The Eye of the Camera

Maddie and I went to a pitching coach last Friday afternoon.  He suggested some "tweaks" to Maddie's mechanics to produce more speed.  He flies in from Erie, PA about once a month for a weekend full of lessons.  I liked him, he had a sense of humor.  Everything he suggested is something I knew was "fixable" but put it more in the Maddie Style bucket instead of Mechanic requirement.  

The comparison below isn't completely fair.  The left side is with the mechanic tweaks and the right side is from a couple months ago.  I tried to find similar angles, but the right side was taken with a camera and the left side an iPhone.

First comparison...  he stopped the hands over head and has Maddie using her legs to push toward home...  he wants her momentum going toward home and views the hands over head as unneeded use of energy... I like the momentum to home...  it also makes it easier to do "walk-ups"...

Second comparison...  she is more angled toward home and appears to be "pushing" more...  big difference is where her glove hand is...

Third comparison...  ALMOST the same...  he does not like the glove hand toward third...  and neither do I...  but Maddie DOES :-) ...  we will keep working on that...  takes away some energy...

Fourth comparison...  almost the same...  

Maddie pitched 17 1/3 innings in a 6 GG 16U tournament in Keller this weekend.  Her 14U Texas Glory Adkins team won 4 out of 6...  Maddie's best pitching game was against a team down from Oklahoma with sophomore and junior players...  they were big...  we lost giving up 1 earned run, but kept them off-balance, had her fair share of strike outs and managed to get 6 innings in the 1 hour and 15 minute time limit...  the game moved along...

Maddie came in the last game with the bases loaded and two outs winning by 2 runs...  she couldn't find the plate in warm-ups and then proceeded to throw three straight strikes to strike out the batter (looking)...

It is amazing what cameras can do these days...