Joan Joyce, the riseball and dropping the shoulder

[halskinner]

In Joans video she talks about her risebal, how she threw with both the windmill AND the sling shot wind ups. She explains that she had a much better riseball with the sling shot wind up as she got lower and was able to get farther 'under' the ball for more spin.

I have said many times that if you drop the throwing shoulder at release, when throwing a riseball you would get more spin and can even change the axis and produce a really nasty up and in pitch. Someone here said that dropping the shoulder would accomplish nothing.

Watch the video where Joan demonstrates both wind ups. Note how much lower her throwing shoulder is on the sling shot wind up. Joan says she could get under the ball more. When I was a teenager a few of the older pitchers called it 'Ducking under the ball' because it resembled a pitcher ducking under a line drive back at them. Made sense to me back then and I got good at it.

When teaching the bent fingered rise to students, Thats when I REALLY found out how good that worked. They moved the ball way more than I ever did! I had to conclude that they were way more flexible than I was.

At any rate, here is Joan Joyces video.


The Slingshot Pitch - Joan Joyce - YouTube




To the person that told me dropping the throwing shoulder couldnt make any difference in a riseball, maybe you will believe Joan Joyce when SHE says it does.

 

[Jojo]

Hal, my DD was a rise ball pitcher. A -drop your shoulder- rise ball pitcher.

In her freshman year in college, the other teams in her conference begin to work on how to deal with her rise ball and pretty much they worked on, not swinging at anything that looked like it was higher than waist high in the strike zone.
So DD had to learn to adjust. She worked on it at school and we worked with at home over the summer. She worked on dropping her shoulder even more to get a low rise that still had great spin. She could now throw it low in zone.

 

[halskinner]

OObviously there are two forces at work here; Ball speed and ball spin. Figuring out the exact combination of both for that particular day could be a challenge for me.

Simply put, not enough spin for the speed, hardly broke at all or moved too late to be as effective as it could be. Vice versa could also occur, breaking too soon and it was much more hittable,

Figuring out exactly what was off a little could take me into the 2nd inninmg. I strived for it to be flat, like a fastball, until right before they started to swing, THEN come up.

Good for your daughter.

 

[Jojo]

OObviously there are two forces at work here; Ball speed and ball spin. Figuring out the exact combination of both for that particular day could be a challenge for me.

Simply put, not enough spin for the speed, hardly broke at all or moved too late to be as effective as it could be. Vice versa could also occur, breaking too soon and it was much more hittable,

Figuring out exactly what was off a little could take me into the 2nd inninmg. I strived for it to be flat, like a fastball, until right before they started to swing, THEN come up.

Good for your daughter.

This is what we worked on, getting it to stay down in the zone, and then stay up finishing up right around the letters. She could throw it for a called strike. But the only way she could do this was to start it lower in the zone.
I have a picture of her somewhere when we working on it, I'll try to find it.

 

[Jojo]

Okay, I found it, here she was working on getting it released low in zone. It ended up right around the letters of the hitter.

 

[halskinner]

YIKES! I guess she is getting low. Is she throwing a sling shot wind up? She looks about halfway between windmill and sling shot. DEFINITELY more limber than I was.

 

[Jojo]

No she was full windmill.

 

[Rocketech1]

OObviously there are two forces at work here; Ball speed and ball spin. Figuring out the exact combination of both for that particular day could be a challenge for me.

Simply put, not enough spin for the speed, hardly broke at all or moved too late to be as effective as it could be. Vice versa could also occur, breaking too soon and it was much more hittable,

Figuring out exactly what was off a little could take me into the 2nd inninmg. I strived for it to be flat, like a fastball, until right before they started to swing, THEN come up.

Good for your daughter.

I just gotta say that the amount of ignorance on how a rise ball "rises" from a "professional" pitching coach is shocking to me. All things being equal, a rise ball with the most velocity and most revolutions per second will have the best "movement" (i.e. it won't drop as much) as compared to a rise ball with less velocity and spin per second. This whole idea that a rise ball has late movement up in the strike zone is a joke. I wish you guys would not continue to popularize this myth about the rise ball. Off my soap box...

 

[Taxi]

If shes getting that low do the batters now know hey.. a riseball is coming ? and does that matter since it can come in as a strike ?

 

[Jojo]

If shes getting that low do the batters now know hey.. a riseball is coming ? and does that matter since it can come in as a strike ?

I think it was successful, because it came in as as a strike. They were forced to swing at a rise ball they would have preferred to lay off of.
She didn't throw it low all the time, just enough to keep them guessing.