Fastball Hitting Improvement with a Personal Pitcher Pitching Machine

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traing effectively for baseball using the wiffle ball

How to Improve Your Ability to Hit the Fastball

with a

Personal Pitcher Pitching Machine

Hitting a fastball is the most basic element of successful hitting. If you can’t hit the fastball - you can’t hit - period. Sorry to be so blunt. But, the first pitch you must master hitting, is the fastball. As a rule, you will see more fastballs in any given at-bat than you will see of any other pitch. You will see more fastballs for strikes from the opposing pitcher too, since it is the easiest pitch (usually) to throw for a strike. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO HIT A FASTBALL.

Getting smoked

As you progress up the age brackets in organized baseball, you will find that in your first year in a new level that you have a hard time catching up to the fastball. In your first year at a new age bracket, you will probably be playing against players who are older and stronger and they throw harder than what you are accustomed to .

Getting accustomed to serious heat

Throwing speed and fastball speed is really all just relative. The top MLB fastball pitchers are really only about 10% faster than “average”. If 90 mph is the average fastball speed in the Majors, then someone throwing 99 mph is only throwing 10% faster. A 99 mph fastball is not impossible to hit -in and of itself, it is only hard if everyone else is throwing around 90 mph. It is all relative

If you want to s-l-o-w t-h-e g-a-m-e d-o-w-n , then speed it up during practice, game time will become like “slow motion” after awhile. Do you think a Major Leaguer would have a hard time handling an 80 mph fastball? Of course not. They are not super humans, but they are accustomed to hitting 90 mph fastballs. A 75 - 80 mph “fastball” is a “change up” to them.

Use the plastic wiffle ball pitching machine to move up

At first, you will not react well to the new pitch speed. The safest way to move up in pitch speed when your reaction time is still a little slow, is to do so hitting a plastic wiffle ball - rather than against a hard baseball.

Work your way up slowly over time

Move up in small increments at a time, until you finally reach the 10% or 15% faster pitch speed. One of the best ways to move up to the next level is to do so during the off season where you can move up slowly until you are ready when the new season begins.

Using the Personal Pitcher and two home plates

When practicing hitting a fastball, set one home plate down at your “normal” pitch speed reaction distance. This may be 20 feet from the machine or 25 feet or more depending on the hitter’s age and skill level. Set the first home plate at this normal distance and place a second home plate 2 - 5 feet closer to the machine (this will vary again based on skill and age, with younger players 2 feet will do, older players may need to move a little more).

Start out the day’s hitting session at the first home plate location, then move up to the second once you are warmed up and hitting well at the first home plate. The second home plate location should challenge you, but not be so much quicker that you are totally “out-classed” by the new pitch speed. Remember, you are going to work up to hitting the faster speed over time. Start out with the second plate two feet closer to the pitching machine, then after a few weeks, move up one more foot closer, then another after another few weeks of hitting with the two plate method.

In time, your reaction time will have “naturally” improved, simply by seeing slightly faster pitch speeds and progressing up as you are able to over time.

Hitting a small fastball is harder than hitting a regulation size fastball

The Personal Pitcher throws the golf ball sized wiffle ball which is in and of itself more difficult to hit than a regulation (baseball) fastball. It is like trying to hit a “pea” as the expression goes. Soon enough the regulation baseball will seem like a “beach ball”.

The Personal Pitcher is an ideal pitching machine to work on hitting the fastball, and using the two plate method of fastball hitting improvement.

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