairly high release point and she is throwing a decent release angle.....two other attributes that are important are speed and spin rate......do you have either of those measures?

Her ball is definitely dropping nicely, but my eye test suggests that she is not throwing it very fast.....so in that case, gravity has a lot of time to pull the ball down. If this pitch were 60 mph and dropping like it is in this clip then she would have a phenomenal drop.....if it is 50 mph then most of the drop is due to gravity.
Is spin rate important....yes, but on a dropball it is not nearly as important as her release angle/release point.
As she picks up speed don't be disappointed if the ball doesn't drop as much......again, it is a function of speed/time for gravity to pull it down. With the attributes she is currently displaying her dropball will break later/sharper as she picks up speed.....all good things.

Rick, I would guess her speed is around 50 for these pitches. She was in that range for her fastball last winter 47-52. Spin rate has never been checked, but a neat thing I noticed with the last pitch in the video, if it's viewed frame by frame, the ball appears not to move. Seams and stripe stay in place. My phone has a 30 fps rate, so I'm guessing she spinning it around 15rps, would doubt it would be at 30. Thanks for responding

 

[Perfect Circle]

Agreed... One more thing I see great... is she is keeping the ball up off the ground... Big in my book !!!

 

[Perfect Circle]

That was a great clip... When I can see the tape & seams, so can the best in the business.

The times are from release to hitting your glove. I use this to go back and check DD's clips from a long time ago. Also to compare her to the other pitcher in the game. It shows differences in her PowerPitches vs. OffSpeed pitches.

If you get the same set up, just run a red (or any other color tape) the opposite way across the tape you have now...and you can count the RPS... (roughly)...One thing great about throwing a 12/6... Just thinking this pitch is higher than 15rps
My guess is this pitch is 49mph... give or take 3 MPH

<video width="512" height="388" controls="controls">
<source src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58923514/1-dpf/shaker1/Timed%202.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>

Click the full screen arrows... If you right click the video, you can download... & Change the speed of play

 

[Perfect Circle]

Right-Click to "save as" to your computer.... First read my signature before going any further...

Get you another (old) ball. Run the tape the other way... 2Seam
You see my first stop on .gif below... her pinky & thumb are curled. Get her to hold the pads of her three fingers over the seam, and stretch her pinky and thumb out to the center of ball. As close to center, and she can hold the ball without the other 3 fingers comfortably... Mark the spot where pinky & thumb are holding close to center.

Now take a big bolt & hammer, and put a dent in ball. Now throw with pinky & thumb on dents & pressure on dents...until peel time. Throw this same pitch...

Same thing with another (old) ball... dents for pinky & thumb, and add one for middle finger. Looks like she is using index. Not that's wrong... just to see if it gives another variance in the pitch.

You get it... then put dents the opposite way you want the ball to go... 2Seam. Same pitch.

Have fun with this until you come up with your Speed gaining Strategy...

 

[Rick Pauly]

Shaker1
Just another observation: She really has nice overall pitching mechanics so I am wondering why her speeds aren't a bit higher. In this nice blown-up clip PC has done I think I am noticing her cut off her stride a bit....in other words, has she been taught to shorten her stride for the dropball? If so, I think I would scrap that....she gets her spine angle/posture up near vertical nicely so just have her do her normal high energy stride. I don't think she needs to stride short.
Rick

 

[Perfect Circle]

Shaker1
Just another observation: She really has nice overall pitching mechanics so I am wondering why her speeds aren't a bit higher. In this nice blown-up clip PC has done I think I am noticing her cut off her stride a bit....in other words, has she been taught to shorten her stride for the dropball? If so, I think I would scrap that....she gets her spine angle/posture up near vertical nicely so just have her do her normal high energy stride. I don't think she needs to stride short.
Rick

Yep Rick that's a great clip he got... if he was back just a tad and got her whole profile. I bet Java would like to see that left foot on the drive... that's cut out.

The video above with the 4 pitches @ full speed really shows that, I went and looked since you mentioned... If your on a computer, hit the full screen arrows, and give it a look... it really shows up there (short stride)...all 4 times. I jumped on that last drop for the .gif. Awesome pitch, great color contrast, nice background. Very interesting Backstop.

He got that shot in 1280 x 720....and the format holds color... unbelievable what these phones can do. I hope FFS don't catch me trying to make art out of this again...

 

[Fastpitch86]

Good comments