Hi gang. Hoping some of my fellow bucket dads can give me some feedback on my 16YO DD. 2 years ago she was topping out around 55mph with good control and change up so we starting working on breaking pitches. We decided to go with a drop curve. She picked it up pretty quickly and soon could throw it really well and hit her spots with it. We worked on it non stop for about a year. That's when we noticed that her fastball had lost some speed. After doing some video review we realized that she had begun to roll her hand over the outside top of all of her pitches including the fastball, probably b/c she had worked on the drop curve rotation so much. She went from 55mph to 50 which is pretty significant obviously. She is the only varsity pitcher on our HS team and this really limited us being able to work on it. She still spots her FB well and her change and drop curve are really good. The problem is that when we face good hitting teams they will all get in the front of the box to hit the drop curve before it breaks since at 50mph they don't have to be worried about her throwing the FB by them. Long story short we got out the ole spin right spinner disk and started working on keeping her fingers behind the ball and making sure she really loaded the forearm (i.e. get palm to the sky at the 9 o'clock position). She has made good progress and we are now up to around 52-53 mph. I know every kid has a limit when it comes to speed but I also know she isn't close to her max potential and I can't figure out why. She has grown and matured a lot in the last 2 years so there is no reason she shouldn't at least still be hitting 55mph if not more. I look at her mechanics and I see a lot of the good stuff we talk about here on the forum. The only glaring problem I see is the glove swimming which she has always done but certainly that can't be the only reason for such a drastic loss of speed. The only other possibility I see is that maybe she is "missing her whip", but she doesn't look like she is holding on to it too long as evidenced by the video showing her fingers behind and to the inside of the ball at release. I don't see alot of wrist snap but that has been debated on here extensively in regards to if it actually adds any speed to the pitch. I need the masters on here to chime in and point out what I am missing. She is a really gifted athlete as you can see in the videos. She is super strong and very athletic and in better shape than almost anyone in her school. We really gotta get this figured out before she gets so discouraged she wants to hang it up. The other day she asked about just concentrating on her hitting and OF and that is when I knew I needed some help. Any and all technical advise would be greatly appreciated. We found this site 3 years ago and it was nothing short of a miracle. We went from a hello elbow pitcher throwing 42mph to an internally rotating machine throwing 55mph in 1 summer. LOL. She had 113 strikeouts her 8th grade year against only 12 walks and we play in Florida where the competition is pretty stiff. Help me get my DD back on the right track. Thanks in advance for all the replies!! Sorry for the poor quality. My camera shoots slow motion video at 240fps but it can only do so at low resolutions.
Last edited: