Clubhouse Gas

Nick Abel - Pitching Grip and Release

Editor's Notes: Every pitcher at every level hears the same advice from his pitching coach: throw first pitch strikes, keep the lead off runner off base and don’t walk anybody. How do you accomplish that? You must have control of your fastball. Back in the Clubhouse is Nick Able a rising Mets relief pitcher assigned to the Savannah Sand Gnats that throws a nasty 94 MPH, four seam fastball, from a ¾ arm slot to show us the secret to mastering your fastball. Clubhouse Gas would like to thank our friends with the Savannah Sand Gnats for allowing us access to its players and coaches. A tip from your friends at CHG, take the family out to a Minor League Baseball Game and get up close to the action, coaches and players. It’s the best entertainment value in sports! If you like this show, be sure to check out our “Youth Sports Videos On-Demand” feature for more great shows on your favorite subject: youth sports. You can subscribe to CHG or share today’s show with your friends and family by clicking on the “Subscribe and Share” tab in the menu at the top of the page and following the directions.

Video Transcript

Casey: We’re talking a lot here in Clubhouse Gas about different grips, how to throw pitches, how to hold the baseball but I’m not so sure we’ve talked about why. Today we talk about the effect that you’re grip has on your ability to become a good pitcher on Clubhouse Gas.

We’re happy again to be joined by friend of the show Nick Abel which who pitches for the Savannah Sand Gnats. Nick last time you were here we talked about foundation. How important it is proper mechanics and foundation. I would love it if you can show us some different grips but as we were talking about grips you made a statement that you wanted to make sure that people understood not only how to hold a baseball but why to hold a baseball, why is that?

Nick: Right, I mean the grip and your lower body mechanics and everything ties into one thing and basically as a pitcher your job is to generate spin. Basically your grip starts with your index finger and your middle finger on the ball right here. You have the horseshoe right here and you’re going to place your fingers kind of where you can see the middle on the ball right here and then if you go to the other side of the ball there’s a seam right down here.

And you’re them and this joint right here is actually going to be right on that seam, so it’s going to look something like this. It’s pretty much going to flip these two fingers down the middle and then the other part is your ring finger coming around this seam right here. So it’s going to look like this, alright and a traditional 4-seamer has the seam rotation so to create that you have your grip and for you guys at home you could grab a baseball if you want right now and do the same thing with me but the first finger to come off the ball is what? If you guys didn’t know it’s actually your thumb.

So your thumb comes off and this joint right here actually creates friction which is good because you see the guys on the mound they have the Rosin Bag and what that does is create more friction from your finger tips to the ball and what friction is going to allow you to do is spin the ball with more revolutions and more revolutions equal more velocity which equals more commands and then you’re coach is going to be very happy then because you’re going to come in your fastball with a lot of velocity.

So back to the grip you have your thumb coming off creating the friction and as you release your thumb the key to this grip is you actually have your ring finger on here which keeps your finger on here which keeps your fingers and the ball on a track so instead of a lot of people teach keeping this kind of just on the side of this and ones you release that thumb look what happens to the ball. It falls out.

Now if you do this in fast motion with me throwing a baseball you’ll see that once you release this thumb if I don’t have this finger on the ball will almost wobble a little bit because it’s not stable on the side. This finger right here activates your stabilization on the ball and now the ball comes out and instead of having a sideway spin it has a seam over seam spin which will allow you to cut through the air and create more revolutions.

So this finger comes off, this is coming, it’s going, it’s going, and this just slides along, slides along until you finally release and the release if you watch a lot of big league pitchers when they finish you’ll actually see their thumb split these two fingers and what you’ve got to look for is Pedro Martinez at his peak so late 90’s early 2000 before he had a couple of injuries.

Josh Beckett is a great guy to look for you know, there’s a lot of guys that you can watch and you can just see their finish and you’re going to see them finish this way and the other thing I want to talk about is another thing you can do at home that finish and this grip go side by side because now you activate the muscle in your forearm and if you do a quick drill right here and you take your forearm and you take your fingers along the like this and you squeeze down.

Squeeze down feel which muscle is used there. Now take this and squeeze down. You can actually feel more muscle being used squeezing this way than this way. And to spin, I mean if you’re using more muscles you can snap harder down on the ball to create more spin, more command, more velocity.