How to Grip a Baseball on Change Up Pitches

Series Summary

Baseball, the great American pastime, is actually considered the official sport of the United States, though it is enjoyed by many fans in several countries throughout the world. Developed in the late 18th century, the game of baseball was probably derived from older British bat and ball games and then brought over to America. Today, baseball teams consist of nine or ten players and a pitcher. In some leagues the pitcher is the tenth player and must bat for the team, while other leagues allow a designated hitter to bat in place of the pitcher. Baseball enjoys great popularity as both a professional spectator sport, and an amateur or youth league sport.

In this free video series, a baseball expert will demonstrate how to throw a change up pitch. Using step-by-step instructions, an expert baseball coach will go over basic pitching grips, positioning and stance, as well as provide specialized training for throwing change up pitches. You will also learn a variety of change up pitching types, like a Grodski change up, a knuckle ball, and a cut fast ball. These free baseball training videos are especially helpful for young pitchers, and will provide a myriad of tips and techniques for any pitcher wanting to add a variety of important pitches to their pitching repertoire.

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Mike Lumley on behalf of Expert Village I'm here to teach you pitching. So the first thing we want to talk about today is actually the grip. The grip is actually one of the most important things for flight, movement, accuracy on the end result of the target. So we have two different options of is a 4 seam and that is where we put our fingers across the seam, across the fat part of the seam. Why it is called four seam is when the ball rotate four seams cut through the air. Four seam is a little straighter, a little truer and then we move to two seams. Two seams you can either go with the small part of the laces or across the small part of laces. From there we gain a little bit more movement so the theory is as the ball goes it slips through the air and creates a little bit of drag and starts to tail up to whatever side the pitcher is. So right hander to the right side, left hander to the left side. Most young kids should start with the four seam but understand that the younger some of the younger kids have small hands so should really if they want to go with the two seam that is fine cause movement at that age is really not a big factor cause a lack of velocity. So starting with the hand grip I prefer for that to be part of the horseshoe it goes in towards the middle of the body. Finger, try to flip the ball having a bit of a center line and thumb is directly underneath on the bottom. If you put the ball in we don't want to choke it too deep. If we choke it too deep we have less accuracy and a lot of drag on the ball which is going to cause less velocity. So if I take the strike ball that would give me a good, good view where my fingers should be placed and then underneath the ball dead center and then right over the top. So here we are going to throw and I would show a little bit of a example of throwing the ball. We are going to go through a few steps today; the first one we are going to call is basically elbow up and elbow up is just working on the upper, just really all we are working on is a release of the ball. Okay, so right now we are going to start and when we throw the ball we make sure we lead out with the elbow and release out front. So in this drill we are going to stand up nice and tall or sit up tall on our knees, elbows up as high as our shoulders and out in front of our shoulders. All we are trying to do with this drill is work on our release and put a little bit of zip on the ball."